Vasilis Babouris

Hello Mr. Babouris, Thank you for being with us today.

Hello, I’m also very happy to be here at the Steki Metafrasis [Translation Corner].

We’d like to begin with some general questions about your personal relationship with translation. How did it come into your life?

How translation came into my life. By chance. I was studying Physics. I can’t say I was enamored by the subject of my studies, and at some point my mother saw an ad in Kathimerini, if I remember correctly, about a Translation Studies program starting at the British Council. Knowing how much I loved English, she told me to go. So I did. That’s how it all basically started. Before I’d even finished the program I’d started to take on some work. It was an experimental course, and the few of us students were guinea pigs, but some of us survived and entered the market. And bit by bit, as it usually goes, project after project, I found myself on one hand working as a translator, and on the other thinking I was very lucky to have made the change, because I honestly love translation.

What does “to translate” mean to you? What do you get out of it?

Unfortunately, defining “to translate” traverses another question: What am I translating? Like, when I’m translating a manual, I can’t say it means anything. It’s just a job. When I’m translating literature, or comics, or poetry, then it fulfills a big need for me, that of creativity. So mainly, translation for me is a way to externalize my need for creativity. That doesn’t mean I want to create something of my own. I serve the author. But at the same time this job has a strong creative element that I find fascinating.

What do you prefer to translate?

Do you mean which literary genre or what kind of text in general?

In general. You’ve got a lot of types under your belt.

One would think that since I studied Physics I’d enjoy translating technical texts. I get technical texts and can handle them, but they don’t captivate me, so the technical jobs I took on gradually dwindled, and I focused mainly on literature, and especially fantasy literature. Additionally, because I learned English at a very young age, by reading the comics given to me by a Scottish teacher I had, I became a fan, and still enjoy translating comics. Because I’m involved in translation tools and translation technologies, I also enjoy projects pertaining to website and software localization. That’s it.

Do you choose the texts you translate yourself?

Anymore, yes. It’s something I built on. I’ve been very lucky, to be honest, because a childhood friend of mine approached me to start up a publishing house, Oxy, together. I didn’t join that outfit in a proprietary role, however, I did help him a lot at first to put together some series, and I handled a big, and long-living fantasy series that ran for 16 years. As the main editor of the series I had the opportunity to choose the titles, and pick out the ones I wanted to translate myself. I realize that this is an ideal scenario for a translator. It takes a little work to get there, but it feels great when you do.

Out of everything you’ve translated, which text was the hardest, and what made it so hard?

Let me start with something I’ve observed. Since I pursue challenges in translation, the times I’ve taken on books that were very peculiar, post-modern, that defied the rules, so to speak, of grammar and proper spelling, and so on, those books, like Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates, turned out to be really simple. A book that really gave me a hard time and took me about a year to finish was Haunted, by Chuck Palahniuk. The structure of this book is reminiscent of The Canterbury Tales. It’s about 17 people confined in a space, and each of them writes a short story, with a frame story that connects them all together. Palahniuk’s discourse was so complex with such difficult vocabulary, and at the same time so transgressive in grammar and syntax, which wasn’t due to incompetence, but rather his attitude on the composition of his language. And so, the combination of an extremely demanding vocabulary and the peculiar syntax, was truly a huge challenge. I went over it again and again many times, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I sometimes open it and read some excerpts, and, perhaps a little smug, I don’t know, I congratulate myself on a job well done.

Out of the different kinds of text that you translate, is there one that stands out in terms of difficulty?

No, I don’t think so. I think… We can’t simply say one type of text is easy while another isn’t. Individual texts of individual types might have many particular difficulties. But I wouldn’t say a specific type has more difficulties than another.

As for translation as a profession – a whole other chapter – are you happy, generally, with a translator’s financial rewards?

First of all, I need to clarify that my main occupation now is training translators, not translation itself. So I don’t know if I’m the right person to ask about that. Obviously it’s been argued for many years… Not just many years, it’s been that way ever since I entered the field, that translation is underpaid. Once someone enters the field, though, and starts meeting translators, they’ll see that it isn’t the case for everyone. There are translators who are paid just fine. There are translators who’ve managed – either with a lot of personal work here in our country, or by networking abroad with foreign companies – to secure very high fees. I do think that the argument about generally underpaid translators is objective. But that doesn’t mean that anyone should be deterred from working in translation. I think good translators in any area, eventually find, manage, construct, if you will, the opportunities and professional relationships through which they obtain better financial rewards. Do fees need to be raised in general for all of us? Yes. There’s no two ways about it.

As regards to working conditions, what are the biggest challenges a translator faces, in your opinion?

Look, we need to distinguish between freelancers and internal employees. Not to mention other categories of translators who aren’t hired as translators but are made to translate nonetheless. Or fellow translators who work for the Translation Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Separating the profession into those two basic categories, the main difficulties for a freelancer are quite clearly building a loyal clientele which takes time, fighting the monster of bureaucracy and taxation, which mutates year by year and unfortunately keeps growing, and certainly the issue of promoting themselves in the market. How to make new contacts, how to create professional relationships, and how to expand abroad, which I believe every freelancer should do. As for an in-house translator, I’d say that in the last few years, this – I’ll put it delicately – flexibility in labor relations has allowed many agencies to employ freelancers and pay very low fees in the form of a salary, although those translators still have to pay out of pocket for their own social security, whereas if they’d been hired as employees, that wouldn’t happen. Of course, what’s legal is also moral, as someone told us. This is a practice first implemented by the Ministry of Culture, under Voulgarakis, if I remember correctly. I’m obviously joking, what’s legal isn’t always moral, but that’s a big hurdle for me. On the other hand, I feel that a translator’s “pupilage”, so to speak, at a translating agency, not so much in the sense of an internship, but working for a couple of years at a translating agency is very good training and a stepping stone to entering the market on their own. That’s exactly the advice I give my own students. “Work at an agency if you want to, but be ready to cut the cord two or three years in, and go out on your own. That’s the only way to get the financial rewards you deserve.”

What’s your opinion on the status of translators in Greece?

Again, we need to make some distinctions, I mean, what’s the status of technical translators? Do they even exist? We don’t see them anywhere. Have you ever read a manual that mentioned the translator’s name? Never. So, translators of technical texts are completely invisible. They also have no copyright. There’s no law protecting copyright in technical translations. We’ve also never heard of an award for a technical translation, a translator awarded for the best manual, or something. In literature though, and I make this distinction since we’re talking about literary and non-literary, namely technical translation, in literature things are somewhat different. There are colleagues who have… They hold a certain status, have gained a reputation and have been honored with awards. Things are pretty different, I’d say. Of course, that doesn’t mean that we should be contented. It’s trivial that five or ten out of a thousand translators have been given plaques, cups, awards, or prizes. What’s important is how we’re going to manage to highlight the importance of our work in society, so that everyone realizes how important a translator’s job is.

Do you consider editing necessary for translations, and what’s your relationship with your own work’s editors?

Right, I’ll answer one by one because those are two questions. Is editing necessary? Yes. I could stop there, nonetheless I’ll offer a personal experience. There have been books that I translated and edited myself. Just one pair of human eyes is never enough. No matter how many times you go over it, a second pair of eyes will see it elseways. So I’d say, if the option is available, it’s good to have an editor. What an editor does is very important. Now, my relationship with editors. I think the main issue there is a combination of hierarchy and communication. Meaning the editor – and translators need to understand this – has the final word. On the other hand translators and editors need to have a common code of communication to ensure they’re talking about the same thing. So, whenever I hand in a book, I try to meet with whoever is editing it. I explain how I went about translating it, and I also note some things I feel they should be aware of before working on it. A translator will immerse themselves in the text, much more than an editor will. Consequently, I believe they should be entitled to set some guidelines for the editor. That said, any major disagreements should be discussed and resolved.

And what about censorship? Have there been instances where you felt you had to deviate, or change something?

I’m going to be the guy who breaks questions into two parts. There’s censorship and then there’s self-censorship. Censorship is when an external force interferes in our work. So if a publisher said, “Listen, this scene is too shocking or gory”, or whatever, “We need to tone it down”, that would be censorship and it’s never happened to me. Self-censorship is when we take on the role of censor. We fear something we wrote might come off as extreme, the publisher might find it distasteful and that may affect our future relationship with them. And so we change things to dial down the tension. Both are objectionable and should be avoided as much as possible. I remember a case where we’d published a comic called Das Leben des Jesus [The Life of Jesus]. It was a satirical comic that depicted events in Jesus’ life in a comedic way, and the publisher, translator, and author all got sued by the Holy Synod, because it was considered to be insulting to religion. There was a hearing and obviously we were cleared. I wasn’t the translator, but I was in Oxy Publications that had published the book. That was an attempt at censorship, so to speak, but after the translation process, not during.

Have you received criticism for one of your translations, and if so, how far did it affect your translating activity?

I don’t remember having been criticized, unless I have, and pushed it back into my subconscious. If I did, it wouldn’t affect me at all. Just like it doesn’t affect me when I get really good feedback. I consider criticism of translation a huge issue. There have been conventions on the topic and we still haven’t decided on how to do it. I very often meet people who’ve read books that I translated, and they tell me my translation was great while I think to myself, “How exactly do you know that?”. The only way to judge a translation is to compare it to the original, from people who understand the techniques that were used, and what approach was taken during the translation. So, I basically take it to mean, “I liked the Greek, I liked the language”. It’s a prerequisite for a good translation, but it isn’t about the translation. It’s another kind of comment.

Are you optimistic about the future of translation in Greece?

I’d say I am. I think what we observe around us points to translators becoming more and more essential. Communication is everything in the globalized society we live in, this global village. It might sound a little cliché, or stereotypical, but it’s still true. Everyone wants to sell what they’ve published everywhere, the moment they publish it. An important condition for that to happen is multilingual communication, and that’s something that we ensure. So yes, I am optimistic, especially about Greece. In recent years, with the actions of associations and other bodies, including those who train translators, there’s a flurry of activity in the translation field. Things are improving, or at least things are moving towards improvement. I think that warrants optimism.

In closing, do you have any advice for a student who aspires to be a professional translator?

Have we got another hour? I have a lot of advice to give, but I won’t drag it out and become tiresome. My initial thought is that students often focus on the issue of talent. They wonder if they’re talented. Okay, it’s a good thing to have talent, whatever that is, but above all you need to be a hard worker. You need to love the text. You need to read and write a lot, because we’ve drifted away from both. The rest will come, I think. If you do it with love – again, a stereotype – but if you love the text and love translation and languages, little by little, everything else will start rolling in.

Thank you for taking the time to be with us today.

Thank you very much.