Theo Votsos

First of all we’d like to thank you for being with us today and we’d like to hear some first impressions about the Thessaloniki International Book Fair. How did you like it?

Look, it’s been many years since I last visited the Thessaloniki Book Fair. The last time was before the crisis, in 2008 I think, and compared to then, I have the feeling that the turnout is lower. Apart from Babel, the Steki Metafrasis [Translation Corner], it is very calm. Is it due to the good weather? I don’t know. However, I was surprised that the audience is smaller than in the past, at least as far as I can remember. 

This year’s 13th Book Fair is dedicated to translation as well as to Russia, as you know. You are a translator, too.

I’m a translator, yes.

Do you have any other occupation besides translation?

My main occupation has been translation for fifteen, twenty years now. I am a freelance translator of literature. I started with translations from Greek into German, because I grew up in Germany. German is in a way the language I know best. About seven years ago, I met a colleague and writer, Agoritsa Bakodimou from Athens, with whom I started collaborating, and we undertook translations from German into Greek. I translate the first draft, because she doesn’t know German so well. She edits my text and then we start quarreling, that is, we go through the text together and when I feel that she has edited something very freely I try to bring her back closer to the original. And we always end up with a fairly satisfactory result. We have translated about ten books since then. At the same time, I also translate Greek literature into German on my own.

Was it a lifelong dream to be involved in translation?

No, I wouldn’t say that it was a lifelong dream. But I grew up in a bilingual and bicultural environment, I grew up in Germany in a Greek family, there were always two cultures. So it was – how can I put it? – my fate due to my living arrangements, my destiny. I always had to translate in some way. You may know that immigrants in Germany didn’t initially have the opportunity to learn the language. They came with a contract, they were taken from the train station to the place they would work, mostly in factories, and they were taught the basics. My parents, who lived in Germany for 40-45 years, didn’t learn German. Well, they learned the basics, so that they could communicate, but they never had regular courses, they never went to a foreign language school. So, while growing up in Germany, I always had to translate for my parents, for the family environment, for friends. The integration of our parents was achieved mostly through their children, because we, growing up there, had another access to the host society and through us they also managed to integrate better. So translation, in the broad sense of the word, has always been an important feature of my life. And then, during my studies – as I told you before – we published in Tübingen a Greek-German journal called Kassandra, a bilingual journal of politics and culture. And that’s how I started translating texts by my Greek fellow students who had come to Germany to study. They wrote in Greek and I translated the texts in German, because that was the concept of the journal, that all texts should be in both languages, not just summaries in the other language, but the texts in their entirety. And then I thought that it works out for me somehow and I started to translate more professionally. In 2001, when Greece was an honored country at the Frankfurt Book Fair, German publishing houses showed a greater interest in Greek literature, so I started translating for other publishing houses besides Romiosini, which I mentioned earlier. I translated for the Berlin Verlag, for the dtv, for the Hanser Verlag… And in the meantime I had done other things as well, I was working at a film festival and at an intercultural theater in Cologne, but translation has always been something I have been doing throughout my life. And in the last seven years, I’ve been translating exclusively. I’m also a bit involved in film criticism, that is, I write film reviews for publications. 

Βut the translator’s germ never leaves. Belonging to a new generation, what language dominates over the other?

Pardon?

You belong to the new generation of Greeks who grew up in Germany. You said that you have a very good command of German…

Yes, but what are you asking me exactly? In which language I…

In which language do you feel better? Do you feel more secure when you translate into Greek or into German? 

I’ve improved my Greek over the past few years, in written discourse at least, and I’ve started translating into Greek. But German, since I grew up with it, is still, of course, the more dominant language. But I spend a lot of time in Greece, so my Greek is also at a good level.

Is there a translator that you admire, that you have as a role model?

Yes, Aris Georgiou, regarding Greek translators. He has translated Russian literature. Regarding German translators, Harry Rowohlt.

When you are dealing with a text and you want to translate it, what emotions, so to speak, overwhelm you?

Initially?

Yes. Are you anxious?

No. Look, it is my profession, I earn my livelihood from it. So I’m happy with every translation I have the chance to do. It’s a job and this way I manage to have an income. The translations I take on are various. There are publishing houses that assign me the translation of books which I don’t initially know of, and there are other books that I suggest they be translated. The ones they assign me aren’t my choices, but I always feel satisfaction in the beginning, and then, it depends on whether I like the book or not… But I always connect with the book to some extent, so I can only be subjective. Translating is such an organic process. We, as translators, are, so to speak, the most intensive readers of a book. Sometimes we spend a whole day reading one page. You are, so to speak, fermented with the text, you connect with it to some extent. While you may not like the book, you nevertheless somehow embrace it, make it your own. And after you are finished, you defend it. Even if it has weaknesses. 

Yes, of course. And how about the books that you choose? Does this process involve more love, more enthusiasm?

Regarding the books that I choose…

What criteria do you base your choice on?

What criteria? First of all, it must be a book that has not been translated into Greek, which I consider important, either historically or qualitatively. However, this should be combined with the fact that the translation of a book provides me with a decent fee. The problem is that now with the economic crisis the publishing houses are having a hard time paying translators, or the fees have been reduced, or they don’t publish any foreign literature at all, or not any contemporary literature anyway. So lately I’ve done the following: I know Switzerland is a very prosperous country and it has the cultural institution Pro Helvetia, which subsidizes translation 100%. Germany doesn’t do that. So I often choose Switzerland, since I also have some connection with that country. There is a translation center that I visit every year in the mountains of the canton of Zurich. I’ve met Swiss writers who are actually remarkable. We are now translating Gottfried Keller’s Green Henry, a classic novel that has not yet been translated into Greek. And because the writer is Swiss, our fee is also guaranteed, even though the Greek publishing house couldn’t afford to pay us. So both aspects matter.

So are you satisfied with your financial rewards from translation?

Yes, I’m satisfied, because when there is this subsidy, you are not paid based on the regular fee that applies here, but a higher one, a fee that a translator of literature receives in Germany. Of course, as a translator of literature you still don’t get paid well – my colleagues in Germany and in other countries, too – in relation to other translations of official documents etc. But it’s better than it is here. Here you get eight euros per standard page, there you get 18, 20 euros, there’s a difference. Υou can apply for a subsidy from Pro Helvetia, for example, or the Goethe Institute, which also offers subsidies, not 100% but up to 50% of the fee. And you can apply based on what the EU proposes as a fee for each country. Approximately 18 euros/page is proposed for Greece, while in reality translations are paid here 8 or 9 euros/page.

How about the future of translation in our country?

There are some positive signs in the most recent years. Also the fact that this Translation Corner is now created. It brings translation to the fore. Moreover, there is, I think, an association of translators, proofreaders and editors founded in Athens, which makes translation issues public. Translation as a process is solitary, it is carried out in rooms, in offices, it’s not visible. Our job and our mission is to bring it to public attention, to point out its significance. 

But also the difficulties that… 

Yes, but also that translation is very important in terms of reconciling cultures. If it weren’t for us, there would be no world literature. This is what we must raise people’s awareness of. The better you translate, the more you disappear at the same time. Because one reads a book by a certain author, e.g. by Sebald or Dostoevsky, and they think they read Dostoevsky, but in fact they read the translator.

Are you in contact with the authors you translate? 

Yes. Yes, if they are still alive. I seek to meet them and to have them at my disposal, when I have questions. With the German writers I have translated, the contemporary ones, yes, I even have a friendly relationship. In Germany, there are different possibilities when a book has been sold in different countries and is planned to be translated into several languages. There are institutions which organize meetings between the author and the ten, twelve, fifteen translators for about a week. E.g. the European center for translators in Straelen [Europäisches Übersetzer-Kollegium], where I’ve been twice with two authors and with my colleagues from other countries. We had the opportunity to study the book that we’d translate into our languages, from the very first to the very last page. There was also a coordinator who kept notes, and at the end we received, so to speak, the proceedings. This is the ideal preparation, because whatever question you have, it can be answered there and then by the author themselves, without having to do research and so on. And through this process we bond, we have the feeling that we are a family, we have something in common. Our child is the book that we will translate and we are also interested in the course of the book that will be published in Italy, in Sweden…

How do you think the quality of translation can be improved?

I hear it still happens in Greece, that translations are done through intermediary languages, especially when it comes to a more exotic language, e.g. Asian, but even Hungarian. A colleague of mine has translated a Hungarian writer not from Hungarian, but from French. I consider this malpractice. And it should change. Last year’s Translation Prize of a Russian book – what was it called? – War and…

…punishment.

Not by Dostoevsky, by another author. I think it was translated either from English or from French. The translator may have done a perfect job, but I don’t think it’s right to translate through intermediary languages. This should change. I’m not a theorist of translation, I haven’t studied translation, I was taught through practice… That is, I have no knowledge of the various theories. But, yes, I believe that these standards should be established, that is, that translation must be done from the original language. Translation can be improved. It depends on the translator, how good a writer they are.

What do you think the difficulties of translation are?

The difficulties?

Yes.

The difficulties are the whole cultural background. That is, the idiomatic phrases and what is hidden behind them, the culture, the cultural context that must be transferred. I cannot mention anything specifically – we’d have to take the book and…

Yes, ok. How do you deal with the criticism of your work? If there has been any criticism.

Negative criticism, you mean.

Regarding your translation work.

I haven’t received any negative reviews so far. It only happened once, but it was mild, moderate criticism, so it didn’t affect me much.

Apart from being a translator are you also involved in writing?

No, I have no time for that, except for these journalistic articles that I write from time to time. Only as a teenager did I make such attempts. Since then… I feel completely fulfilled by translation. 

We’d like to thank you for taking the time to answer our questions.

I thank you, as well.