Category Archives: Thoughts on Translation

Translating Laila Lalami

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by Emire Gül Yildiz

As a group, we chose the translatory strategy of foreignization to translate the excerpts from The Moor’s Account by Laila Lalami because we wanted to retain the source text’s information without changing the meaning (cf. Bassnett 2014, 47). For example, the novel has many Spanish and Arabic words. Therefore there was no intention to translate them into German, like the word Señor (Lalami 2014, 47).

Each of the group members took over a specific part of the text and first translated this excerpt individually, which is the part of our translation that I am going to focus on in this post:

During the translation process, I didn’t encounter significant difficulties. However, due to our decision to stay close to the original text, we had to find the balance between maintaining the original meaning and writing a grammatically correct German translation. Sometimes this was not as easy as it seemed.

Furthermore, another problem was the grammar, primarily because of the different sentence structures. When I began translating in the same sentence order as the English text, the result showed that the German text was full of grammatical errors and changed the meaning of the source text. Consequently, I had to find different approaches to modify the sentences until the syntax and meaning were both accurate, which took some time.

All in all, I can say that I had much fun translating my text excerpt. I learned a lot during the translation process, especially the importance of deciding which translation method to choose for the text. The procedure demands an understanding of the cultural references of the source text because we choose how to connect the author and the readers. By deciding on foreignization, we ensure the author can deliver her message without distorting the meaning.


Works Cited
Bassnett, Susan. Translation. London / New York: Routledge, 2014.
Lalami, Laila. The Moor’s Account. New York: Vintage, 2014.

Translation: A Constant Act of Balancing Words

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by Lea-Marie Schneider

Translation can be done in several ways with different emphases and different theories in mind. The focus we had was based on one of Walkowitz’s theories about the Born Translated: The Contemporary Novel in an Age of World Literature (Walkowitz 2015) which critically engages with the global dominance of English written novels. Born translated novels are written to be translated or even as if they are already translated. Those texts are treated either “as medium and origin rather than as afterthought” (Walkowitz 3-4) translations and mostly “pretend[…] to take place in a language other than the one in which they have been composed” (Walkowitz 4). The focus of the seminar was to engage with the Anglophone Arab Novel and how the authors managed to write their stories in English with contexts and plots that are tied to another culture. Those various forms of translation that happened in the process of writing of the authors are impacting the understanding of a potential readership who possibly do not have knowledge about the Arabic cultures, values, or habits.

The excerpt that was translated by us as a group was taken from the novel The Moor’s Account (2015) written by the author Laila Lalami. Our translation was mainly informed by Rebecca Walkowitz’s Born Translated: The Contemporary Novel in an Age of World Literature (2015). The novel is a historical fictional narrative and tells the story of Mustafa ibn Muhammad, a Moroccan slave who explores La Florida with a Castilian exploration crew and his owner. First, we agreed to stay as close to the original text as possible and tried to keep the meaning and the mood the source text conveys. This required us to consider the overall context of the novel and the context of the particular part that was to be translated. The fact that the novel’s genre is that of historical fiction was also a big part of the translation in terms of word choices. For example, the word “treasurer” (Lalami 47) can be translated into the word “Kämmerer” or “Schatzmeister”. The second possibility seemed more natural as a word choice because the novel is a historical fictional narrative and therefore ancient terminology fits more into the overall context. We also decided to keep the Spanish words and names as they are without translating them into German. For example, the Spanish word “Señor” (Lalami 47) was kept and was not translated into the German version Senior. This reminds the potential reader of other languages and places and possibly expands the view of the superiority of a language. As translators we always had to be aware of the grammar of both languages, the target and the source language. Changing the word order sometimes caused problems and changed the whole meaning. The sense was sometimes lost in translation but could be restored by the position of several words. Sometimes even the usage of metaphorical sentences is problematic and could cause misunderstandings. Therefore, we agreed upon a less metaphorical style and translated “he never said it to the treasurers face” (Lalami 47) into “in Abwesenheit des Schatzmeisters”.

The process of translation was a permanent balance of what makes the most sense and what keeps the implied mood of the novel. Even if in the position of the translator one tries to preserve as much meaning as possible with the willingness to keep the sentence structure, there are always compromises and decisions to be made. It is surprising how much one person can think about the choice of a word out of five options and how much time one paragraph can consume. Even though you are not the writer of the novel the decisions that you make can affect the novel and the meaning of the whole translation.

Works Cited

Lalami, Laila. The Moor’s Account. Vintage; Reprint Edition, 2015.
Walkowitz, Rebecca. Born Translated: The Contemporary Novel in an Age of World Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.

Language and Form

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by Selina Kraft, Anna Herkelmann, Laura Zimmermann and Sarah Riedel

While translating “Oil”, not only the correctness of the translation was a problem we had to face in the process. “Oil”, a poem by Fatimah Asghar, is about a teenage girl with diverse identities, among them Muslim, South Asian and Middle Eastern, facing an existential crisis following the events of 9/11, using oil as a metaphor to link the events with the speaker’s crisis. The poem is one of many from Asghar’s collection If They Come for Us (2018). The form of the poem is closely connected to the content, so we had to be careful to keep an eye on that while translating. This led to choices such as rearranging German sentences and leaving out obligatory punctuation. The tone of the poem was a task we had to face as well.

While reading Asghar’s poem “Oil”, we noticed the unusual form. While the text needed six pages in total, it could have been printed onto half of the pages by looking at the lines. One part of the text even is upside-down and written almost without spaces between words. In our first meeting, we as a group decided immediately that we wanted to keep the form of the poem since we thought that Asghar wrote it intentionally in that form. It could be because of the torn feelings of the speaker or because of other things; ours is just one of a million ways to interpret the form. We tried to keep the form as close to the original as possible, including learning from fellow students from our group on how to turn a text upside-down in Microsoft Word.

Sometimes this was not as easy as it seems. To keep the translation grammatically correct in German, the line breaks could not be kept word by word. This means that we weren’t always able to break the line at the same words as in the original, e.g. one of the lines breaks at the word “doctor” but due to German grammar, we were only able to break the line at the word sagt because the object could not stand before the verb.

By switching words and lines for the purpose of maintaining formal integrity, we also had to be aware that the German language needs more words to form a correct sentence than English. To keep the form, we had to rearrange the longer German sentences. While writing down the translation, we also had to be aware of the legibility. This was one of the biggest problems to tackle because the English original in some instances only needed half the words to form a proper sentence than our translation. We tried to write in a non-halting German so that the reader could read the translation in a flow, just like the original.

The last important thing while we were thinking about how to manage our translation was word choice and punctuation.

We read through “Oil” again and again, looking at our notes from the session on the poem. We asked ourselves “Who is the speaker in the poem?” The speaker, we agreed, had to be a teenage girl in Middle School or High School. This was crucial for some choices on the language of the translation. We decided to keep an informal style for the translation, appropriate for a teenager. This led to choices like translating “my people” not as “mein Volk” (which also had a slightly strange overtone for us) but as “meine Leute”.

While reading through the first draft of the translation, we noticed something the German grammar loves to bits: commas. Our translation had lots of commas that were necessary for being grammatically correct. That interrupted the reading and poetic flow we tried to keep. We were worried that the poem could be interpreted differently because the reading flow was stopped more often than in the original poem. For keeping this very flow, we decided to leave out some commas. In particular when the thinking speed of the speaker seemed to be faster in our interpretation, we left commas out so the reader can read faster and therefore can understand and feel the speaker’s stress and distress throughout the poem.

The bridge between languages is built by every translation of a text. However, not only the choice of words and the correctness of the translation are important. It is also important to look at the outside form, putting aside syntactical and grammatical correctness. Looking at a poem can have its own effects without reading it. When the work is then read, little things like commas can be changing the whole meaning and the interpretation. If a translator looks at a work to translate, these little details have to be transported from the original to the translation as well.

  • Asghar, Fatimah. If They Come For Us. One World, 2018.

Translating and Keeping the Respect

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by Annalena Steffens, Renee Czyganowski, Michelle Chiru and Audrey Heimann

Translating a piece of writing from one language to another can lead to several difficulties, many of which we encountered during our project with Fatimah Asghar’s “Oil”, a poem in Asghar’s poem collection If They Come For Us (2018). “Oil” deals with a speaker with diverse affiliation, among them them Muslim, South Asian and Middle Eastern, who struggles with their cultural identity, both socially and politically, particularly in the wake of 9/11 and uses oil as a metaphor that brings their identity together.

As we set out to translate “Oil”  from English to German, we came across problems concerning foreign expressions, metaphors and underlying meanings.

How does one handle non-English words in a multilingual text? When looking at “Oil”, we decided to stay as close to the original as possible, and thus keep foreign words as written in the original. While translating a word such as badam, a tropical tree known as country almond, Indian almond, Malabar almond, as well as  a few other names in English and Katappenbaum in German, would make it easier for the reader, the author had an intent in intertwining languages, and thus cultures. An intent that we, as translators, decided to keep in order not to change future interaction with the poem.

However, sometimes we were forced to intervene in this relationship between the original and the reader of the translation.

One difficulty we came across was the difference in grammar between English and German, especially when the grammar includes meaning. While “no one heard” is grammatically correct in English, the German language forces you to include an object, and thus we had to deviate from the original and write down an interpretation of who or what could have been meant, instead of sticking to the openness of the original.

Mixing interpretation into translation doesn’t stop there, but continues throughout the entire process. Especially in a genre such as poetry, where literal and metaphoric meaning are woven together, one cannot bypass making interpretational decisions in the translation. Very few words have the exact same meaning in two, or more, languages. Those cases become even rarer upon trying to navigate metaphors and double-meanings and in the end the translation shows our interpretation of what we have found in the original.

Upon starting this project, we set ourselves the task to be mindful of the original, not to change words and meaning if we didn’t have to. And while we managed to do so for the most part (or at least we hope we did), there are always instances in translating where the translator has to step into the role of the interpreter as well, changing the original a little to bridge the gap between languages.

  • Asghar, Fatimah. If They Come For Us. One World, 2018.

Lost in Translation? Interpreting and Identity in Suki Kim’s The Interpreter

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The Interpreter (2003) is the first novel by Suki Kim, who was born in Korea and immigrated to the US with her parents at the age of thirteen. The plot revolves around the interpreter Suzy Park, also born in Korea and immigrated to America, who lost contact to her parents after she ran away with a married man. She later finds out her parents were murdered, but the case is not solved, which leads Suzy to investigate the murder herself. Aside from the murder mystery, Kim’s novel touches upon themes like depression, hybridity and multiculturalism.

The character of the interpreter in any kind of fiction certainly became more prominent in recent years, especially in Speculative Fiction. Examples include Ted Chiang’s Arrival, George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, as well as Samantha Shannon’s The Priory of the Orange Tree. However, interpreters are also often used in crime fiction, which is the case in Suki Kim’s novel. Just like the name of the novel’s title already suggests, interpreting is one of the central issues of Kim’s work. The question of what interpreting has to do with detective narratives and its use might arise if you are, just like I was, unfamiliar with the concept. Is interpreting a mere plot device? Is it of any significance at all to the character of Suzy? If you want to find out, please do keep on reading!

As Suzy narrates the story, her profession as an interpreter is of high relevance time and time again. So let’s take a look at how and why Suzy uses her interpreting skills throughout the novel. When Suzy first mentions her job, she says: “The interpreter, however, is the shadow. The key is to be invisible. She is the only one in the room who knows the truth, a keeper of secrets” (Kim12). Invisibility and the illusion of transparency is also discussed in Lawrence Venuti’s The Translator’s Invisibility and underlines the translator’s ability to intervene (1).

These aspects of intervention and manipulation can also be found in Suzy’s interpretations, which is why she can be called an untrustworthy interpreter. Ingrid Kurz, a scholar researching infidel interpreters in fiction, clarifies that the first and most important task of an interpreter is conveying the speaker’s message as truthfully and clearly as possible (206). Any other possible outcomes caused by the interpreter are generally considered as infidelity – regardless of intention. Examples include wilful manipulation or betrayal, a lack of skills, or siding with an underprivileged speaker (cf. Kurz). In Suzy’s case, she herself says she often “finds herself cheating” (Kim 15). In a flashback, Suzy interprets for the first time in the novel and sides with a Korean man who fell victim to a cultural misunderstanding: 

“[…]‘Surely,’ the lawyer insists, ‘the injury must not have been severe if you even refused medical attention!’ But Suzy knows that it is a cultural misunderstanding. It is the Korean way always to underplay the situation, to declare one is fine even when suffering from pain or ravenous hunger. This might stem from their Confucian or even Buddhist tradition, but the lawyers don’t care about that. […] The witness gets all nervous and stammers something about how he’s not a liar, and Suzy puts on a steel face to hide her anger and translates, ‘I was in shock, and the pain was not obvious to me until I got home and collapsed.’”

Kim 15f.

Suzy is well aware of the controversy attached to her decision, because a revelation would very likely cost her her job(16). What this scene very well illustrates, is how Suzy is caught between her professional/legal commitment and her personal/moral commitment. Kurz underlines this with the common observation of people with the same ethnic heritage viewing the other as an ally, just as it happens here.

But this is not Suzy’s only intention, as she also willingly misinterprets at court to gain information about her parents: “’Can you describe to me again the ways in which you hire and fire your workers?’ […] Five years ago, you said, you worked for people who are dead. Can you describe to me what happened to them?” (Kim 95). In this situation, she is not helping the underprivileged, but she is manipulating the testimony in order to investigate her parents’ murder further. This demonstrates a usurpation and abuse of power that clearly violates the law and emphasises Suzy’s infidelity. Lastly, it also underlines how Suzy’s need for personal gain leads to her unreliability and therefore connects to her parents’ decision to provide information about fellow Koreans to save their own necks.

Even though interpreting is certainly a tool for Suzy’s detective work, another concept that is central to my argumentation is that of hybridity. Very roughly speaking, the idea of hybridity deals with the “merging of disparate identities” (cf. Burger and Mattila). In relation to Suzy and her actions throughout the novel, one could consider her a hybrid detective, as she is not only the investigator, but is to an extend invested in criminal activity herself. Furthermore, she is also frequently moving between a privileged and poor life, which is by her immigrant parents and her simultaneously going to an Ivy League college (and then dropping out of it). However, the idea of disparate identities also shows in her interpreting skills, since Suzy is constantly torn between to languages or two identities, which connects back to her multicultural upbringing.  As Eco puts is, “translation is always a shift, not between two languages, but between two cultures” (192). This impression can be backed up by Suzy:

“Being bilingual, being multicultural should have brought two worlds into one heart, and yet for Suzy, it meant a persistent hollowness. It seems that she needed to love one culture to be able to love the other. Piling up cultural references led to no further identification. […] She was stuck in a vacuum where neither culture moved nor owned her. Deep inside, she felt no connection […].”

Kim 166.

As underlined by the quote, Suzy’s sense of identity is constantly challenged, which leads to her identity crisis caused by a missing sense of belonging. Therefore, her skills as an interpreter are not only a mere plot device to help her investigate her parents’ murder, but are also crucial to her character as a whole, as interpreting offers an intro-perspective into her mind and the issue of multiculturalism. Just as Suzy links the job of the interpreter to invisibility, she and her cultural understanding of herself become invisible and hollow. In the end, interpreting is essential to protagonist and plot and the key to Suki Kim’s work.

Works Cited

Burger, Bettina and Lucas Mattila: “Hybridity and Doubling in Suki Kim’s The Interpreter.” YouTube, uploaded by Lucas Mattila, 25 November 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw93CsFBNuI.

Eco, Umberto: Experiences in Translation. University of Toronto Press, 2000.

Kim, Suki. The Interpreter. Picador, 2003.

Kurz, Ingrid. “On the (In)fidelity of (Fictional) Interpreters.” Transfiction. Research into the Realities of Translation Fiction, edited by Klaus Kaindl and Karlheinz Spitzl, John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2014, pp. 205-220.

Venuti, Lawrence. The Translator’s Invisibility. A History of Translation. Second Edition. Routledge, 2008.