This is the final part of our interview with Nico Lorenzutti of ROH Press. Thanks again, Nico!
Do you try to stay with very literal translations or give yourself a little room for creativity?
When I first started, my translations were very literal, almost word for word in fact. Respect for the author, his phrasing, his word choice. What I ended up with was a stilted text that did not match the quick pace and energy of the original Italian. I looked at what other translators did and was particularly inspired by Edith Grossman, the translator for Don Quixote and Love in the Time of Cholera. She states that a translation can be faithful to tone, intention, and meaning, but that it can rarely be faithful to words or syntax of the original language for those characteristics are not transferable. So I decided to change my approach and write the way I imagined Salgari would have written the novel today had he been writing in English.
I do at times change or drop small passages from the original text. I’ve removed anachronisms, changed a couple of names and tightened dialogue when it appeared superfluous or overly melodramatic. Salgari’s adventures were all based in places he had never visited, and he drew his information from the travel and scientific journals of his time. Like many of the writers of the late 19th century, he wanted to educate his readers while entertaining them. I check facts, even hunt down his original sources to get an idea of what he read. His information is seldom wrong, but when it is, I correct it. I also look at Spanish, French and German translations to see what other translators have added or omitted. Still any changes I make are always faithful in tone, meaning and intention to the original. I really have no right to tamper with someone else’s story. To my surprise I discovered that in an early French translation of The Mystery of the Black Jungle the translator had added a chapter of his own. He didn’t like the way the story ended and had the hero, Tremal-Naik kill his nemesis, Suyodhana the high priest of the Kali cult. What he didn’t realize was that Suyodhana played a prominent role in the next two novels in the series.
What are some common challenges you face when translating?
Finding the right word. There are times when I can translate a chapter in a few hours, yet other times when it’ll take days to find the right words for just one sentence. And you never know where inspiration will hit you, sitting on a train, washing dishes, on the treadmill at the gym… I always try to keep a pen at hand.
It actually takes me longer to translate the books than it took Salgari to write them. He wrote three or four a year, I usually manage to do one.
Do you see yourself branching out into other Italian authors at all?
Not immediately, there just isn’t the time. There are some other Italian and French authors I’d like to translate, but they’ll have to wait until after I finish my MA. For the moment our only non-Salgari title is Mathias Sandorf by Jules Verne. It had been out of print for 80 years and we brought it back, complete with all of its original 111 illustrations. Even though I only edited the original translation, restoring some omissions and making minor changes to the translation, it proved to be a lot of work.
You mentioned ebooks?
Yes, we’re going to make all of our titles available digitally this year. I still prefer to read paperbacks and hardbacks. I love books; I can’t imagine a home without them. But, that said, ebooks are great, I love their versatility and they allow so many new writers to reach an audience. It’s great to read stories online about how someone who was rejected by traditional publishers found their niche and has become wealthy doing what they love. Very inspiring, makes you believe anyone can do it. I’d love for it to happen to me, who wouldn’t? But I take the stories with a grain of salt. There’s always someone that wins the lottery jackpot out of millions that play, just enough winners to keep you buying tickets. I do this work because I enjoy it, as I enjoy teaching, studying, travelling and so many of the other things that fill my day.
How do you see yourself?
A person who wears many hats and lucky enough to enjoy all of them.
Next week, Andrew Oberg on some of the limericks a fugitive gorilla painted on the metro walls in Tokyo.
By the winners
I recently read Richard Lloyd Parry’s very thoughtful and thorough review of a new book on Aung San Suu Kyi and the anti-junta movement within Burma called The Lady and the Peacock: The Life of Aung San Suu Kyi by Peter Popham. In it, Parry relates how the book was already in the final stages of preparation for publication when the military-dominated government in Burma (technically civilian since 2011) surprised everyone by suddenly embarking on an almost perestroika-like program of reforms, including holding elections which were seen as open and fair enough for Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy Party to participate in (as opposed to their 2010 boycott on grounds that the elections held then were a sham), and agreeing on a ceasefire with the various insurgency groups who have been fighting for independent ethnic states to be formed from parts of Burma since the nation’s independence from Britain in 1948.
All politics aside, what interests us here is the fact that this book was already very dated even before it officially went to press, which of course raises serious questions about how history should be written and whether any analysis can be offered about contemporary events beyond that which is possible via journalism. In an age when capitalizing on current affairs is seen as good business by publishers and a sure way to generate sales and profit, just how current can current be?
One major fault, it seems to me, with the thinking behind pushing a book like Popham’s through rather than allowing him to add a chapter or two on all that has happened since (and of course I have no idea if Popham would even be interested in doing so) is that it does much to stultify the analysis the book contains. Granted, as Parry points out in his review, the book does give us an excellent picture of the situation immediately preceding the military government’s thaw and all that led up to that situation, but it still leaves the work in a kind of limbo, neither addressing contemporary events nor having the power of insight available to, say, a work written with sufficient historical distance. Burma may be in the news a lot now, and that may mean it is on our minds more than it used to be, in turn making us more likely to buy a book on the topic, but I can’t help but think that there is a disconnect happening here between the motivations of the publisher and the author involved.
It could, no doubt, be said that such a disconnect is a necessary part of publishing, and that as long as companies are producing books for profit while authors are writing them for any number of reasons, this disconnect will come part and parcel with the processes involved. However, we writers are no longer quite as much at the mercy of others as we used to be; choices abound for the modern wordsmith, and how we take advantage of the opportunities and tools available is in many ways entirely up to us.
The last laugh could well be Popham’s though—he may have already negotiated a deal for a sequel to his book in light of what’s happened the past six months or so. History does, after all, tend to be written by the winners.
Next week, Paul j Rogers on the optimal room temperature for continuous typing.