"Found in Translation?"

by

Lev Raphael

The prize-winning translator Edith Hoffman likes to say that translating is bringing a book into another language. I reviewed her book this past year for Bibliobuffet and found the expression evocative.

It suggests many things: the translator as host, guide, companion. The sense of effort involved. The notion that the translation is a transformation, a voyage, and an entrance into something new.

Until recently, though I had reviewed many books in translation, I never had an intimate relationship with the process. Then last year, when preparing to tour in Germany for my memoir My Germany, I was asked to do some readings in German. That was because I would be reading in some cities in the former East Germany and for many people there, English would not be their second language, Russian would.

The book has been translated into German, so I thought this sounded doable and maybe even fun. I love performing my work, have done so hundreds of times in a handful of countries, so why not? I had also been studying German by myself on and off for a few years, taking classes, watching language videos, studying favorite German movies like Run Lola Run, The Lives of Others, and Downfall. I knew a former high school teacher of German who did tutoring.

The elements were there, and I was willing.

But the translation itself resisted. My memoir is written in a conversational tone. It’s not overly casual, but it’s certainly not formal. German friends and acquaintances who’ve compared the two versions have told me that the translation is not faithful to the tone of the book. One said, “It reads like Thomas Mann.” He didn’t mean that as a compliment.

Working with my tutor, I came to see that the detractors were right. It wasn’t just the different syntax of German that made the text I was studying seems so different, it was different in how it hit the reader. The book hadn’t been brought into German, it had been hijacked and given an extreme makeover. I had learned enough German already to understand that this was not close enough to my book. It was the translator’s idea of my book, which meant that he didn’t really get it, or he had his own agenda. He hadn’t really done what Hoffman said, that is, found equivalents in German for the English, he had apparently gone his own convoluted way.

What to do? I had discovered that the Prologue made an excellent monologue, so to speak (I was a double major in English and theater in College). It’s short, which means it lends itself to not being rushed through. It has a clear structure of beginning, middle, and end, and a somewhat surprising conclusion. I knew it so intimately after dozens of readings that when I did a reading, I could just glance down at the page now and then to scan coming sentences, and was able to keep consistent eye contact with the audience, something most writers don’t know how to do. I could also improvise when I felt like it.

Only rigid and boring authors, in my opinion, read their texts exactly as they stand on the page. When they do that, they ignore the reality of the audience, the fact that the book has moved from private experience to a public one, and they manifest their lack of imagination. Rhythms have to change to make a book hearable.

Working with what we had, my tutor and I together did a translation that was simpler, closer to the original, and easier for me to read as a non-native speaker. For months I practiced part or all of the piece every day.

My first attempts in Germany went over very well, despite my being nervous, but it was a reading in Giessen, north of Frankfurt, that stunned me. Until that evening at a university, I had always been aware of myself reading a book that was mine but wasn’t mine. Something changed after two weeks of touring around Germany, speaking German and being immersed in the sounds of another language.

The only way I can describe it is this: I felt the book had been originally written in German. In those exact German words. They weren’t a translator's, they were mine—completely, irrevocably. I felt quietly exhilarated as I read the pages, experiencing the kind of grace and ease you might feel in a perfect swim or run. I asked the host how it went (“Hat es gut geklappt?”) and without exaggeration, he looked stunned.

As the son of Holocaust survivors, I had never imagined going to Germany once let alone five times, or seeing my work translated into German. But this was something even more extraordinary and I’m still trying to decipher what it means. When I started studying German, my first dream in German told me I had crossed an important threshold. But this reading in another language that suddenly didn’t feel “other,” it was a doorway I didn’t even know existed.

Books mentioned in this column
My Germany, by Lev Raphael (University of Wisconsin Press, 2009) 

Lev Raphael grew up in New York but got over it and has lived half his life in Michigan where he found his partner of twenty-six years along with a certain small fame. He escaped academia in 1988 to write full-time and has never looked back. The author of twenty-one books in many genres, and hundreds of reviews, stories and articles, he's seen his work discussed in journals, books, conference papers, and assigned in college and university classrooms. Which means he’s become homework. Who knew? Lev’s books have been translated into close to a dozen languages, some of which he can't identify, and he's done hundreds of readings and talks across the U.S. and Canada, and in France, England, Scotland, Austria, Germany and Israel. His latest book Pride and Prejudice: The Jewess and the Gentile is his second e-book original. You can learn more about Lev and his work on his website. Lev has reviewed for the Washington Post, Boston Review, NPR, the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, Jerusalem Report and the Detroit Free Press where he had a mystery column for almost a decade. He also hosted his own public radio book show where he interviewed Salman Rushdie, Erica Jong, and Julian Barnes among many other authors. Whatever the genre, he's always looked for books with a memorable voice and a compelling story to tell. Contact Lev.