I have just sent off the first draft of a translation of a 130,000-word novel, Etienne van Heerden’s 30 Nagte in Amsterdam (30 Nights in Amsterdam). By chance, on the same day, I receive a Call for Papers from the University of Swansea in the UK for a conference on “The Author-Translator in the European Literary Tradition.”  The call for papers kicks off with the following paragraph:

The recent ‘creative turn’ in translation studies has challenged notions of translation as a derivative and uncreative activity which is inferior to ‘original’ writing. Commentators have drawn attention to the creative processes involved in the translation of texts, and suggested a rethinking of translation as a form of creative writing. Hence there is growing critical and theoretical interest in translations undertaken by literary authors.

The topic interests me, because I have published four novels and three literary translations (not counting this latest, as yet unpublished one), and I have from time to time asked myself, in an informal sort of way, about “the creative processes involved in the translation of texts”: is it in fact “a form of creative writing”?  And if so, how does it differ from the more traditional kind?

I’m not sure that I have a clear-cut answer to this. Yes, translating a complex literary text is more creative than translating a Home Economics textbook (which I’ve also had to do in my time, and hope never to have to do again): the play of possible meanings is far richer, and the translator is often led by considerations not strictly lexical: the register of the original, its range of cultural allusion, even mechanical aspects like rhythm or alliteration. The translator tries to recreate (or re-create?) not just the verbal meaning, but in some sense the experience of the original, for the edification of readers unfamiliar with the original context.

Writing this, it occurs to me that the word “recreate” encapsulates the problem: for if it means simply rendering the work in another language, then it’s more a question of transliteration or transposition than creation; but if it means “re-create” as in creating anew, then one is stressing the creative contribution of the translator: the translation, then, carries the stamp of the translator as unmistakably as the original carries the stamp of the author.

But of course translation is also, inescapably, a second-order activity, derived very directly from the creation of the author. If the translation is a creative act, it is yet unlike the writing of a novel in that it does not require that most difficult of creative feats, which is to create from nothing. A novelist creates and peoples a world; a translator reports back on that world to people who wouldn’t otherwise have access to that world.

But a translation is not only a negotiation between two cultures (although it is very much that too): it is also a negotiation between two people – that is, where the author of the original is still alive and, as is invariably the case in South Africa, proficient in English. And here the creativity of the translator may create problems: most authors are understandably possessive of their work and jealous of any attempt to appropriate it. Translators again, equally understandably, are tempted to tamper with the original, bring out meanings that are latent in the original – or so they might maintain, in the face of accusations that they have in fact imposed unwarranted meanings upon the work.

The fact is, I think, that authors don’t particularly want their translators to be creative: what they want is a faithful rendering of their original. It’s a rare author who will welcome deviations from of the original as in fact enriching – one such author, incidentally, being Marlene van Niekerk, whose monumental novel Agaat (published in the UK as The Way of the Women) it was my privilege to translate. For the most part, Marlene was entirely open to changes and additions that extended the range of the novel, and the result was, I think, a better translation than would have been possible with a more possessive author – better in the sense then of resonating within the receiving language with something of the force of the original, if not exactly in the same terms.

As for the other, more possessive kind of author, I’m afraid I’m one of those. When my novel The Children’s Day was translated into Afrikaans, I went through the translation like a jealous lover seeking signs of infidelity, and ruthlessly expunged every such sign. (The novel is now being translated into French: fortunately for the translator, my French isn’t good enough to enable me to interfere).

So now, while I’m awaiting Etienne van Heerden’s verdict on my translation of his novel, I reflect that it would be only poetic justice if he rejected every happy “find” on my part, every inspired “extension” of the meaning of the original. He might, with justice, tell me that I’m not paid to be creative: if you want to be creative, go and write your own novel.
Which is what I’m planning to do next.

Michiel Heyns grew up in South Africa and studied at the universities of Stellenbosch and Cambridge. He is the author of Bodies Politic, The Reluctant Passenger, The Typewriter’s Tale, and The Children’s Day (available August 1 from Tin House Books). You can read an excerpt from The Children’s Day at Bookforum. Heyns’ translation of Marlene Van Niekerk’s Agaat will be published by Tin House Books in the spring of 2010.