Google translate? No thanks, these writers prove their human worth

Consider Homer’s Odyssey, Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, even the Bible – most English speakers will only ever know these texts in translation. For us to read it, someone with keen knowledge of the original language has taken apart, studied and interpreted every word, re-creating the author’s vision for an entirely new audience.

It’s a behemoth task, and one that is still undertaken on countless texts by translators who invariably operate behind the scenes, receiving little public recognition. Today, some are being replaced by artificial intelligence.

From left: Mariana Enriquez, Gabriel Garcia Ochoa and Lilit Žekulin Thwaites will examine the art of translation at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival this year.Credit: Wayne Taylor

Translation Slam, an event at this year’s Melbourne Writers Festival, aims to correct this by exposing the crucial art of translation.

Two translators will go head to head, each translating the same vignette by Argentinian horror author Mariana Enriquez into Australian English. They will examine the differences between their work, which will be projected side by side onto a large screen, alongside host and fellow translator Dr Gabriel Garcia Ochoa.

“Translation provides an innumerable number of possibilities to interpret a text,” Ochoa says. “Two translations are so seldom the same. For this event, I highlighted only about three instances where the translators wrote the same sentence.”

This is because translating literature isn’t like solving an equation. Rather, it’s an art form. Translators aren’t simply converting a text linguistically from one language to another, Ochoa says, but from one culture to another.

“The meaning isn’t only tied to the words, but to the cultural weight that those words carry,” he says. “For example, I grew up in Mexico, where Spanish was my first language. There, the way class structures work is often unspoken. In a text, that would be clear to someone who was brought up in that cultural context, but very unclear if you’re not from that culture.”

Every translator will therefore leave some kind of imprint on the text they’re interpreting, says Translation Slam participant Alice Whitmore. “Translators aren’t ghosts or magicians. We leave traces. Even if you were to translate a text as literally as possible, you would be altering the text in a distinct and measurable way,” she says.

“I don’t pretend that scientific objectivity is possible, nor do I think it’s desirable. Literature is human, so translation must be, too.”

This isn’t to imply that a translator can change a text however they please. They must make it comprehensible for a new audience while remaining faithful to the author’s vision. Therein lies the greatest challenge, says president of The Australian Association for Literary Translation and Translation Slam participant Lilit Žekulin Thwaites.

This may involve describing the situation that lies behind an idiom, a turn of phrase, a pun or a joke, by adding an explanatory phrase or word, or by re-organising the sentence or the paragraph. The word “haunting” doesn’t exist in Spanish, so translators need to spell out the emotions.

“No matter what, it has to make sense to the target language reader while remaining true to the original author’s intent,” Thwaites says.

Thwaites has been fortunate to work alongside the authors of most of the pieces she has translated, including Antonio Iturbe and Luisa Etxenike. They usually trust her to interpret their work faithfully, and often don’t see the translation until the final draft.

Similarly, Enriquez rarely sees the translations of her work until they’re complete. Throughout her career, during which she has been translated into over 20 languages, she has never read a poor translation, though some are more surprising than others.

“For example, Spanish from Argentina can sound very commanding. To us, it sounds gentle, but not to others,” she says. “So, when I read a text in French, it sounds too ornamented sometimes. It’s not that the translation is bad; it just doesn’t sound like me.”

It requires some “letting go”, she says. “But that letting go is to be read. I don’t think about the manipulation of the text, but about the possibility of having more readers. It’s an opening of new worlds.”

Yet Thwaites says some translators are still not named on book covers. Worse, computer-generated translation is becoming a cost-saving measure.

“AI translation is being ‘improved’ daily by being fed our translations and creative work without permission or acknowledgment. It’s enabling unscrupulous publishers to find new ways of paying translators even less than is currently the practice,” she says.

Ochoa echoes this, saying the human art of translation must be preserved.

“The global world we live in is impossible without translation. It’s easy to forget that when you speak a dominant language like English. But to operate across cultures and countries, we need people who can translate.”

Found in Translation: Translation Slam will take place at the State Library Victoria on May 11 as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival. The Age is a festival partner.

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