Manolis Piblis

Good afternoon, Mr. Piblis.

Good afternoon.

We’re delighted to have you here for this interview.

As am I. Likewise. I’m delighted to be here, too.

Great. We’d like to begin with some general questions. For instance, how did translation come into your life?

Translation? Language and discourse have always been part of my life, the written word, and it’s taken many different forms at times, mainly journalistic, for many years. But journalism which is relevant to books. And… And a bit, laterally, as an author. I’ve written some short stories, sparsely, here and there. And of course reading. It comes naturally to me, it’s another aspect of my involvement in books. 

Lovely. So what does “to translate” mean to you?

To translate means to transmit someone else’s words into my own language, which is complex. You’ve got to do work that is creative, but not go overboard with it, not to become a creator to a larger extent than you should be. You have to serve someone else’s words as well as the Greek readers’ outlook. So you’ve got two bets to win, at once. One is not to betray the author’s style in your translation, and the other is to create a text that a Greek person can comfortably read, ideally one that seems like it could’ve been originally written in Greek.

As for the texts that you’ve translated, what kind of difficulties have you faced? What is the hardest thing for a translator?

Let’s see. There are many difficulties. One is that… The fact that we have a much better grasp of the language we’re translating into, than the one we’re translating from. That happens by definition unless one is totally bilingual. From birth. So you need some in-depth work to ensure a word is… has certain… – how do I say this? – connotations, while the other has different ones. That one word is learned, while another is more colloquial, or even slang. In the case of, say, Éric Vuillard, whom I’ve recently translated, that is a big hurdle. This writer uses formal language and slang in the same sentence. And he does it deliberately, he wants it that way. It doesn’t suffice to know the meaning of a word, you have to be sure about which word is appropriate for the translation. It’s a significant problem. Another one I’ve encountered – I’d suspected it before I started translating, and confirmed it – is that regardless of how much we like projecting the view that the Greek language is the richest in the world and stuff like that, in reality it has numerous problems, which exist for a reason. The fact that from the birth of the Greek state an artificial language was formed, Katharevousa, that was given a lot of gravity, especially by the establishment, I mean, like, in justice, in… The formal language was Katharevousa, hence it was the language that was enriched the most, and sourced, and fed into from ancient Greek, was Katharevousa. Demotic language was somewhat neglected, and the result was that although it’s the main language of the Greek people, Demotic of course, not Katharevousa, it has a lot of shortcomings. And it’s got shortcomings to this day, we know it. Even grammatical. Some verbs don’t have all the past tenses, after 200 years of usage in the established Greek state. There are a lot of problems like that, and you see, for example in French, I’d seen in a book by François Roux there was a description, there was someone who sold knives and cutting tools, and there were 15 verbs, all defined as “cut” in the dictionary. In Greek there’s “cut”, “slice”, and “chop”, in French there are 15. Why? Because it’s a matter of culture in a broader sense. There are professions that have been developed more in one country, for whatever reason, so they’ve got their own jargon. You go to the butcher’s here and they cut the meat with the cleaver, while in France meat cutting is a whole science. So it’s only natural that there would be 15 verbs to describe cutting. There are many such problems. I think it’s the responsibility of translators, and even more so, authors, to make the Greek language more elaborate, to enrich Demotic Greek with loans from earlier periods of the language, in order to – and this is the hard part for a writer – to embed the words, or rather, make them functional, those older words in contemporary language.

You mentioned Vuillard, and how he uses different styles. In such cases, do you contact the writer? Do you have a relationship with the authors?

Usually I do. I had contact with… We hadn’t had much contact about the first book, and out of the blue I got an e-mail from the publisher that said… It was instructions towards translators of all languages, and I got a lengthy note. The reason they sent it was that it had just won the Goncourt Prize in France, so it suddenly got widely translated, and the various translators had many questions, so he composed one text to send out. Luckily, though I was almost done by then, I realized I’d unknowingly followed the instructions I got. Regarding the other book that was recently published, 14 juillet, we had more communication, and there were huge difficulties. That was because he described an era for which there’s no equivalent in our linguistic quiver. For example, he’d have descriptions of weapons used in the French Revolution. What have we got here? The kariophili, the harquebus, and, I don’t know, perhaps one more word for rifles. But there, it was weapons galore. There were even words for a specific part of an 18th century weapon. A very difficult case. If you can’t find it anywhere, you’re forced to make adaptations. So… Not so much about that kind of problem, those are either solvable or they aren’t, you find it or you don’t, but more about problems like the ones I mentioned before, such as the style in some phrases. I e-mailed him my questions and fortunately he was accommodating. I’d send him a couple of sentences, and he’d reply with a full page of commentary to explain one phrase.

Wonderful. Let’s move on. We looked at translation as a process and its problems, now on to translation as a profession, there are difficulties there, too.

That’s more than difficulties, it’s a tragedy. Translation is globally a job that’s unrewarded, underpaid, just as it is here, in Greece. In fact, during the recession things got even worse. I believe there should be an appeal for higher financial rewards, and the state should intervene. I mean within the implementation of a more general policy about books, publishers should be given leeway to be able to pay the translators better. It’s a very difficult job. A job that demands dedication and giving it your best, which is never perfect, there’s always room for improvement. It’s up to the translator to decide when to say, “Alright, I’m done”. Otherwise they’d just keep endlessly improving on a text. So, it’s a laborious job. I’d also like to mention – on what’s said about it being creative – I’d say there are two sides to that. It’s creative on one hand, but I feel that there’s a peculiar side to it. A writer’s feelings are expressed in their writings, they’re given shape with words and that serves as an outlet. When translating, you take in someone else’s letting of steam. You absorb someone else’s pent-up emotions, which often results in them weighing on you. That’s someone else’s energy that you’re absorbing, instead of releasing. That’s the feeling I get from it. There’s this duplicity, which is both creative and a burden. However, I’d like to say that I felt wonderful at the opening of the Book Fair, here in Thessaloniki, when the National Theater of Northern Greece did a reading of an excerpt by Éric Vuillard. I was moved, because I felt like it was mine, too. It was my words, really, since the discourse was in Greek, and not French. I was honestly touched.

Since you mentioned the Thessaloniki International Book Fair, for the last 4 years there’s been a Translation Festival within it. What influence, if any, does the Book Fair have on the promotion of translation?

It has a big influence. Significant events are organized, adapted to the thematic sections of the Fair, where translators are given the chance to speak. How it usually goes for translators is that they’re cooped up at home, working. They don’t get to have contact with the audience like an author does. I want to believe that the Book Fair gives them the chance to step into the spotlight and talk about their issues, in the presence of an audience. Amongst themselves, with the audience, and with the authors. It’s a beautiful process that also promotes their work, which is pivotal in literature.

As the Director of the Book Fair here, what are, in your opinion, the differences between the Thessaloniki International Book Fair and the Frankfurt Book Fair, for example?

The Frankfurt Book Fair is exclusively commercial. It’s massive, and agreements are made between agents and publishers, and so on. There was a Facebook post by a publisher yesterday, that said the Thessaloniki Fair is more like Paris than Frankfurt, and he was right in that it’s a celebration of books, and an exchange of ideas at the same time, that goes beyond the commercial aspect. Frankfurt is the king of international trade fairs, while we’re moving in a different direction. We do want there to be a discussion on rights, and we do make an effort, but it isn’t easy since we’re a good, but regional exhibition. In today’s world of the internet, agents pick one or two to go to and the rest is done over e-mail. However, the significance of human contact never diminishes, some still come here, and I think that in future, as we grow, more and more will visit. The character of this fair is not at all like Frankfurt, though. It’s a balance between commerce and festival. A festival in the sense that authors meet their readers and vice versa, and all of them meet the publishers and there’s a fermentation, an assimilation. What we’re trying mainly to promote, is an environment that favors the exchange of ideas, public, quality interaction, where translators, authors, and readers get to speak, and that discourse is very different to the discourse we’re used to, around us.

In closing, what other actions does Hellenic Foundation for Culture organize to support translation and the book, besides the Book Fair that we’re all enjoying at the moment?

Yes. There are exhibitions abroad where translated Greek literature is presented, and it also has branches abroad, where it tries – the branches aren’t solely about books, but also other forms of art and writing – but it does organize actions and events about translation abroad, too. There’s always room for more, and I think we can get working on that.

That would have been our next, and final question. How do you see the future of the Book Fair and the Translation Festival as part of it?

I’m optimistic. I think the Fair has reached a point where nobody can… How can I explain it? They can’t offend it without consequences. It’s established, and that compels the institutions, whichever they may be, to support it, I think. Translation will always hold its ground, and we’ll try to afford it more and more of a role. We already have events that translators’ associations participate in, and the Book Fair itself also organizes events. It’s turned into a festival that I think everyone has embraced. Translators, regardless of whether they belong to an association or not, attend, participate, talk, discuss their issues and the books they’re translating within the context of a thematic. This year I noticed people showed a greater interest. For example, at the talk on Borges, held by Achilleas Kyriakidis and Dimitris Kalokiris, Borges’ two translators, the place was jam-packed, which is impressive. It’s impressive firstly because it’s Borges, not a best-selling author of our time, but a non-living author who’s quite heavy-going, and secondly, because the speakers were two translators, not the author, so you can’t say there was any aspect of “celebrity” to it, to have attracted the audience. That means there is interest in the topic, and there is interest in the book. A book consists of everything. You can’t separate the author from the publisher and from the translator. That’s what we’re trying to show. Books are all of that. And they’re all equally important.

Thank you very much. Have a good day.

Same to you. Thank you.