Angela Rodel interview: ‘Translators don’t play second fiddle to authors, it’s like a duet’

Aside from the book, what other writing did you draw inspiration from for your translation?   

Georgi’s previous writing was perhaps the best inspiration – so many of his books are metatextual, they reference one another and expand on earlier themes, thus I felt I needed to make translation decisions that would resonate with his full body of work. As for other writers, I found Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights inspiring, as she, too, writes in a fragmentary, non-linear way (I was not surprised to find out she and Georgi have been friends for years, having met on the literary festival circuit). I also took courage from Jennifer Croft’s brilliant translation of the novel, which flows beautifully without taming or domesticating what makes the novel unique.   

What was your path to becoming a translator of literary fiction? What would you say to someone who is considering such a career for themselves?   

I started out as a comp lit major at Yale as an undergrad, working with Russian and German, but then switched to linguistics, as I realised I loved exploring the inner workings of language, comparing and contrasting constructions – perhaps that was the nascent translator in me awakening. At the time I had no idea that being a literary translator was even a possible career path. But when I found myself in Bulgaria, married to a poet, and surrounded by lots of writers in our social circle, suddenly all that linguistic curiosity paid off: I started trying my hand at translating a poem here, a story there, since there were very few native speakers of English in Bulgaria at the time with a fluent grasp of the language. Only then did I realise it was something I loved to do and could actually make a living with – so for eight years I was exclusively a freelance translator, primarily of contemporary literature.   

I am happy to report that now there is a new generation of savvy and largely bi-lingual Bulgarian to English translators, some of whom I have had the great pleasure to teach and mentor. My advice would be to find a way to protect their artistic energy – freelance translating can be exhausting, the burnout of translating all day, every day can dampen what should be an exhilarating experience. Most translators teach at universities or, as in my case, have arts-related day jobs that allow us to only translate works we truly love, so that we come to every text with an energy that is palpable in our final translations.  

Why do you feel it’s important for us to celebrate translated fiction?     

As noted above, there unfortunately seems to be a chauvinistic belief in the English-speaking world that translations are ‘second fiddle’, somehow less-than or less desirable than original works in English, relegated to the ‘translated fiction’ or ‘foreign movies’ section (although luckily I think this is changing). A major international prize like the International Booker challenges this shortsighted Anglo-centric assumption and demonstrates that we have a moral responsibility to hear voices from beyond our own comfort zone, to recognise that the lived experiences of people whose language is not English holds just as much insight into the human condition as our own literature does.    

If you had to choose three works of fiction that have inspired your career the most, what would they be and why?  

Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment blew my angsty teen mind – it was one of the first novels in translation I ever read (although I didn’t really register this fact at the time). Dostoevsky inspired me to start studying Russian, which led to Slavic linguistics, which eventually led me to Bulgarian… I reread it regularly every five years or so (in different translations, my Russian is too rusty for the original at this point) and can happily report that I have yet to be disenchanted.    

Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, which I first read in English and then reread shortly thereafter in German, was the first work to give me a taste of translation’s magical energy, showing the way a translation recreates an atmosphere, capturing the shades and hues of the language and a world.   

More generally, my all-time favorite writer is the Canadian novelist Robertson Davies – I can only hope my translations might someday approach in some small way his witty and brilliant use of English. It turns out he was shortlisted for the Booker in 1986… inspiring company to aspire to!