At ATA66 in Boston this year, SLD has invited literary translator and translation teacher Robert Chandler as its Distinguished Speaker. Robert began learning Russian at 15, and when he was 20, he spent a year as an exchange scholar in Voronezh, where Andrey Platonov was born and Osip Mandelstam was exiled. He has translated a wide variety of works, including by Sappho, Nadezhda Teffi, Alexander Pushkin, Vasily Grossman, and the Uzbek novelist Hamid Ismailov. He has edited three anthologies of Russian poetry, Russian short stories, and Russian magic tales for Penguin Classics. He has also taught translation workshops in London for many years. Before deciding to translate full-time, he worked for eight years as a teacher of the Alexander Technique, a valuable discipline involving breath, voice, and movement. In Boston, he will be presenting two sessions:
- “Changing Attitudes to Translating from Russian” on Friday, October 24, at 2:40 PM, about the shifting legacy and interpretation of the classic translations by Constance Garnett and what that reveals about attitudes toward translation
- “Learning from My Mistakes” on Saturday, October 25, at 10:30 AM, focusing on misunderstandings of verbal aspects
If you haven’t already registered for ATA66, don’t wait: early bird registration ends Sunday, September 14!
What brought you to Russian in the first place, and what motivated you to stick with it? What was your path toward translating professionally and teaching translation workshops?
I was fifteen years old. I was very good at Latin and Greek but did not want to continue with what, at the time, I contemptuouly thought of as “dead languages.” And we had an excellent Russian teacher at my school – kind, patient and dedicated.
You have been teaching translation workshops for many years. What do you find rewarding about teaching translators, and what do you find challenging?
Teaching is rewarding in many ways. It makes me focus more intently than ever on each word. And there are few subjects where a complete beginner may come up with truly helpful contributions. If I were teaching engineering or astrophysics, it is unlikely that a beginner would come up with something I have never thought of. But in a translation workshop it happens all the time. There are often thousands of choices to be made, and I am never going to think of all the different possibilities myself. Real collaboration is very enjoyable.
In your opinion, what makes a good translation? Is the ability to translate well something that can be taught, and how do you go about imparting it to your students?
What makes a translation good or bad is no different from what makes any piece of writing good or bad. As for imparting the ability to translate, I don’t really know. All I can do is encourage people to focus on every word of the original – and every letter of every word. And if something doesn’t make sense – to ask questions. And then to read their translation aloud to someone who does not know the original. That is the real test: does it or does it not convey real intellectual and/or emotional meaning to the listener?
I’m very far from literary translation, so I’m mystified by the process of choosing what gets translated. When reading foreign-language works, do you ever come across something that speaks to you and makes you want to translate it? Is there any pattern to the types of works that inspire you in this way? Or do publishers come to you with something they want translated?
Every translator’s experience is likely to be different. For the main part, I myself have made my own choices and proposed them to publishers. I choose works I believe in, works that I can re-read many times with pleasure. And if it is a long project, I need to feel confident that I can live for months or years in that particular author’s world.
When translating, what’s your approach to elements of the text that draw on cultural knowledge the Russian reader would have, but an English reader wouldn’t?
As with nearly all translation questions, it depends on the individual case. Sometimes a five or ten page introduction may be the best way. Sometimes end notes may be more helpful. Sometimes, for the sake of clarity, it may be possible to slip a few extra words into the main text.
I know that picking a favorite translation project can be a bit like choosing a favorite child, but do any of your translations stand out to you as particularly memorable in some way – positively or negatively?
Hard to say. I feel a great warmth towards Teffi. Her wit, grace and resilience are remarkable. It is a joy to be in her company. I am also deeply moved by the number of people who have written to me, unprompted to say that reading Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate has changed their lives.
