December was a very productive month for my project of producing a literary translation into English of the Welsh novella Yn y Tŷ Hwn. For a start, it’s now got an English name: This House. It’s official – the author, Sian Northey, has approved the title change. That is the title I shall pitch to a potential publisher.
Last month also saw the final ‘meeting’ with my mentor. After the meeting, I spent the last few days before Christmas doing a whole-text re-edit. I also tied down the last few loose ends with Sian (thanks, Sian!).
On Christmas Day, when lockdown travel rules in Wales were relaxed for one day, I filmed this little video on my phone of the sort of landscape in which This House is set. Excuse the sniffles on the sound – there was a pretty cold wind and my nose was running!
At the start of 2020
It’s just over a year since I found out that I’d been awarded a year’s menteeship as an early career literary translator. Almost a year has passed since I posted my first, introductory post on this blog, in January 2020.
I used a photo of an unopened bottle of champagne as the featured image in that first post. I privately thought that I would have done well if I could illustrate a post at the end of the year with a bottle opened in virtual celebration. It’s not quite time to do that.
Back in January I aimed to produce a text as nuanced and subtle in English as the Welsh original. I think I have. I also hoped Sian Northey would like it. On Christmas Eve, I gave Sian the English text to read over when she gets time. (She’s probably been a bit busy since then.)
So maybe now, at the end of 2020, I can put the bubbly on ice, but not pour it for a while yet.
Spin-off benefits of the project
Just being part of something different for a year has brought many benefits.
Marketing
I’m a professional proofreader and copy-editor, trading as Sue Proof. The project has been an entrée into a new bunch of people who might want to use my services.
I’d been considering joining the Translators Association (and, yes, they do spell it without the possessive apostrophe) for a while. It’s part of the Society of Authors (SoA), and once I’d joined the SoA I was sent the Society’s magazine. A real-world, paper magazine, with small ads and everything.
So, for £34.80 I placed an advert for Sue Proof.
Result: proofreading work in 2020 worth about £3.4K, with follow-up jobs already in the diary for 2021 from two of those new clients.
Networking
Of course, at the beginning of the year I thought that I’d be networking physically – not least at the London Book Fair and Hay Festival – but it was not to be.
However, the online networking I’m part of has been invaluable. I’ve joined two online forums for translators: the Translators Association Members’ group on Groups.io, and the Emerging Translators’ Group, which is a Google group. Both are a fantastic resource, with a very friendly ‘no question is too stupid’ attitude.
As a user of Facebook, I’ve joined The Cwtch – the SoA Wales Discussion Group. I’ve also ‘attended’ the first meeting of a nascent network for translators of less-translated languages, of which Welsh is one.
Not to be forgotten are the residential courses at the National Centre for Writing in Norwich and Tŷ Newydd, the National Writing Centre of Wales that I went on earlier in my menteeship year. These introduced me to more new bunches of literary people.
Dragon Hall, the National Centre for Writing in Norwich
Increased and varied reading
In a normal year I read about a book a month, and I usually read a lot of non-fiction. In 2020 year I read over twice that number of books, and it wasn’t all due to lockdown. The increase was partly the result of reading many more novels. A fair few of those were novels in translation, for purposes of professional development. I’ve discussed some of them in past posts.
The pursuit of novels that This House is ‘like’, for when I pitch to publishers, accounts for many of the other additional books I read last year. This need to cite similar works to the one you’re pitching (called ‘comps’ in the jargon) was one of the project’s revelations.
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
Despite being very different in subject and setting, my best fit so far is Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin. This is because of its small cast of characters, the limited and limiting physical setting, the interiority of the main character, and its theme of reflection on past events that might, or could, have turned out differently. I’ve been told that it’s the ‘vibe’ of works referred to as comps that’s important, rather than the subject matter. However, if you replace the copious alcohol drinking in Giovanni’s Room with the copious tea drinking in This House, maybe they’re not that dissimilar …
The drawback
When I signed up to be mentored and to produce This House from Yn y Tŷ Hwn, I didn’t know how much time it would swallow. I worried about this a lot at the beginning, especially as the menteeship meant signing up for two residential courses which took chunks of time out of one quarter of my Sue Proof 2020 business year.
As things have panned out, the project accounted for about +25% on the hours I worked in 2020, compared to the mean number of hours worked in the three years 2017–19. I made the choice on occasion to turn down paid work so I could accommodate the project without having to work too many weekends.
. . . or maybe not such a drawback?
However, when Sue Proof’s business income for 2020 is compared to its mean business income for the three years 2017–19, it’s at +20%. (And that’s not including the Chancellor’s coronavirus grant.) So the extra exposure and extra marketing the project afforded Sue Proof has, roughly, paid for the extra time devoted to it. That feels good, before I even start pitching to publishers to try and sell This House.
Looking ahead to the rest of 2021
I have been cast onto the rough sea of publishing to pitch my book. I need a publisher; unlike an author, I’m not in a position to self-publish. But I am prepared: I have been compiling a list of likely potential publishers since March 2020, when I thought I’d be going to the London Book Fair.
So I’ll paddle my little raft onwards, with no mentor support, into the waves of 2021. I will only be posting on this blog if anything important happens from now on, rather than monthly. At the moment, the project feels like this:
I hope, before too long, it’ll feel like this:
Words and images ©Susan Walton 2020 except for the champagne photo by Thomas Owen on Unsplash; the ice bucket photo by Siora Photography on Unsplash; the pound coin photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash; the photo of a winter full moon (a ‘wolf moon’) rising over Moelwyn Bach by Llinos Griffin of Gwefus, used with permission.
