Effie Yannopoulou

We’d like to thank you for this interview. Let’s start with a warm-up question. Was it your lifelong dream to be involved in translation?

Do you mean, if I have wanted to be a translator since I was little? No. But I think it was very… I loved reading and literature a lot, so I think I imagined I’d like to do something related to that, so, in a sense, you could say it was a dream. But when I was a kid I didn’t think of it as a job. I didn’t think about it at all.

Regarding translation, what image of it did you have before you became a translator and what image do you have now?

Regarding the process or the profession?

Both of them.

I had a rather normal image of the translation process. I mean, I translated from a very young age just for fun. E.g. while reading, while learning French, I was tutored for certificate exams that contained literary texts and poetry, and I was always tempted to try to translate something, a poem for example. Later, I attended a seminar of literary translation at the French Institute, and that was certainly an acquaintance with the so-called secrets of the job, the métier.

Are you more into literary translation or translation of technical texts?

I don’t do any technical translation, I translate literature, but also essays, that is, texts of the Humanities, and theater.

I’d like to ask you, what translation offers you, that is, what you enjoy during the translation process. How do you feel when you translate?

Well, it’s a very enjoyable process. I think one enjoys many things while translating. One reads a book in the closest and deepest way, one discovers so many things about what they read, which they wouldn’t discover just by reading as a reader. So one gains this, which is often very enjoyable. Moreover, rewriting the book also has some moments of great pleasure, either when solving a difficult problem or when achieving the rendering of a difficult rhythm or of an idiomatic expression. So rewriting is a great pleasure, it’s a bit like being a writer, which you are actually not.

 Is there a translator you admire, that you hold up as a role model?

I don’t know if I would say a role model. But I have a lot of colleagues who are about the same age as me and with whom we started working at about the same time, that I consider excellent. I could mention Iannis Kalifatidis, who you may also know since you are involved in German literature. I think he’s one of the best translators we have. But there are also others. Margarita Zachariadou, for example. Eleni Bakopoulou, who is now translating Dostoevsky again. She has done several translations. I think that many times we are jealous of the texts someone else translates. I mean, we’re a bit jealous of each other when someone translates a book that we wish we could have translated ourselves. E.g. I don’t know German, I can’t translate from German. However, I have translated a book written in German, but I used some of its translations. I fell in love with it so much that I decided that I should translate it, I should rewrite it, so I did it through intermediary languages.

What…

Ask me.

What’s your relationship with the languages you translate from?

What does this mean?

Did you grow up as a bilingual?

No, I’m not bilingual and I learned foreign languages the traditional way, that is, in foreign language schools. I started learning French at a very young age, as well as English. Although at first I hadn’t thought that I would translate from English, it turned out that I translated plays for theater several times. I wouldn’t translate literature, because English is the one of the three languages I know most poorly and I don’t have the rich vocabulary that literature would require. I haven’t lived permanently or for a long time in any of these countries where these languages are the native and official languages. I think I approached languages more through reading than through a more active relationship, you know, “I speak the language”.

Do you have any other occupation besides translation, are you involved in something else, too?

For many years, I’ve tried to make a living from translation and everything else around it in the publishing field. That is, text editing, publication editing, proofreading and such. In the past few years I’ve also worked as a journalist a lot.

Do you think it is possible to live on translation only? That is, regarding the financial aspect.

No. Not on the translation of literature, at least not as I have it in my mind. I mean, there are people who manage to do it, who work much faster and who work on different terms. I usually keep the books I translate for a long time and it’s financially unrewarding.

You’ve mentioned editing. You were also an editor yourself.

Yes, for many years and I still am in general.

So you consider editing necessary. 

Yes, I do and I also enjoy it on many levels. I’ve worked as a translation editor many times, but also as an editor of original texts, that is, correcting other people’s texts, doing a kind of rewriting, such various things.

What do you think the difficulties of translation are? Can you give us a specific example that was very difficult for you?

Well, I don’t know exactly how to answer this. I think that if… One may say that puns are a difficulty, because one always has to find an equivalent. But it doesn’t seem to me as the greatest difficulty of translation. I think translation difficulty is scattered across the whole work and text, so it’s not something specific I would spot and say, “Yes, that’s it”. The two most difficult books I think I have translated are a novel and a collection of short stories by Juan Rulfo, which are two masterpieces – at least in the original – and which, while being prose, have many poetic features – not in the current, a bit banal use of the term. They have characteristics of poetic writing, used when one writes poetry, that is, density, rhythm, accuracy in the expression. They were, therefore, the only texts I’ve translated that throughout the process – which lasted a long time, while they are both small books – one couldn’t see the seams of the text at all, something, which a translator usually sees, that is, they were perfect and opaque texts. So this is the greatest difficulty, because you didn’t feel that you were looking at the back side, so you just had to rebuild the face, without knowing the hidden stitches. This is scattered throughout the text, which had other difficulties, too. For example, when Spanish speakers hear that I have translated Rulfo, they usually look at me quite marveled. Even Daniel [D. Hahn], when I mentioned to him yesterday that I had translated Rulfo since he also translates from Spanish, said, “Well, this is the dream of every translator who translates from Spanish and it is very difficult”. The text also has other, more practical difficulties. E.g. there is an idiolect of a specific area in Mexico, whose most words are not understood even by Spaniards, so… But this doesn’t actually make a difference for the translator, they will search and find the words. It’s not the same as in the case of a Spaniard who reads it and doesn’t understand a certain thing. The translator will search and find what it means. But the real difficulty is, I think, scattered throughout the text and it is mainly to be able to invent a language that corresponds to the language of the original and many times you need to do this without having any type of paradigm in Greek. That is, without having a corresponding literary writing, a corresponding style,in order to say, I’ll translate X, through drawing linguistic and stylistic features from that Greek writer. If you don’t have that, you have to create it yourself, which is very often the most difficult thing, I think.

Are you in touch with the authors you translate?

With some of them, yes. I send them questions and such. Yes, with some I am. Some are, so to speak, friends, in a way.

Do you usually choose the pieces of literary work you will translate or…? 

Both happen now. But not in the beginning. In the beginning, others assigned me translations, others chose them. Νow I suggest things, too. And at least I can say no when I’m not interested in something or I suggest something that interests me.

Regarding criticism of your translation work, is there any, and if so, how do you face it?

Do you mean negative criticism?

Let’s say if it’s well-intentioned…

I don’t know. I’d say that there isn’t any substantial translation criticism, anyway. At least not in the Greek press. The reviews usually mention something like that: “good translation”, “bad translation”, “the rich Greek vocabulary of the translator”, “they rendered the text in a flowing way”, etc. All this seems a bit silly to me, to be honest. I’ve written some texts of translation criticism specifically, not… I’ve written about the new translations of Alexandrou, creating a text that no longer concerns Dostoevsky, but how the modern translations are, compared to the old ones of Alexandrou, what has changed, what each translation offers. I’ve also written about something Jenny Mastoraki had translated for Vogiatzis. But this means that you don’t deal with the original piece of work, which is usually what we do in criticism in Greece, adding a paragraph about translation at the end. Usually I’m faced with rather positive reviews, so… Yes. The most negative, which is also indicative, would be the following: I had translated the Sweet Bird of Youth. No, sorry. That year I did two… actually four translations, two of which were plays, the Sweet Bird of Youth and The House of Bernarda Alba. Regarding the latter, Georgousopoulos wrote something like, “Mrs. Yannopoulou’s translation didn’t overwhelm me”. I don’t consider this criticism. After all, I had no reason to overwhelm him. While, in fact, it would have been a very fitting opportunity – if one wanted to do it – to compare Gatsos’ translation and mine and see what each translation is, that would have been of interest. But for that to happen, one should write an article only on this. That is, what has changed compared to what the poet Gatsos does as Lorca? Regardless of whether the two translators are so different or maybe quite incomparable. But my translation of Bernarda Alba in 2010, is very different from Gatsos’ translation in the ’50s. You know, I imagine, from your university courses, that there’s a number of cultural, linguistic and many other elements, even personal elements of two different people, e.g. how translating can be a part of someone’s oeuvre and how it is as a professional occupation. I don’t create a translation corpus, so to speak, as Gatsos does, with specific things that he likes, that suit him. I am a professional translator who does her job well.

How do you think translation can be improved? Apart from translation criticism.

Do you mean the quality of translations? 

Yes.

By good training, for sure. I believe that what has happened through the Ionian university and some Foreign Language Departments, which has been more intensive in the last several years, and what has happened with CTL [Centre de la traduction littéraire] at the French Institute and EKEMEL [European Center for the Translation of Literature & the Human Science] in Athens has changed things a bit. Regarding CTL and EKEMEL, the people who taught us, and we, who taught others later, – I taught there, as well, for several years – were at the same time professional translators. There was a connection between students and teachers. The teachers recommended us to publishing houses, and when we became teachers we recommended our students, too. It was a little more… it wasn’t so academic, it was more like a workshop, it had to do more with the craft of translation, with translators as craftsmen. So I think the way publishers saw translators changed a little bit at the time. And that’s something, it’s important that publishers choose translators more carefully, and pay attention to translation, and on the other hand, that translators be more educated. And if they were paid better and could do this job without fifteen others at the same time…

Now that you’ve mentioned publishing houses, what’s your relationship with them, especially today with the financial crisis and all that?

I would be very ungrateful if I said that my relationship with them is bad. It is good.

As a collaboration, that is.

Yes. Mainly because, for some reason, they respect my quirks, such as delays, that is, my dealing with translation in a slightly different way. And I never had an extremely bad experience. I’m not saying they were all great, but I didn’t have an extremely bad experience.

As for the choice of book title, do you choose it, are you influenced by someone else? Who has the last word on title choice?

It’s me, I think.

Has it ever happened to have a title changed? 

No, it has never happened. As far as I can recall, it has never happened.

And one last question. Are you optimistic about the future of translation in Greece?

About the future of translation or the future of translators? I am optimistic about the future of translation in Greece. I think it has improved in the past few years, people are interested in it. In other words, we’ve started to see it a little more… Some people see it professionally and at the same time they also have theoretical knowledge and there is such an interest. There is an increase in the quality of translations in general, I would say, both in literary books and much more in scientific ones, which I consider to be… Without this meaning that there are no bad translations on the market. But, yes, I’m optimistic about that. As for the other part, if there will be people who will manage to earn a living as professional translators, I am a little less optimistic. I’m not sure at all. I mean, things don’t help in this regard. And there’s no easy solution, in my opinion. The Greek publishing market is a very small market, anyway. It’s not that a publisher is a bad, cruel businessman who gives you a certain fee, while they can give you a much higher one. Even if they give you the highest fee they can, in order to cover all other publishing costs, it is still not much. In most cases. I’ve translated more than fifty books. I don’t know about all of them, but I don’t think that more than twenty have reached a second edition, so how could the publisher pay me much more?

Foreign publishing houses surely pay better. Can one say that?

It depends on the country, don’t be so sure, and it also depends – which is why I said before that the market is small – it depends on the book market. I saw the prices of Daniel Hahn on his site and I was a little shocked, but the books that Daniel translates are addressed to millions of people. The books I translate are addressed to about 10,000 Greeks who love reading literature. And that’s it. Or it could be, maybe, 30,000, if a book becomes a best seller. It’s not possible to earn the same money. That is, in the free market. If we had communism and the state paid us to translate, it would be possible to receive the same money.

Thank you very much.

I thank you, as well.