Maria Papadima

Thank you very much for being here, and for your time, it’s a pleasure.

It’s a pleasure for me, as well, to see you motivated to do things.

Our first question is, was it a lifelong dream of yours to get into translation?

I wouldn’t say it was a dream. In my teens or younger years, I wasn’t thinking of becoming a translator. I’d thought of similar things like a journalist or critic, with a brief stint in medicine. I mean, I hadn’t thought of it back then. I thought of it after I finished my PhD when I was around 30. That’s when I felt kind of a pang to get into translation, and I never turned back.

What did you think of translation before you did it professionally, and after you became a professional translator?

I think, like most of us, I used to read a lot as a teen. And, like most people at the time, I didn’t notice the translator, I had no idea who had translated the foreign book I was reading. So I didn’t have much of an impression of the translator, nor had I any thoughts on translation. Like, I was an avid Jules Verne reader when I was 13 or 14, and at some point I did some work on Verne’s translations, much later in time, in university, and I realized those translations were near incomprehensible, and wondered what the heck I’d been reading. It wasn’t something that I had thought about. I think people are just becoming aware now, in the last few years, of translation matters. Who does it, and so on.

On that, is there a translator you look up to, or have as a role model?

Someone I admire and appreciate very much, who I think does outstanding work, he really does, is Achilleas Kyriakidis. There are others, he’s not the only one. There’s Anna Papastavrou… You caught me off guard with this question. I’m sure there are more, if you give me time I’ll come up with more, but Achilleas Kyriakidis for sure, because there are some writers that we’ve both worked on and I know his work well.

How do you feel when you’re translating something?

Any more, it’s essentially the best part of my life. I mean it. That… Although I’m no longer exclusively a translator, as you know, I lecture at university, it’s not… There are translators who do it exclusively. For example Efi Koromila lives off it, and so does Anna Papastavrou. They only do translations. But for me, it isn’t a time of labor, it’s really a time of leisure and great… It’s time that’s essentially my own, and it’s pleasurable, because I’m doing what I love the most.

What do you get out of translation?

The main thing is creativity. I’ve said before that for me, translating is writing with a safety net. In my younger days I’d written and published a collection of poems. I later decided that I wouldn’t publish anything again. I would write occasionally. So, translation for me, at least, came to satisfy my creative side, though I was riding the author’s coattails. I mean, it’s the author who’s done all the work. They’re the one who had the inspiration to write the book, the novel, or the poem, and the translator comes in to recreate something that already exists. I mean, I’m given a canvas, on which I add embroidery.

Why is translation important to you? What’s your motivation to translate?

I think it’s more personal than it is collective. I mean… I definitely think of the reader, sometimes as in how nice it is that they’ll get to read Pessoa in Greek, or Machado de Assis in Greek, but it’s mainly about my own duel with the text, and with its difficulties. It’s like pushing your limits through the various difficulties you face. And you enter, or rather you have to constantly be in a state of awareness. There’s always a banana peel you might slip on, there’s always a chance of a blunder, even after 30 years’ work. So it’s a state of pleasure, passion, and simultaneously of mental alertness, and… You have to be alert, and ready for anything at all times. You’re pumped up on adrenaline.

Are you involved in anything other than translation? We’re already aware that you are a professor.

Yes, I’m a professor of French Language and Literature, and for the last three years I’ve been Head of the Department, so as you can imagine my time for translation… That’s why I said that to me, it’s the most precious and enjoyable time. I love teaching, mind you. In no way am I saying it’s something I find boring. I don’t think that I could just be a translator. Combining teaching translation with translation itself provides a perfect balance for me.

Are you a member of any translators’ associations?

I’m not, because I’ve realized that I can’t be. I mean, as a member of faculty I can’t also be self-employed, I do very few translations, only about one or two books per year, at most. I think these facts preclude a non-professional translator from being a member of an association, be it a union, or a professional organization.

And are you satisfied with the financial rewards?

I don’t think you’ll find a translator who’s satisfied. Right? Especially… I’ve got a strong point of comparison in the sense that I worked as a translator at the European Council for ten years. I’d passed the exams, and was an employee for almost ten years, until I resigned to join the University. So comparing the financial rewards of translators there to a translator’s earnings in Greece, whether it’s a technical translation, from what I hear, or a literary translation, there’s a huge disparity. I think it’s one of the jobs with the lowest pay. Especially for younger people. I mean, with the languages I speak, like Portuguese for instance, and my specialization, if we can call it that, or reputation, or whatever, I can maintain my fees at a certain level. I know young people get very low offers by publishers.

Are you optimistic about the future of translation in Greece?

I’m optimistic by nature, so yes, by extension. But, I mean, there’s some optimism in the sense that the profession is being acknowledged, there are translation studies, and there’s consideration to mentioning their names. What still makes me a little weary, is the fact that financial rewards are bad. Someone who’s competent and deserves to be paid well, why would they translate for such meager fees instead of doing something else? And that publishers keep going by the logic of “I’ll pay peanuts, then edit it”, and, “No worries, it’s fine like this”. They think they’ve saved money because they skimped on translation fees. These two things keep me from being overly optimistic.

Do you translate from Portuguese and French?

And Spanish.

What’s your relationship with these languages?

French is the language I’m the most fluent in, having lived in France and Belgium for almost 20 years. I basically learned Portuguese, rather, I learned Spanish as a second language since it was in vogue in the ’80s and ’90s, and I took up Portuguese initially because I wanted to translate Pessoa into Greek. That’s how I started studying Portuguese. So they’re languages that… I’d say I speak Portuguese just as well. Perhaps I’m not as fluent, because French, if you’ve lived there for 20 years, is as good as my mother tongue. But I have a deep knowledge of Portuguese, mostly through literature.

What is your relationship like with the authors you translate? You’ve already mentioned Pessoa.

Yes. What’s my relationship… I’ve translated both living authors as well as older ones. As for Pessoa, who’s an author I’ve been dealing with… I’ve dealt with him since the year 2000, it’s been about 20 years now, he’s a writer whose work I know very well, and what’s been written about it. I feel a certain familiarity, I wouldn’t say intimacy – because translators develop close relationships with their authors, and they feel awkward when someone else translates an author that they’ve taken on – but I’d say he’s the author I know the best. My relationship with other writers could be described as more fragmented. I mean I did one or two books, not… As for relationships with living authors, Pierre Mertens, for example, or Jean-Noël Schifano, I had contact with them when I needed to ask about issues I faced in their books. But I’ve also spoken to Semprún, whom I’ve translated as well, who said, “I don’t want to know anything about who my translator is”. He wrote in French, though he was Spanish. So I asked him the obvious. How he felt when he saw his work translated into Spanish. Because, in contrast to Alexakis, his translations were done by Spanish translators. He said he didn’t want to know, because there was no way they could convey what he wanted to say as well as he had written it. So the conversation didn’t go much further.

What genre of literature piques your interest the most?

The more the years go by, the more interested I am in classic literature, and the yet to be translated works of classic literature.

As for the quality of translations, how do you think it can be improved?

To be improved… By translators, or as a whole?

Both. Yes, by translators. 

I’d say it can improve first of all, if the… Actually, if the publisher knows who to assign each translation to, and in turn the translator tells them what they can or cannot do, instead of approaching everything the same way. Like, if I was asked to translate, I don’t know, contemporary Brazilian literature, with a lot of slang, I wouldn’t do it, because I don’t know Brazilian slang. I could figure it out and do it, but it definitely wouldn’t be the best way possible. So one thing is for publishers and translators to be honest as to their abilities on the translator’s side, and publishers as to why they chose one translator over another. Not because they happened to be available, or because they were the cheapest option, or the first one they came across and said, “Fine”, or because they were recommended by a friend. If they started off with the right person, the translation would be guaranteed to be better. After that – and this is a subject I’m researching – I’m very interested in the relationship between translators and editors. I think there’s work to be done there. What do publishers mean by “editing”? I keep hearing my colleagues say that there’s no teamwork between translator and editor. They’re corrected, their work is taken and edited and it gets published without any discussion whatsoever. I think the editor has a very important part to play. They are – theoretically, if they’re good editors –…

They’re essential.

They are essential, as well as being the first third-party reader of a translation, who will see the mistakes and catch anything that’s slipped by. Those are the two things that I think would facilitate better translations.

What do you consider the difficulties of translation?

The usual. Linguistic, pragmatic, stylistic. Every time I’ve said, “This book isn’t hard”, or, “This book is easy”, I’ve been proven wrong. Even the easiest book, that seems easy on the surface looking at it as a reader, when you try to translate it, it might turn out to be extremely hard. For instance, Duras, whose way of writing is very simple and brief, is extremely difficult to translate into Greek. It just doesn’t work, this blunt, dry style. So there are all these difficulties. The author’s style, of course, and pragmatics and… I imagine linguistic issues, matters of vocabulary can be solved much easier. As long as they’re aware of them and don’t make mistakes without having a clue.

Can you give us an example of a translation that you found especially difficult? Like a word, or something like that?

My last translation, which is three novels by the Brazilian Machado de Assis. They were written in the 19th century, and it’s an era of cultural elements that don’t correspond to Greek culture. There were some words that I knew their definitions, but that was of no use. Like the word “moleque”. A “moleque” is a young, black man who is a slave. We’re talking about the 19th century. What do you call him? A slave? A black guy? It’s like “boy”, in English. That was lost. There was nothing I could do. In this case you know that this… Another issue I had was appellations. There was “señor”, and then “seño”, and “ñoño”, and other variations and corrupted derivatives. In that case, although I was subjected to a certain not so much pressure, more like opinion from the publisher to make them “sire”, “boss”, or some such, I said, “No, I won’t do that”, I put some translation aside, on what I did and how, and did a phonetic transcription and used “sinio”, “nionio” and so on. Those were the difficulties that I had recently.

How do you deal with criticism of your work?

I’ve never had… I’ve always had good reviews. But that… Overall I think criticism of a translation can’t be done. Whatever is said about a great translation, or a good translator, sure, I like reading it about my books, but I don’t think anyone has the authority to actually sign their name to it. They’d need to speak Portuguese, read both texts and compare Portuguese and Greek. On what basis would they criticize the translation? That the text flows in Greek? That it’s good, the Greek is correct? It might be correct Greek, but say the exact opposite to the text. I mean, if one doesn’t know what dilemmas the translator faced and how they solved them, I don’t think the review can have any substance. It’d be limited to whether the book is readable, and there’s nothing that stands out or seems awkward.

Do you think there’s proper implementation of the copyright law for translations?

No. I don’t think there is. I think the translator has to fight to get their contract – because their fee is really an advance on their copyright proceeds, and there should be an audit every year to see what was sold or not, and they should get paid again since they’re entitled to a percentage, by law. I don’t think anyone does that. I demand it from my publishers, but every time, with the exception of a few, very few, just one, really, everyone else… Nobody’s ever going to call you up to tell you that they owe you five hundred euro, or 100, or 50. Not a chance. There might be a couple of publishers that actually do it, the rest all forget about it and you have to… There’s this attitude that the translator no matter how well-known, or good, or distinguished, has to become a beggar to get what is owed to them, when that is actually part of their financial rewards.

Are you influenced by anyone when it comes to choosing the title? Who makes the final decision?

I’ve always made that decision. But I would be open to other suggestions. There are some titles that are just untranslatable. It hasn’t happened to me so far. The books I’ve translated… Wait, there was one, just one. There was one from Portuguese called Os Meus Sentimentos, which sounds like “my sentiments”, but actually means “my condolences”. It’s literally, “I present my sentiments”, but in essence it means “condolences”. But the word “sentimentos” is in there, which is sentiments. What do you do with that title? You can’t entitle a book “My Condolences”. It works in Portuguese, because it contains the word “sentiment”. In that case I had to change the title altogether. I didn’t stick to the original one.

Before we wrap up, one last question. What advice would you give young translators like us?

I feel that if translation is something that you really like, if you, I don’t know, whether it’s technical, general, or literary translation, it’s a profession for me… How should I say this? I didn’t… I’ve never regretted being a translator. But it takes a lot of passion, a lot of curiosity. If a translator… Sure, there’s the internet today, knowledge is easily accessible, but a translator gets good at it only if they read a lot themselves. When they have knowledge of every kind. It’s a multifaceted profession. You need linguistic skills, writing well and having a good grasp of Greek, speaking the foreign language well, but also having knowledge on all topics, beyond authors and literature, about numerous other things. It needs an ardor, as a profession. And it definitely isn’t financially rewarded accordingly.

Unfortunately. Thank you very much.

You’re welcome.