Evriviadis Sofos

Thank you very much for being here with us.

Ι thank you, too.

Let’s start with our questions about translation. Was it a lifelong dream to get involved in translation?

No, it wasn’t a lifelong dream. It came about when I had to make a decision about what I was going to do in my life. As a student, I was thinking about what I was going to do and my sister suggested that translation would possibly be a good idea for me, in the sense that I was fluent in languages. But that was quite vague. I mean there wasn’t… It’s not like I had learned so many languages at that point or my family had seen something very special in me, so to speak. It was just a suggestion.

Are you only involved in Catalan?

No, not only Catalan. Actually, I translate from Spanish and Catalan, these two languages.

What is your relationship with Spanish and Catalan?

I lived in Spain for seven years. I studied there, so…

How did you decide to study in Spain?

I had studied Spanish Language in Athens and I wanted to continue studying somehow, so I studied Spanish Literature in Granada. I took an exam to get into a Spanish university and I succeeded.

How do you feel when you translate?

What do you mean?

What feelings do you get when you try to translate something and succeed or when you have difficulties in doing so?

It depends on what kind of text I am translating. Not all texts are the same. There was a book I co-translated with Konstantinos Paleologos called If You Eat a Lemon without Pulling a Face by Sergi Pàmies. Regarding this book, I think we really didn’t have any difficulty at all. It wasn’t a text that made me grumble or think, “Oh, I have to go and translate” or anything like that. Confiteor was a very challenging book. It had a lot of difficulties in all aspects. It required a lot of study on my part and a lot of hours of work. I understand you are interested in translation and language. If you want to go into translation you have to work a lot and with military discipline. You have to work specific hours every day, concentrate only on your work and not get distracted in any way.

Based on what criteria do you choose what to translate?

Look, I have made some suggestions, there are some books that I wanted to translate, but most of the times publishing houses somehow found me and suggested that I translate this or that text.

Does this mean that what you translate might be something you don’t like?

Usually, in order to start a book and agree with a publisher, you have to kind of like what you’re doing. I think you really have to be in a very difficult financial situation to accept translating a text that you don’t like at all. I liked most of the texts I translated. I don’t think there was any that I didn’t like. No.

Are you satisfied with your financial rewards from translation? Is it possible to make a living solely from translation?

No. It is a job that… I mean… I don’t know if the money one gets from translation is enough, considering the long working hours. I don’t know how everyone makes a living, but I think translation requires several hours of work if you want to get a good result, right? If we want to get a good result, we need to work for several hours. It’s not an easy job to create a text that’s solid and mature.

Do you also write? Are you also a writer?

No, no. Only a translator. I don’t write my own literary texts.

Besides translation, are you also involved in anything else?

Yes, I’m a teacher of Spanish at the Foreign Language Teaching Center of the Kapodistrian University of Athens. So… I split my time between these two. On the one hand I translate, which is very solitary and requires isolation. It has nothing to do with socializing, you’re at home, you’re alone, at most you can put on music if you can work like that. And the rest of the time I have my classes, which gives me this opportunity to socialize and be with other people. So it’s pretty good.

Have you ever come across a cultural element whose rendering was particularly difficult for you?

Look, this last book, Confiteor, contained specific vocabulary, like, for example, church vocabulary, terms from the Catholic church, which don’t exist in the Greek church. There was no equivalent many times. Or it wasn’t easy to find the terms which should be used. So I had to search quite a lot. Also, in Greek there is broad arbitrariness as to what is used where. That is, everyone uses the terms, e.g. for a musical instrument, as they wish: “I call it that”. There is no… In Spanish, for example, there is a specific word for this part of the violin and everybody uses the same word. In Greece it’s not like that. In Athens it may be called this way, in Crete it’s called that way. And there is no record of these things.

Can I ask something? Is the author of this book you translated still alive? Have you translated a book by a living author?

Sure.

Do you have any contact with the authors?

Yes, of course. He was here yesterday, we introduced him at the Book Fair.

How do you deal with criticism of your work?

How do I deal with criticism?

Yes. Positive or negative criticism, perhaps.

I don’t think there’s much we can do. Regarding a positive review, you accept it, you’re glad, I suppose. Regarding a negative review, I don’t know what we can do. There’s not much you can do. You can defend your work, what you’ve done, the hours of work you’ve put into the book. I don’t know how… You know, not all people treat texts the same way. We don’t all understand the same things. And, of course, some texts may objectively be of low quality. Clearly. There is that aspect, too.

Does the publishing house you work with assign the text editing or do you get to choose a certain editor?

Before I deliver the text there is usually someone on my side who edits my text and then there is also someone on the publishing house’s side who edits the final text. So there are usually two edits. I always have an editor of my own. Sure.

And if those two edits, yours and the publisher’s, are quite different or if you don’t agree with something?

How much different can they be? There is the possibility of conversation, which is very important. We’re open people, we can have a conversation and reach an agreement, we’re not… Unless it’s a change that the publishing house wants to impose, which is a far cry from what I was thinking about.

What do you think needs to be improved in the field of translation?

One thing that should be organized in some way, but through state initiative, is the vocabulary in every field of science, so that everyone can use the same terms and there can be no arbitrariness in that regard. That is, not to have everyone calling…

There should be a common glossary.

Yes, a common glossary that we can all use, and it should be available on the internet. That would be very good. Something like that doesn’t exist at the moment. Things are a bit vague.

Are you optimistic about translation in the future? In Greece, in particular.

Yes, I think so, because in Greece, we know that we have a language, we are twelve million people, and books will be published in the future, as well. We are a country that consumes a lot. We consume cinema, we consume television, TV-series, we consume books, so all these things have to be translated somehow. Even though education and language learning has come a long way, that is, children from a very young age can have a very good level of a foreign language, usually English, I think that for many years to come, we will still have to deal with translation. Translation will play a leading role.

Are you also optimistic about literary translation?

I can’t tell you that for sure, because I don’t know what will happen with literature in general. In other words, it is not clear to me if people will have the same interest in reading literature.

Is there an audience in Greece that reads Spanish literature?

Yes, there is quite a broad audience. And in recent years, it’s been getting even broader. Many people learn Spanish and discover Spanish and Latin American literature. Portuguese and Spanish, and now also Catalan have come to the fore.

But why do you think people will not be interested in literature in the future? I think that’s what you said earlier.

No, I don’t know… What I said is that I don’t know whether the interest will be… Judging from what I see now, I don’t know whether the younger generations will have the same interest in literature as the older ones had. It’s not something certain.

Do you translate literature exclusively?

Yes.

What advice would you give to students who want to go into translation professionally?

To have a lot of patience, to read a lot of Greek texts, to learn Greek very well, to correct their Greek first, to try to learn our language first, so that they can correctly render a foreign language in Greek. If we don’t know Greek, we can’t translate. It is necessary to learn Greek. That’s what I would advise. Regarding the professional part, to be honest, they should have a lot of patience, because the financial rewards won’t be satisfactory many times. And I think that, if they really believe in it, they’ll figure out how to proceed in the field of translation.

Thank you very much.

I thank you, too.