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How I Became an American
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From: jomalley at caruspub.com <jomalley>
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 11:02:36 -0600
From Jim Skofield, translator of Karin Gundisch's How I Became an American:
I first read the book (titled "Das Paradies Liegt in Amerika" or "Paradise Lies in America" auf Deutsch) at Marc Aronson's request, along with a couple other German language books Carus/Cricket was considering. That was back in the autumn of 2000, if memory serves. As it was published in Germany, the book stopped not too long after the family arrived in Youngstown -- specifically after the section in which the entire family has its photo taken just before the oldest brother leaves Youngstown to go make his way in California. I wrote an enthusiastic report on the book [I hadn't actually seen anything quite like it before] and sent it off to Marc, noting that -- as published in German -- it felt somewhat incomplete to me. I could certainly understand the author's desire to concentrate on the actual process of immigration, but -as an American myself -- I wished she had written some more about what the family encountered once they had actually settled into life in Ohio. There was a
"beat" to the book that I thought lacking in the original German that would make it most attractive to American readers. Marc concurred with my assessment and duly forwarded our concerns onto the German publisher and Karin G?ndisch, and she, in turn, quickly sat down and wrote a few more chapters which made a fuller and rounder story for the English language translation.
About the actual process of translation, I'm not sure what to say. My primary aim, always in translating a book, is "first, do no damage" -- a sort of
"Hippocratic Oath for translators" -- which is, alas, impossible to achieve, since any translation, no matter how good, can only approximate the feel of a text in its orginal language. Of course, one wants to get the nuts and bolts right -- the tenses, the nouns, the precise adjectives and adverbs -- but over and beyond that, one seeks always to find the closest English equivalent to the original writer's style and rhythm. In the case of "How... American", the original German had a bit of a rough, unpolished "feel" -- it was supposed to have been written by a twelve year old boy, after all, and that made challenges for me as a translator, because an actual twelve year old would never have expressed some of the more sophisticated observations the author put into his mouth.
Marc and Joelle Dujardin, who were unfailingly helpful during the process of revision, more than once commented on the "choppy" nature of the text, and I sometimes found myself wailing in response, "but that's the way it IS in the original!"
The actual translation process seemed to move rather easily for me; it was a quick translation -- a smidge over five weeks of work, plus perhaps another week of on and off revision work. Marc and Joelle and I made phone calls and emails back and forth; queries were handled over the 'phone for the most part, and we went over the copy?ited ms. together by telephone. The greatest point of friction seemed to be that I -- who work on a MacIntosh, seemed not to have a word-processing system readily decipherable by the computers at Cricket! The part of the translation that I found most challenging (and, I think am therefore proudest of) were the four rhyming poems/songs that appear in the early part of the book. Since they were supposed to be immigrant songs that caught the ear and were easy to remember, it seemed to me vital that they retain their lilt and rhyme scheme intact. In order to do this, I made xeroxes of the original poems and pasted them on large sheets of white cardboard, and -whenever I had a moment free -- I worked on making lists of words and pushing them about those sheets of cardboard (sometimes literally) until I arrived at working solutions that satisfied me. It was a bit like doing a crossword puzzle in which all the clues are in another language, but the solution had to be in English, and yet still had to retain the sense of the original instructions. I have been asked by students what the primary necessity of a translator's temperament has to be, and I guess I'd say "patience". Those poems sorely tried mine, but I am pleased that I eventually wound up with reasonable English equivalents.
- Jim Skofield 3/26/02
Received on Tue 26 Mar 2002 11:02:36 AM CST
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 11:02:36 -0600
From Jim Skofield, translator of Karin Gundisch's How I Became an American:
I first read the book (titled "Das Paradies Liegt in Amerika" or "Paradise Lies in America" auf Deutsch) at Marc Aronson's request, along with a couple other German language books Carus/Cricket was considering. That was back in the autumn of 2000, if memory serves. As it was published in Germany, the book stopped not too long after the family arrived in Youngstown -- specifically after the section in which the entire family has its photo taken just before the oldest brother leaves Youngstown to go make his way in California. I wrote an enthusiastic report on the book [I hadn't actually seen anything quite like it before] and sent it off to Marc, noting that -- as published in German -- it felt somewhat incomplete to me. I could certainly understand the author's desire to concentrate on the actual process of immigration, but -as an American myself -- I wished she had written some more about what the family encountered once they had actually settled into life in Ohio. There was a
"beat" to the book that I thought lacking in the original German that would make it most attractive to American readers. Marc concurred with my assessment and duly forwarded our concerns onto the German publisher and Karin G?ndisch, and she, in turn, quickly sat down and wrote a few more chapters which made a fuller and rounder story for the English language translation.
About the actual process of translation, I'm not sure what to say. My primary aim, always in translating a book, is "first, do no damage" -- a sort of
"Hippocratic Oath for translators" -- which is, alas, impossible to achieve, since any translation, no matter how good, can only approximate the feel of a text in its orginal language. Of course, one wants to get the nuts and bolts right -- the tenses, the nouns, the precise adjectives and adverbs -- but over and beyond that, one seeks always to find the closest English equivalent to the original writer's style and rhythm. In the case of "How... American", the original German had a bit of a rough, unpolished "feel" -- it was supposed to have been written by a twelve year old boy, after all, and that made challenges for me as a translator, because an actual twelve year old would never have expressed some of the more sophisticated observations the author put into his mouth.
Marc and Joelle Dujardin, who were unfailingly helpful during the process of revision, more than once commented on the "choppy" nature of the text, and I sometimes found myself wailing in response, "but that's the way it IS in the original!"
The actual translation process seemed to move rather easily for me; it was a quick translation -- a smidge over five weeks of work, plus perhaps another week of on and off revision work. Marc and Joelle and I made phone calls and emails back and forth; queries were handled over the 'phone for the most part, and we went over the copy?ited ms. together by telephone. The greatest point of friction seemed to be that I -- who work on a MacIntosh, seemed not to have a word-processing system readily decipherable by the computers at Cricket! The part of the translation that I found most challenging (and, I think am therefore proudest of) were the four rhyming poems/songs that appear in the early part of the book. Since they were supposed to be immigrant songs that caught the ear and were easy to remember, it seemed to me vital that they retain their lilt and rhyme scheme intact. In order to do this, I made xeroxes of the original poems and pasted them on large sheets of white cardboard, and -whenever I had a moment free -- I worked on making lists of words and pushing them about those sheets of cardboard (sometimes literally) until I arrived at working solutions that satisfied me. It was a bit like doing a crossword puzzle in which all the clues are in another language, but the solution had to be in English, and yet still had to retain the sense of the original instructions. I have been asked by students what the primary necessity of a translator's temperament has to be, and I guess I'd say "patience". Those poems sorely tried mine, but I am pleased that I eventually wound up with reasonable English equivalents.
- Jim Skofield 3/26/02
Received on Tue 26 Mar 2002 11:02:36 AM CST
