Nikos Pratsinis

Hello.

Hello.

We’re glad you took the time to be here with us, and it’s time to talk about translation. Firstly, we’d like to ask you if it was a lifelong dream of yours to get into translation.

No. It just happened.

It happened.

Do you want me to tell you exactly?

Tell us, yes.

I haven’t studied translation. I studied natural sciences. I studied chemistry and actually graduated, even though I didn’t work for long. And my postgraduate degrees were also in economics. It was just that at university right after my entrance exams, one of my professors, a philologist called me because I was quite good at translating from ancient to modern Greek, and he knew my English was very good, and asked me to translate some encyclopedia entries, from English to Greek, on subjects relevant to my studies; physics, chemistry, meteorology. I realized it was a very well-paid job. We’re talking about the early – mid ’80s. Working not even full time, I earned more than my father who was a civil servant. I liked it, and never stopped doing it since. Later on, my friends encouraged me since I was an avid reader, and I started translating literature. At first from English. William Burroughs, Aldous Huxley, the British and American classics. Then I studied Spanish and Portuguese, and fully took up translation, and also interpreting, because I attended a private interpreting school in the late ’90s.

Here in Greece?

Yes, here in Greece. The private school belonged to the first interpreter in Greece. I’m not sure if she’s still living, if she is, she’d be in her 90s. She was called Dalabira and she’d also written a book. That’s it. It was indeed a fluke. It was something I thought was relatively easy work. Technical translation, for someone who knows the subject and the language, and has a good grasp of Greek, is a lucrative job, and a good one. Literary translation is another story. It’s not lucrative, and I don’t think it ever will be. Simply put. But you do it for other reasons.

How did you switch from technical to literary translation?

There were a couple of books that I had… Actually, the first book was by Aldous Huxley. A friend and I had read it, Doors of Perception, and telling a friend who was a translator that I liked it, he said some publishers wanted it and had asked him for it. “I can’t do it for them. Do it and I’ll help you.” He did help me. We did the proofreading together and that’s how I learned. All of it. There was ample time, and basically from his corrections – he was quite an experienced translator with fifteen, twenty books – I learned some things and the book turned out ok. Obviously the publishers had some corrections, too. And that’s how I got into literary translation, which I kept at a low pace, a bit here and there. You don’t make much. I think very few people can make a living from literary translation without resorting to sloppy translations, even if they’re good translators. Unfortunately. If they try to make a living just from literature. It’s just the way it is. I think I’ve covered it somewhat generally.

What did you think of translation before you became a professional, and how did that change after you did?

I had no opinion. It had never crossed my mind that some of the texts we read, be it a technical manual, or a poem, are translated. I didn’t get it, even though, as I mentioned, I’d translated, and was interested in ancient to modern Greek translation. And as my professor said – and that’s why he’d considered me good because I listened to him – ,”Please make me a text that’s readable. The rest is in the textbooks you use in exams, that have syntax and grammar and so on”. He said, “I want the text to read as if a Greek writer wrote it today”. That was all I knew, but I’d thought it applied mostly to ancient and modern Greek, which we often conflate mistakenly, if you ask me. They aren’t the same. I had no other insight. Then I began to understand the difficulties of technical translation as well, which just comes down to knowing the subject and its terminology. Keep in mind that at that time we didn’t have the internet. I remember using encyclopedias, calling experts on each subject who had studied in England, meteorology, and the like. In literary translation, things progressed much slower, awareness of the difficulties, and I was very much helped by the man who is no longer alive, with whom I edited my first literary translation, which was not even literature but a literary essay, not fiction, that is. And I slowly realized some things. I took up translation studies around the year 2000, out of an unrelated interest. I find it very interesting, but if you don’t know how to translate, it’s useless. I mean if you’re a good machine-shop mechanic you could repair a car. If you’re good at physics, the internal combustion engine is based on physics, the second law of thermodynamics, you can’t fix the engine or anything, you can just be a driver. Like a philologist. So first of all, translation is an art. Science helps, too. You could be a mechanic who can then study physics, and practice further, and improve the engine, and suggest something to the company. That’s another level. I still believe that translation is ultimately an art that can be learned. What the French call “métier” or “craft”, as the English call it.

Is there a translator you admire? Who was your role model perhaps?

One translator I admire to a certain extent, is Giorgos Koropoulis who translates poetry, because I’d read some great poets, like Anna Akhmatova, for example, in English and Portuguese, and other Greek translations, and I didn’t think much of her. There are others, she just came to mind. When I read her I realized that she’s a great poet, and since Koropoulis himself is a poet, not a great poet, mind you, that’s why he translated her very well. There is no other explanation. That’s why I admired him. Because I know that as a poet he couldn’t write like her. I’ve read his work.

When you translate something, how do you feel?

You mean literature. If I’ve suggested it myself, or I’m lucky enough to like the publisher’s suggestion, it feels good. I get into it, research it, sometimes excessively. Not so much translation-wise. I read about the author, the literary piece of work, the era. It feels really good. If it’s been commissioned, it feels never-ending and worse than a technical translation. If I don’t like it. Because in technical translation you don’t have to make an effort, it becomes automatic once you know the subject and terminology. Doing literature that you don’t like… You might do it for the money, it may have some linguistic interest, but from a certain point on, especially if the book is long, it’s hell. Quite simply. Another thing I do that you might find interesting, I realized over time, that translation is not an individual project. Nowadays, when I translate a difficult piece I have a few people who I read it to. If they are also translators they understand the problem, even if they don’t know the language, you can sometimes convey the problem even if the other person doesn’t speak the language. But basically, there are a couple of people who hang out at my house who I read some excerpts to. I also give them information, because if the language is archaic you have to tell them it’s 19th century. Or if there’s slang you explain it’s because he’s an American in the ’60s – ’70s. You tell them a few things, and then you read to them. I think to a large extent the work is collective and it’s actually collective without total awareness. Various words and things that you read or hear during a translation, will be used if they’re necessary. It’s not individual work. That’s a myth. That the translator works in isolation. First of all, I can tell you that I always listen to music while working. Sometimes there are lyrics, and that irritates me. But that still plays a role. You understand the song.

What do you get out of translation, what do you enjoy about it?

That you get to make something. There’s no expectation to be original, to be a creator. You are not judged. You’re not judged as an artist, but very simply as a craftsman. You get the satisfaction of someone who’s finished painting a house and gets kudos for it. Satisfaction that’s comparable to successfully growing a plant, or putting together a nice garden. The kind of feeling of plain creation that is part of everyday life. Without expectation of originality or greatness. There is no originality. There may be an original solution, but the literary work is the literary work. You fix it up, bit by bit. For example, I once had a bonsai tree. I didn’t know how to grow it. I researched, did it right and I was happy it didn’t die on me. That’s kind of how it goes. You’ve got a good text by a writer, and you render it into your language, one who is considered important, and the reader goes, “He’s actually a good writer”. You’re the one who did that. Just like you grew the bonsai. You don’t know how to grow a bonsai, but you researched. The Japanese invented the method. Just like the text was written by Márquez, or someone. You managed to produce something in Greek. It’s a simple gratification, maybe even mundane.

Do you have any other occupation besides translation?

Interpreting. While sometimes considered more difficult, I personally find it, I’ll say it plainly, baloney. Because it’s evanescent. Said, done, gone. You won’t be judged. On the other hand, okay, it’s live and there’s the fact that you’re not just translating text, the person is physically present. There’s something theatrical about it. A physicality, I’d say. Because you can feel their presence, and you mirror their mannerisms which is good, and it gets you out of the house. I own a small translation and interpreting company where I do a type of management which puts me in touch with people. It’s interesting to see how translation is seen in the market, and a handful of hours of teaching translation, which is the most pleasant, because I usually work with the students… I do very little theoretical work. I give them some books to read. There’s no point beyond some general stuff. The books are available in Greek, anyway. The basic books are all there well-translated, and so on. Basically we do collective translation, or rather collective proofreading. They each translate, and we correct it together in class, which is very pleasant. It’s relevant to the subject, but this way it’s openly collective instead of covertly.

Great. Are you a member of a professional association of translators or interpreters?

As a translator I could’ve been a member of the Association of Translators – Editors – Proofreaders (SMED), but due to my translation business, technically, I can’t. I have a very good working relationship with them. I was also involved in its founding. As an interpreter, no. Interpreters are quite scattered. Some of them work in the European Union, it’s quite hard to form a professional association. In fact, it is distinctly fragmented. There’s the EU, which covers half of interpreter work in Greece, and there’s the other half which is largely uncharted. Conversely, translation, with the associations that exist like the Ionian, PEM, and SMED… You can certainly be in an association if you want to. Or keep up with things. The profession is more regulated in how it’s done. Despite its existing problems.

You said that in the ’80s translation was well-paid.

No. Technical translation was well-paid. And the financial rewards are still good today, although machine-assisted translation, and especially translation memories, though very helpful to the translator, have majorly trimmed them down. And there’s another issue. Translators were scarce in the ’80s, even for technical translation. Today, there are many such translators and very good ones, I might add. I’m speaking from experience, since I own a translation company and work with people with or without degrees, but with good knowledge of languages. There are many who are good, and that drives fees down. Nevertheless, technical translation, both from personal and my colleagues’ experience, the way it is generally paid, can provide better earnings than an average employee salary. Of course, there’s insecurity in freelance work, but through technical translation you can earn 1,500–1,800 euro. You can, if you’re good. I don’t know who else makes that through university studies the way things stand after the recession. Yes, in the ’80s it was much better. There was less competition and we were in demand. Nowadays, okay it’s different. Literary translation always paid poorly and it still does. What I’d like to point out is that the quality of literary translation has improved in Greece. Going through books from the ’80s it’s rare to find a good translation. Today, quite a few good books are decent translations. The average has gone up significantly. I don’t know why, but that’s how it is.

Which languages do you translate from, and what is your relationship with them?

From English, Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan. I lived in Spain for four years, in Portugal for three and I studied Portuguese Literature. I haven’t really lived in an English-speaking country, but I’d been dealing with English since I was young, in school. I’d casually learned English basically through music, mostly. Those were different times. Different musical influences, different ways to search, to find song lyrics, all that. That’s how I learned English mostly, and then built up to more formal English.

What’s your relationship with those languages? Which one do you like best?

Catalan is a recent addition and it’s not an oral language, so I learned to read it, translated a bit, and took some classes. What’s my relationship? I guess the best would be with Portuguese, as a sensation, or…

Right.

I’m not sure I speak it better than any other, but it’s closer to my heart.

What is your relationship with the authors you translate?

With the authors I translate. You mean if they’re alive? Almost nobody. Most of them are dead. I can’t think of anyone who’s alive. So there’s never been a relationship of any kind. They’re people who’ve been dead for a long time, or relatively recently. There was one, but I didn’t have contact with him. Casares. When I translated him he was alive but he was already very old.

Which literary genre interests you the most?

I think the genre that piques the interest of most literary translators is poetry. It’s intriguing. Which is generally the most difficult genre, but also the one that allows you to be quite original without essentially betraying the author. Or even if you do so, it’s with a clear conscience. It makes little professional sense, hardly any, but it has a different value, it’s more interesting. In the context of courses what I do is, if there’s a living foreign poet, we do a translation workshop with their participation, so there is a relationship there. Sometimes the students and I have done a number of classes and collectively translated a literary piece of work and the author happens to be coming to Greece, so we invite them on the last day. Not only poetry, prose as well. Short stories, inevitably. What’s interesting here in the relationship with the writer is that we often find that my perception of the writer’s intention, as well as my students’ not just mine, diverges from the writer’s actual intention. It’s important to keep that in mind, but that’s how it is. I mean… Often when we ask the writer, “What do you generally want to say?” it’s probably pretty pointless. You might ask the meaning of a word, that’s fine, or maybe an expression, sure. But to ask generally why they write, or their intention when they do and the point of their work… That can also happen with writers in your native tongue. It’s not just about translation. But it’s very interesting, it’s beneficial to have the writer in a class and ask them, so that you realize that ultimately, when you’re translating, you shouldn’t fixate upon what the writer wants to say. There are three things, or rather four, or even five. There’s what the writer wanted, which we’ll never know if he’s dead, or maybe we’ll find out sometime if he’s left some writings, or something. There is the work itself, scripta manent. There’s the era it was written in, you can get a lot out of that, and the potential readers, if you look into it you’ll figure out who they are. And then there’s something else, which is about you. The ones who are going to translate what you’re doing, and you have to impart to them all of the above information. You’re not just translating literary work for them. You’re translating an era, you’re translating the author’s field of perception at the time, as well as their supposed intention, which is the first thing to fall between the cracks.

You talked about collective translation. Would you like to tell us more about that? Since we’ve heard a lot about it.

Collective translation… I’ve worked on it with someone you actually know, Konstantinos Paleologos. This year we’re even doing a workshop together. We’re not both present at the same time. He’s done the first lectures and now I’m doing the last ones. The final one will close with some questions and we’ll both be there together, just like the initial one where we were both there. There are two levels in collective translation. It’s the translation itself, where we share a literary work, or rather the lecturer splits it between the students, they each do their own part. It could be a collection of short stories, and the lesson is to correct them collectively in class and join them together, aiming to get it published. That’s a collective translation. The unifier and proofreader is firstly the teacher, but also everyone else. There are other collective translations that are done by three translators, and then a fourth co-translator professionally puts them together. This is also a collective translation. Then there’s another kind, in which Paleologos and I have experience, what we call a group translation. I would call the other one a collective translation. That’s where all of us, after having worked on the same thing, go through it together in class. So, I give out the same short story to a class of ten people, everyone has to have worked on it. I won’t check how much or how little each student has done beforehand. We go in and decide who will start off, while everyone has attempted the exact same text. In the other case the text had been divided, now it’s the same for everyone. And we work to produce the final result. This might be the most interesting translation game, so to speak. You see a text simultaneously read by ten, eleven people including yourself, and it’s been perceived differently by some, certain parts have been interpreted differently, and they’re all correct. It isn’t insufficient knowledge of the language. There’s an ambiguity. We decide, in class, which version to keep. Sometimes we even vote. And it’s even more fun if the writer’s there, and after giving our interpretations, the writer gives a totally different one. “Oh it’s none of that, I meant to say this.” That’s group translation, not collective. Still, I think it’s very interesting, and that because translation is essentially a matter of perception, in collective translation, and even more so in group translation, there can be a multitude of interpretations, which gives the reader more insight into the different dimensions of the text. It’s richer. And it prevents audacious acts of trying to improve on the author’s work. If you get cocky with it, you’ll be shot down by the others. And that’s a good thing. We were fortunate enough to receive an award for one such project, Ferlosio’s Alfanhui. It had won the Cervantes and National Book Centre of Greece (EKEBI) award. The quality of work was good, back then. But later, since there’s still a lot of bias in the profession, there is still the figure of the translator-creator. The following year I was put on the jury. Although I’d won the award with the students, because of the regulations not all the students could get in, so I did. You’d be put on the jury the following year. A rule was put in place by the higher-ups that collective translations would no longer be accepted because they couldn’t ultimately be attributed to one person. I say it should be attributed to everyone. And my other objection which I never got an answer to, is when a book is awarded, who are we actually awarding, the translator or the editor? If we want to go there. If not, we can let it go. But if we do, surely one team member might have worked harder. It might not have been the professor at all. We’ll never know. But that’s also true about books that have been edited. I know of books, I won’t name names, where the book was garbage and the editor did such a great job that they won awards.

So you think that collaborative translation can actually improve the quality of translation.

Absolutely. It’s just not done, because it’s expensive. Publishers don’t even pay enough for one person doing literature. The pay is so bad it’s not enough to live on. Let alone paying five people. But when it’s done as a lesson I’ve been paid to teach, the students have paid, and at least they’ll see their name on a book. It might cost very little, or even be free of charge. It’s the only context in which collective translation is viable, apart from some translation or poetry festivals that are conjointly organized. Such things take place sporadically. But it can’t enter the market, it’s too costly.

Have you struggled with translating something, for example a word, and how did collective translation help you overcome it?

How collective translation helped me overcome something. I’m trying to think of something. It isn’t a matter of words. There are many, but I can’t think of one. I might have tried for half an hour, and out of a class of ten people the one that I’d considered the weakest was lucky enough to come up with the word. Just because you’re good at translating, doesn’t mean you’re good all the time. Sometimes you might get the word from someone very experienced, or somebody who happened to have the inspiration. That’s why I can’t really say. But what I can say regarding collective translation and how it can be useful, is this. When many people are involved, there is better recollection of the contents of the first chapters. A specific word might work as a hint to an event a hundred pages later. I was pleasantly surprised by that during collective translation. Out of eight or ten people, someone remembered it and said, “There was this word before, isn’t it relevant now?”. Like if someone had said, “I’ll see you later”, for instance. Down the line he might say, “I told you I’d see you”. What does that mean? Yeah, but he’d mentioned it beforehand, in passing. This is just a random example. It helps you make it more precise and adhere to the writer’s structuring, especially when the writer is a bit of a stickler for this kind of thing and doesn’t just write hastily, but goes over it again and again, plants the hint on page 5, a word that’s seemingly out of place but makes perfect sense on page 105… It’s stuff like this that greatly benefits from collective translation. When we translate, we forget things. Granted, computers help a lot, it used to be even worse. But still, things that you meant to double-check, will slip your mind. You’d translated it haphazardly just to move on, and now you’re at page 200 and you realize it had a point. We’re talking about the great writers. By “great”, I mean those who labor over their work. Ones who aren’t really spontaneous, but craftsmen, in a way.

How do you deal with criticism of your work?

I’m indifferent, because translation isn’t critiqued in Greece and in most other countries. Usually you hear, “The translation flows” or “It doesn’t flow”. That doesn’t mean much as the original might not flow. I mean, James Joyce’s Ulysses doesn’t flow, why would the translation? For it to have been a flowing translation, the translator would’ve had to mutilate it. It’s an extreme example, but there are more. I think they write a couple of words, and that’s that. There is no point in it. What’s interesting is getting criticism from colleagues. Or from readers who might be friends, or care enough to tell you the positives and negatives. That, I’m willing to take. But printed criticism is non-existent. Very few people will actually look at the original. There was one back in the ’90s, Dimosthenis Kourtovik, who was multilingual. He later became an anthropologist at the University of Crete. He used to give proper reviews. Even if you disagreed, he tried to. I don’t think anyone else… They do, if they spot something that’s really bad. Or if there’s an exceptionally good translation of something difficult. As in managing to convey the feeling of a sonnet, or… But these are extreme cases, I don’t think translation gets reviewed. It’s rare. You think they’d ever pay critics when they don’t even pay translators?

What is your view on copyright law?

As far as the translator is concerned? I think the law is good, but not respected. I believe payment could be contingent on copyright, but, as things stand today, I am glad it isn’t. The translator wouldn’t get a penny. There’s no way to keep track of what’s printed, or to check your balances. I think that in Greece, at the end of the day, it’s better that the law isn’t adhered to and they offer you a flat rate for the first 800 copies or so, and usually that’s all you’ll get, or they might give you some change. Usually it’s book copies. I’ve been given books in lieu of payment. What can you say? It’s petty change. They’ll tell you they printed 100 copies, when you know it wasn’t 100, but… So you just accept the books and give them away. I find it awkward. Based on copyright, the ones who’d profit… It’s very unfair. It would be those in large countries – because Greece has a small audience – who translate commercial books. The copyright law in Greece would benefit the translator of Harry Potter, and nobody else. In a larger country, anyone who translates popular authors would benefit from this law. But here, if we went by the book, some great fringe authors in small languages would never be translated.

Great. You’re right. A differing opinion.

By “small”, I mean in number of speakers.

Yes. Not wide-spread. How important is editing?

Very important. And that’s maybe… I’ve written about it for an event by the Ionian Translators’ Association before a translation slam they wanted to kind of… A good editor is one who saves the book and prevents mistakes that could compromise a good translator. Something that may be trivial, but leave them exposed to ridicule. An editor is a safety net. A good one. But a good editor first of all, to be able to do their job and have it be worthwhile, would have to get a relatively good translation, or they end up being a translator. So I don’t judge them, especially if they’re unfamiliar with the original. Conversely, an editor can be good if they aren’t familiar with the original and get a problematic translation, if they go, “I can’t make sense of this, can we go over it again, together?”. So a good editor is a reader that’s more meticulous than the translator, and works conjointly to produce a flawless result. Unfortunately, not everyone is like that. Good editors are like that. Mediocre editors cover the text in red scribbles, or green, which is more politically correct, to show the publisher that they’ve done something. Good publishers go by the logic of paying both editor and translator more or less equally. Similarly, at least. Sometimes they even ask and a good editor will say, “I didn’t have much to proof “and I want to work with this one again, because it was easy and I’ll get paid, and I spoke to them on the phone and we met up to solve any issues”. On the other hand, there are publishers – some are big publishers, but I won’t name them – who go by the logic of a fixed sum. That is, “I’ll pay 250 per sixteen pages for both translation and editing”, which means they’ll get a piece of trash that’s cost them 50, and get someone else to fix it. A major publishing house once asked me to translate for them. Knowing they weren’t upright, I said no. They asked me to at least do some editing, and I agreed. He gives me two texts, without the names of the translators. Two contemporary Spanish literary works. One of them wasn’t really difficult, it was a biography. It was perfect. I had some minor disagreements on spelling, but that’s no concern of mine, it’s publisher’s policy. I say, “This is perfect”. He asked, “How much would you charge for that?”. I said, “Nothing. Have your philologist decide on the spelling of some words. I haven’t got an opinion, nor do I want to. It’s perfect”. No editing was needed. He said, “How would you have done it?”. “Maybe I’d do some things differently, we’re not all the same”. Moussaka is moussaka, though we each make it differently. But it’s still moussaka. You can tell what it is and it’s good either way if both people cooking it have done it before. The other one… The Greek text looked great, but I look over, and it didn’t match the Spanish. Because the Greek text wasn’t flawless and there was a lot of passive voice, I realized it had been translated from English. You can tell when it’s English. Frequent use of the passive screams of English. “I was told”. Lord, have mercy, “They told me”. You’ll use the passive a couple of times, usually in Greek it’s sarcastic. We’d normally say, “They told me”, or, “He told me”. I say, “Look, there’s an issue. It’s probably been done from English, and I can prove it. It’s not bad, but there’s a problem between English and Spanish. The English version isn’t faithful to the Spanish one. If you want, we can do it from English. Have this person…”. He asked, “How much would you charge for that?”. “Depending on whether you want it done from Spanish. If you want it from English, whoever did this one is fine. I’d charge a small fee, but don’t give me the Spanish, let me edit it from English. I’ll disregard the Spanish one. Give me the English one, I’ll edit a few things, and I’ll charge you very little. Maybe 30 or 20 for a 16-page folio.” It was already good enough. He didn’t get it. A while later I met the translator, who also won an award, who had done the first text, and she told me the publisher had called to congratulate her, and assign her the work – they’d both been test translations. She thanked me. “No need to thank me, you did a very good job.” But despite that, the publisher continues to work like that. With a fixed sum, nowadays he might be paying even less for translation and editing. It does help, though. My point is that as far as Greek is concerned, translating into Greek, either linguistically or in terms of style, not linguistically as in phrasing, but the tone you adopt to attract a certain audience, I think the editor has the final say. But the translator needs to have something else. Knowledge of the cultural reality of the country they are translating from. To know how to say… In a country where blondes aren’t considered dumb, as people think of them here, the translator should know, if someone is translating Greek – I don’t know where exactly, northern countries, I guess – that the expression, “Are you blonde?” means “Are you dumb?”. That’s a cultural element, mainly. Not so much a linguistic element. A translator should know these things. It’s not so much the linguistic, but the cultural. And that helps them work with an editor who deals mostly with the target language. That’s a good combo. Also, a translator who’s conscious of cultural divergence is useful to the publisher. They can suggest something befitting, that might be more appropriate. Publishers can be odd. They peruse international markets and just buy titles. That’s senseless. I’ll give you an interesting example. You might know a book from the late ’90s, Judas was a Great Kisser. It’s not bad, it’s a light novel that was a big hit at the time. It was also in step with the times. It appealed to women of a certain income, status and age who happened to be buying books. It was written for them and they identified with it. It sold well. I knew a publisher, an acquaintance in Spain whom I’d met by chance, who told me she’d got a book that was a big hit in Greece. I asked which one – she’d got it in Frankfurt. She says, “Judas Was A Great Kisser, is it not successful? I was told it sold 70 thousand copies”. I said, “It’s more like 50, but still a lot for Greece”. But I said it would bomb in Spain. “Come on”, she says. I say, “I know what Spanish women are like, and they’ve got nothing in common. This is a book intended for Greece, and specifically for two or three big cities, especially Athens”. She doubted it, but a year later she told me that it had sold a mere four hundred copies in Spain, which is a ridiculous number. So, a good translator… She didn’t listen to me, as a mere outlander, but the translator should have said, “I’ll suggest a book that’ll do well here”.

Thank you very much for your time. You were indeed excellent. Perhaps you would like to give us some advice for future translators, as you are preparing the next batch. Or tell us if you are optimistic about the future of translation.

Yes, I am optimistic. Globalization is giving rise to more and more translations. So, all in all, it’s a profession that I’d say hasn’t been hit that hard. It may have driven fees down, but it hasn’t created much anarchy. The second thing I’d like to tell you is to always be cautious towards publishers, even the best ones. And by caution, I mean make your suggestion… I believe translators ought to suggest books, but as a new translator, and I say this in my classes, because publishers are peculiar, they think, “I’ll give it to my guy with whom I have a…”. If you do suggest a book, don’t divulge the author, or the book. Translate ten pages, describe the book, and say, “That’s it. Do you like my translation? I’ll do more pages if you want”. That’s crucial. Because otherwise, if you suggest a couple of books, they decline and then publish them with another translator, and you’ll end up being a coordinator of assignments. Which again, is bad. Because you’ll end up doing books you have no interest in. You have to somehow balance the two. That’s the only advice I have to offer. Other than that… And another thing. Read a lot of Greek literature. Not so much contemporary. It’s more important to read in katharevousa, the archaising form of Modern Greek, Rhoides and Papadiamantis, though he’s a bit extreme. As well as the greats of the ’30s, Venezis, Karagatsis, Myrivilis, those great demoticists. They’ll enrich your vocabulary, not so much in words, but in expressions. Karagatsis, for example. Not a great writer but he uses language terribly well. As a writer, I’m sure each country has a bunch of those. Modern ones are limited. More and more, there’s… There’s another thing, maybe not so much with Greek, but because I was abroad and at a conference, any more in Spanish, big publishing houses are instructing writers to make sure they write in Spanish that’s understandable in all Spanish–speaking countries, meaning neutral and colorless. And on top of that, not too difficult because the book will be translated. Greek is the same all over Greece. Written Greek, even in Cyprus. We don’t have this problem. But they’ve started… I’ve been told by writers and I found it horrible though I didn’t say anything, they’ve started thinking they should write more simply because it will be translated. So there’s not much to learn from contemporary writers. That’s all.