Confessions of a literary translator

Many moons ago I entered an undergraduate literary translation competition and committed a cardinal sin. The guilt still haunts me to this day. It is, I feel, time to confess.

I was young. I was new to the translating lark. I had limited access to texts. I very much liked the few extracts I’d read of Nodar Dumbadze’s The Sunny Night, which recounted undergraduate life in Soviet-era Tbilisi. It was funny, relevant and that was what I was going to translate, dammit!

Unfortunately, the extract I had ended suddenly, unsatisfactorily. I had no access to the full text. I couldn’t leave it as it was. So I changed the ending. Only a bit, but changed it nonetheless.

Well, I won. This is me, propping myself up against the noticeboard displaying the results, announced the very day I finished my Finals. I’d been celebrating for a good few hours, hence the rather “dazed” expression.The guy who took the photo had been celebrating too. The blurriness kinda gives it away…

So anyway. I spent the prize money decades ago. It wasn’t much. I used it to part-fund further study, during the course of which I got me some translation morals. I wouldn’t dream of translating what’s not really there any more, hence the residual guilt.

Yesterday I decided it was about time I got back on the literary translation horse. I’ll be entering something or other in a competition at the end of the year. This time round I’m a bit spoilt for choice; I’m finding it hard to choose between texts, even between prose and poetry. The only thing I do know is that this time I won’t be making it up. Honest.