Tag: mentor

Time, tenses, and blurb-bingo

One year ago . . .

On 27 November 2019, I received a phone call from Literature Wales telling me of my success in being awarded this:

New opportunity for 2020. One place on the Mentoring Scheme will be ring-fenced for an early career translator/writer, working on literary translation from Welsh to English OR English to Welsh.

I was so discombobulated I had to take the rest of the afternoon off work. I started a new notebook straight away. The first page reads:

New project – new notebook. Got to get stuff out of my head so I can carry on with my paid work. Disbelief – I genuinely thought it would go to a bright young thing. When can I tell Sian?

The question about when could I tell Sian Northey, ‘my’ author, turned into ‘when can I tell anyone at all?’ My award was supposed to be a secret until mid-January 2020. That was when Literature Wales was going to announce the beneficiaries of its bursaries and menteeships, all together.

I can now fully sympathise with anyone who’s been told they’re going to get an honour or an award, but can’t spill the beans. Christmas get-togethers (remember them?) last year were spent replying, ‘Oh, you know, the usual’ to enquiries about how my work was going.

What really I wanted to say –  or scream, possibly – was,  ‘Fantastically well! I’ve been recognised as an emerging literary translator, and I’m going to be mentored throughout 2020!’ Then everyone would have congratulated me and, with any luck, bought me a drink.

Time and tenses

I knew a year ago that one of the things I have trouble with in my translations is tense. Now obviously I know the difference between a straightforward past tense and present tense. I just demonstrated it right there with ‘I knew a year ago’ and ‘I know the difference’.

My problem comes in two parts. The first is that – in common with many languages – tenses in Welsh (my source language) don’t necessarily map tidily onto tenses in my target language, English. The second problem is that I’ve never been taught English grammar properly. I’m like a musician who plays by ear.

My mentor has suggested many tense changes to my translation of Yn y Tŷ Hwn. This is an example from the opening chapter; verbs are in bold.

In my first draft, I’d translated this passage:

Dynas gin oedd hi wedi bod erioed. Ond rhyw chydig fisoedd yn ôl, yng nghanol ei hantur fisol i’r archfarchnad cafodd ei denu – heb unrhyw reswm, bron – gan botel o single malt drud. Cyfiawnhaodd y penderfyniad trwy resymu y byddai‘n debygol o yfed llai o ddiod nad oedd yn arbennig o hoff ohono.

              Ond yn fuan roedd hi wedi ymserchu yn yr hylif euraidd.

as:

She’d always been a gin woman. But a few months back, in the middle of her monthly shopping expedition to the supermarket, she was drawn to – for almost no reason – a bottle of expensive single malt. She justified the decision by reasoning that she’d probably drink less of something she didn’t especially like.

              But before long she’d taken a liking to the golden liquid.

My mentor suggested this:

She’d always been a gin woman. But a few months back, in the middle of her monthly shopping expedition to the supermarket, she’d found herself – inexplicably – being drawn to a bottle of expensive single malt. She’d justified the decision by reasoning that she’d probably drink less of something she didn’t especially like.

              But before long she was growing fond of the golden liquid.

And at present it reads:

She’d always been a gin woman. But a few months back, in the middle of her monthly shopping expedition to the supermarket, she’d found herself drawn – almost inexplicably – to a bottle of expensive single malt. She’d justified the decision by reasoning that she’d probably drink less of something she didn’t particularly like.

              But before long she’d developed a taste for this golden liquid.

Is there a hack?

Well, perhaps not a hack, but at least some illumination. I turned to Editing Fiction at Sentence Level by Louise Harnby, a fellow member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP).

cover of the book Editing Fiction at Sentence Level

Louise is excellent on which past tenses are needed in fiction. Here’s an excerpt from her book:

When past tense flops – understanding past perfect

Less experienced writers can end up in a pickle when referencing
events that happened earlier than their novel’s now. The crucial
thing to remember is that when we set a novel in the past tense,
anything that happens in the story’s past will likely need the past
perfect, at least when the action is introduced.

• What you want the reader to experience: Now – the present
of your novel
• What tense you should write in: Simple past or past
progressive (she stood; she was standing)
• What you want the reader to experience: Something that
happened before (i.e. in the novel’s past)
• What tense you should write in: Past perfect or past perfect
progressive (she had stood; she had been standing)

So all I need to do is go through 100+ pages of my Word version of Yn y Tŷ Hwn and check whether the tense of every verb matches its time …

Maybe that is what’ll be filling the Christmas get-together voids this year.

Blurb bingo

In readiness for our December meeting, my mentor has set me the task of writing a blurb for Yn y Tŷ Hwn that isn’t just a translation of the Welsh one, and that includes a quote relevant to one of the novel’s themes. I’ve never taken much notice of blurbs, so more discovery for me here. More literary fieldwork, so to speak.

Did you notice those novels in the main picture at the top of this post? I read all their blurbs. This is what my highly unrepresentative sample revealed about them:

  • blurb length varied from 70 to 170 words, excluding any quotes from the text itself or author biographical details
  • blurbs are nearly always in the present tense, regardless of whether the novel is mainly written in the past tense or the present continuous
  • some blurbs have a sort of headline sentence: a micro-blurb in a nutshell so you don’t even need to read the blurb
  • many blurbs incorporate quotes from the text
  • most blurbs give a geographical location, many give a time location –  sometimes indirectly –  and often they give the story set-up.

Then I played blurb-bingo with words that cropped up repeatedly. The winning words were powerful, moving, scintillating, literary and love.

My blurb for Yn y Tŷ Hwn

Here’s a sneak peek at my homework, before my mentor gets to see it; maybe it’s too long for a blurb at 140 words plus a quote. I quite like the micro-blurb bit (in bold), but I’m not convinced about the text quote. We’ll see what the mentor makes of it in December.

A  delicate but powerful novel about how decisions taken almost by chance have unforeseen consequences

Anna has lived alone for decades. She is marooned in, and cocooned by, an isolated house called Nant yr Aur in the Welsh mountains. Her only constant friends are farmer Emyr and his wife, Dora.

The arrival of Siôn, a young man who seems strangely at home in Nant yr Aur, leads to an unpicking of Anna’s past.

               She started to write a letter in her head to Siôn.

              ‘Dear Siôn,

              I had been expecting to see you before you left the other morning. I hope you will return to Nant yr Aur, because …’

She started to chew the end of the imaginary biro before resuming in her head.

‘… because your presence in Nant yr Aur felt right.’

As Anna’s relationship with Siôn develops, her perspective on the solidity of her past shifts. Uncertainty, distortion, illusion and subtle betrayal are gradually exposed. Ultimately, a quietly devastating revelation changes the lives of both of Siôn and Anna.

Sian Northey writes with economy and precision, setting out what the life of a middle-aged woman with an emotionally complicated past feels like from the inside.

Fantasy cover design

cover of the book Yn y Tŷ Hwn

Actual cover of Yn y Tŷ Hwn

artwork showing a red cottage in a mountain landscape

Fantasy cover for my translation: ‘Cwm Dyli cottage’ by Rob Piercy

Oh, and while we’re on fantasy cover content, the watercolour of the red cottage is my choice of a front cover picture. It’s by fabulously talented landscape painter Rob Piercy.

Imagine the quote-strapline at the top – ‘By now there were new stars in existence, and their light had yet to reach Nant yr Aur’ – then, in big letters, the title ‘This House’. At the bottom, it should say ‘Sian Northey’ (of course), followed by ‘Translated by Susan Walton’.

I live in hope.

 

Words and images ©Susan Walton 2020 except for clock photo by Fredrik Öhlander on Unsplash; Glenmorangie photo by Anubhav Arora on Unsplash; bingo photo by Tomppa Koponen from Pixabay; cover of Yn y Tŷ Hwn ©Gwasg Gomer, used with permission; Cwm Dyli Cottage ©Rob Piercy, used with permission.

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There’s a deadline looming

That face is just about how I feel at this stage in my year of being mentored.

I had my second meeting with my mentor at the end of September, but because I haven’t had the concentration ability or the brain space since then I haven’t gone through their comments and suggestions. I have a deadline looming – my next commissioned translation – and that’s what’s taking centre stage at the moment.

Drws Du yn Nhonypandy

cover of the book Drws Du yn Nhonypandy

Drws Du yn Nhonypandy (English title The Black Pit of Tonypandy)

The backdrop of the story is the South Wales miners’ fight for a living wage in 1910, and their lockout and strike. The then Home Secretary, Winston Churchill, sent in the Metropolitan Police to quash the miners and riots ensued. Troops were then added to the mix to reinforce the police presence. Because of this, Churchill’s name is still derided in many quarters in Wales.

police line and a crowd during the Tonypandy Riots

During the Tonypandy Riots

South Wales Welsh and South Wales English

One of the challenges of translating Drws Du yn Nhonypandy has been the South Wales Welsh speech of all the characters. Myrddin ap Dafydd, the author and commissioner of all my published translations to date, always wants to retain some Welsh words in the dialogue, but I wasn’t sure how much additional ‘flavour’ to transfer from one language to the other.

The sorts of words Myrddin wants me to retain are the equivalent of ‘lad’, ‘dear’, ‘mate’ etc. These words are tags in the dialogue. They remind readers that the characters would really be speaking Welsh. They don’t hinder the action or understanding, but they give the reader a gentle nudge.

The original Welsh dialogue in Drws Du yn Nhonypandy is rendered on the page how people from the Rhondda speak. Here is an example:

“O’s rhaid iti ga’l cymaint o ddŵr ar y llawr, grwt?”

In standard English, that would be:

“Do you have to get so much water on the floor, lad?”

How much dialect and accent is too much?

Before I started editing the first draft, I asked Myrddin how far he wanted me to go in conveying the way people in the Valleys speak English. I suggested three levels.

One

The first level was to take our usual approach. That means that, in this book, I would include a sprinkling of Welsh words, including ‘crwt’. The word means ‘lad’ or ‘boy’ in South Wales Welsh (‘grwt’ is the mutated form of the root word ‘crwt’). This level looks like this:

“Do you have to get so much water on the floor, crwt?”

Two

A second, deeper level would be for me to reproduce the English accent of the Valleys. I suggested limiting this way of speaking to one or two peripheral characters. An example of such a character is Tal, a grizzled miner who is also a promoter and trainer of bare knuckle boxers. Here he is, in conversation with Moc.

“Elli drefnu gornest i Wil ’ma?”

“Dim problem, Moc. Ma fe’n fachan teidi gyda’i ddyrne. Gawn ni gwpwl o rowndie yma rhyw noson wythnos nesa, ife?”

“Na, un fowr y tro hyn, Tal. Lan ar y mynydd. Yn erbyn un o fois Gilfach-goch. Beth am bnawn Sadwrn?”

In the Welsh, both Moc and Tal speak in the same way. A standard translation would be:

“Can you arrange a bout for Wil here?”

“No problem, Moc. He’s a tidy with his fists, that boy. We’ll have a couple of rounds here one night next week, is it?”

“No, a big one this time, Tal. Up on the mountain. Against one of the Gilfach-goch lads. What about Saturday afternoon?”

Here it is again, but in this version I’ve rendered Tal’s speech only into a form of English with similar contractions and accent as in the original Welsh text:

“Can you arrange a bout for Wil here?”

“No problem, Moc. ’Ee’s tidy with ’is fists, your lad. We’ll ’ave a couple o’ roun’s ’ere one night next week, is it?”

“No, a big one this time, Tal. Up on the mountain. Against one of the Gilfach-goch lads. What about Saturday afternoon?”

Three

Myrddin and I agreed that the third level – to turn all the dialogue into South Wales-accented English – would be too much. There would be a danger of it becoming a caricature of the ‘look you, boyo’ variety. It would be difficult to read and a distraction from the story.

Whereas the readership of the story in Welsh will at least have heard the South Wales variety of Welsh, those reading the English could be from anywhere  in the world. English might not even be their native language.

Back to Yn y Tŷ Hwn –  I feel the influence of being mentored

As I progressed with the first draft of Drws Du yn Nhonypandy, I noticed that some of the lessons from the first meeting with my mentor on Yn y Tŷ Hwn are already spilling over into my paid work.

The mentor pointed out that, so long as an idea in the same part of the text, it doesn’t necessarily have to be placed in exactly the same order as in the original language. An example of this in Yn y Tŷ Hwn is:

Roedd ‘hel pricia’ yn hen, hen jôc rhwng y ddau. Rhy hen a rhy gymhleth i’w hesbonio i neb, bron iawn nad oedd hi ei hun, erbyn hyn, yn sicr o’i tharddiad. Ond pobl gwneud dryga oedd pobl hel pricia, a phobl ddiflas oedd pobl firelighters. A rŵan dyma’r ddau ohonyn nhw’n bobl firelighters.

This would translate straightforwardly as:

‘Collecting kindling’ was an old, old joke between them. Too old and too involved to explain and, by now, she wasn’t even sure herself of its origins. ‘Kindling people’ were full of mischief; ‘firelighters people’ were boring. And now here they both were: firelighters people.

but which my mentor suggests could be rendered as:

Long, long ago, this in-joke had grown between them (how it had started was lost to time). It was a way of reducing everybody to two sorts, the ‘kindling people’ (full of mischief) and the ‘firelighter types’ (boring). And now here they both were: firelighter types.

Just for the record, I have this passage rendered like this at the moment, but it may yet change:

The difference between ‘users of firelighters’ and ‘collectors of kindling’ was an old, old in-joke between them. Its origins were lost in the mists of time, but the gist of the joke was that ‘kindling people’ are full of mischief and ‘firelighter types’ are boring. And now here they both were: firelighter types.

November

I really do hope I can do some proper homework on my being-mentored project in November . . .

the blog's author sitting at a computer

(The picture is for illustrative purposes only. It’s not even my office.)

 

Words ©Susan Walton 2020; Cheeky Tongue photo ©Ruth Elkin on FreeImages; cover of Drws Du yn Nhonypandy ©Gwasg Carreg Gwalch 2020; the photo of the police lined up across the street in Tonypandy is in the public domain; photo of the toddler is by Janko Ferlič on Unsplash; the photo of boxer Amby McGarry is by Newmans of New York and was printed in the supplement to the National Police Gazette, #1565, Saturday, August 10, 1907; photo of kindling is by Alison Dueck on Unsplash; photo of me ©Chris Jones, 2012.

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Time to take a break

This post is a bit different from the others. By mid-September it was time to take a break. A couple of weeks of settled weather were forecast, and the reproduction rate (the R) for coronavirus was once again on the rise. My part of the world may be in lockdown again within weeks.

So, half of this post is about my progress as a mentored emerging literary translator, and half is about taking a break from this work and from my paid work.

September is #WorldKidLitMonth

The World Kid Lit initiative was launched in 2016 as a way of highlighting diverse, global and translated children’s books. They say:

We would like to see more diversity in English-language publishing to give a richer and more realistic representation of the multicultural and multilingual world we live in. We aim to make it easier for readers to find international books, whether in translation from other languages or originally published in English elsewhere.

This post appeared on the World Kid Lit blog while I was having time off. It features The Moon is Red, one of the books for older children I’ve translated for the Gwasg Carreg Gwalch publishing house.

cover of the book The Moon is Red

The Moon is Red, my translation of Mae’r Lleuad yn Goch

How nice to have my efforts with the trilingual dialogue described thus:

… flavours of both Welsh and Basque are kept, particularly in the terms of affection … I also really enjoyed Susan Walton’s portrayal of the dialogue, really bringing the North Walian accent alive.

The original Welsh – Mae’r Lleuad yn Goch – won a Tir na n-Og award in 2018. Hmm … now if only there were awards for translated children’s books …

 

Second meeting with my mentor

Until about four days before this was due to happen, our second meeting was going to be in person. However, with Wales’ First Minister urging people not to make unnecessary journeys because of the rising coronavirus R,  we decided once again to meet virtually.

As ‘homework’ for the session, I’d drafted a ‘pitch’ letter for my mentor to advise on. This led on to a discussion about the themes of the book. The mentor said that I need to choose three or four out of maybe a possible dozen or so themes I could draw out of the text. But the mentor also emphasised that I need to be able to talk and write in depth about all the themes, not just those selected for the pitch.

The other topic that we discussed at length is the ongoing task of identifying other works of art (especially other novels) that Yn y Tŷ Hwn is like. This is what is expected when pitching to publishers or agents. Researching this – more or less since the start of the project – has been quite time-consuming and I haven’t really come up with anything better as a description than ‘A modern-day Brief Encounter’.

I was encouraged by the mentor telling me that some of the books I’d been considering for the ‘it’s like’ role but had discounted, might, in fact, work. These include A Song for Issy Bradley by Carys Bray and The Winterlings by Cristina Sánchez-Andrade, translated by Samuel Rutter. The tutor is going to put on their thinking cap to try to identify closer matches, and I am going to continue researching.

covers of the book The Winterlings and the book A Song for Issy Bradley

The Winterlings by Cristina Sánchez-Andrade and A Song for Issy Bradley by Carys Bray

Anglesey Coastal Path

My long, long-time friend celebrated a big birthday by walking the entire Anglesey Coastal Path. All 130 miles of it.  While I was having time off. So the natural thing to do was to join her for a couple of days. And for another couple of days I did other stretches of the path. I camped on Anglesey – or Ynys Môn, as I think of it.

We both saw what I think was probably the same pod of Risso’s dolphins off Trwyn Eilian, but on different days. Fortuitously, a chap with a long lens was taking photos of them when she saw them. He has kindly allowed both of us to use his photos in our blogs. Her blog is here. (This friend is also the friend I imagine as the ideal reader of a translated Yn y Tŷ Hwn, so reference to her in this post is not entirely irrelevant.)

Risso's dolphin head and fin sticking out of the sea

Risso’s dolphins

Risso's dolphins' fins sticking out of the sea

Risso’s dolphins

A new tent, sad clothes, and secret necklaces

One outcome of camping on Anglesey was discovering that the tent I’d bought to go to Glastonbury in 1981 was no longer waterproof. In any case, my travelling companion and I are getting a bit old and stiff to be crawling in and out of a small, Toblerone-shaped tent after a day’s hiking. So I bought a bigger, modern tent from eBay, to see us out.

What I didn’t foresee was that the new tent wouldn’t fit through the trapdoor to the attic. I had to find another home for it in my very small house. One of the built-in bedroom cupboards seemed the best option.

I shuffled clothes about and made space. But while I was moving some of my lovely clothes, I began to wonder if I’d ever get to wear them again. Will life ever be the same again, and even if it is, will I be too old and fed-up by then to want to get dressed up?

I’ve got lovely jewellery too. The opportunities for wearing jewellery have disappeared. But I’ve decided, regardless of the level of casualness/antiquity the top-half clothes I’m wearing, that I’m going to wear a different necklace every day, underneath, secretly. One of these.

many necklaces against a knitted background

 

Images and words ©Susan Walton 2020, except for the photos of Risso’s dolphins ©George Boyer 2020, reproduced with permission; the image of a thinking woman by Tachina Lee on Unsplash; and the photo of coloured strands by Anand Thakur on Unsplash.

 

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First meeting with my mentor

At last!

I have had my first ‘meeting’ with my mentor – by phone. Going on a 125-mile round trip in person is still a no-no under lockdown rules in Wales. We planned, and started, to meet via Zoom. But the connection decreed otherwise, so we went #oldskool.

I, for one, am quite keen on using the phone. If you spend much of your working life sitting down, looking at a screen, it makes a nice change to be able to walk about while talking. And it was the talking that was important.

a stack of book spines all by Sian Northey and a book mark reading I'm an author, so technically this is work.

Sian Northey’s books for adults, to date

What I hope to achieve from the three mentoring sessions between now and January is to:

  1. turn a good translation into excellent and subtle storytelling
  2. know how to prepare a pitch to potential publishers, and
  3. gather the intelligence to make a list of who to approach, and to approach them with (1) and (2).

Before my mentor and I spoke

A few days ahead of the first meeting, my mentor sent me back the Word document of my translation of Yn y Tŷ Hwn as it stood at the end of April. They had marked up the first third of the text with suggested alterations in Track Changes, and other observations and suggestions in Comments.

It was handy to be able to go through these ahead of the meeting. Most of the comments and suggested edits were self-evident, so we concentrated on stuff that hadn’t occurred to me before.

What we mostly talked about

The main thing the mentor highlighted – and which was new to me – was  that the language of the translation needs to be particularly carefully and finely rendered in the parts of the story that convey its themes, and for the images related to those themes. Themes they had flagged up in Yn y Tŷ Hwn include:

  • the distant influence of things, sometimes as yet unseen or unknown
  • the hidden parts of other people’s lives
  • time, idealisation and shifting perspectives
  • place or a person staying unmarked by time
  • transience and being trapped
  • age, family and repeated patterns.

And I thought it was about being in love with a house, and about profound and mental health-distorting grief!

Homework from my mentor

I now need to sit down and identify those places where the themes are on or near the surface, and polish those nuggets. The mentor also suggested that I read all of Sian’s novels and short story collections for adults. This is so I can imbibe their essence and see which themes recur throughout her work. That should keep me quiet for a while. (Note the bookmark propped up under the books in the photo: it was a freebie on joining the Society of Authors.)

a stack of book spines all by Sian Northey and a book mark reading I'm an author, so technically this is work.

Coincidentally, just after the email suggesting that I absorb The Collected Sian Northey, I saw on social media that Sian was at page proofing stage with her next short story collection, Cylchoedd. I asked to read this new work, with the offer of marking up the PDF proofs if I spotted anything (I am a professional proofreader, after all). She readily agreed, and I have. What serendipity!

What we talked a bit about

The mentor is very insistent that we concentrate on the quality of the translation, on the ‘literature’. In their view, everything else derives from that. Their priority is heavily weighted towards number 1 of my goals – of those labelled 1, 2 and 3, above. We did, however, squeeze in some discussion about potential publishers, and how to make a ‘pitch’.

As goals 2 and 3 are not being prioritised by my mentor, I shall continue my research into how to achieve them under my own steam. I’m under no illusions, though. It’s a tough world out there, and it’s going to be tougher still, post-covid. I read in Summer 2020’s edition of The Author that, ‘… more than half of independent publishers, according to a recent Bookseller survey, have warned they may not [still be in business post-covid]’.

Bonus support and an added possibility

The mentoring scheme from which I am benefitting is run by Literature Wales. There are two other partners involved, one of which is the Wales Literature Exchange. The Exchange is an agency facilitating the sale of translation rights, amongst other things. The officer from the Exchange has also read over my April version of Yn y Tŷ Hwn. They, too, commented on it and suggested tweaks to the text. Their note suggested that my translation as it stands would be good enough as a bridging translation. (A bridging translation is one done into a world language – such as English or French – and then used by other translators wishing to translate into a third language.)  I am chewing that one over. Watch this space …

 

Main photo by Nick Fewings; antique telephone photo by Boston Public Library; photo of puffins by Wynand van Poortvliet; rabbit with a cocked ear photo by Sandy Millar, all on Unsplash. Other images and words ©Susan Walton 2020.

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At the start of 2020

I’m going to have an unusual and interesting year in 2020. I have been awarded a place on Literature Wales’ Mentoring Scheme as ‘an early career translator working on literary translation’.

In August 2019 a client’s timetable had slipped and I found I had a slack month. I used the bonus time to prepare a sample translation of Yn y Tŷ Hwn by Sian Northey and submit an application to the scheme. Then I forgot about it. When I got the call in November, my first reaction was disbelief: I genuinely thought it would go to some bright young thing with a Masters in translation studies or some such. But delight also – Yn y Tŷ Hwn is one of the best novels of the decade just gone. I want my longest-standing friend – who does not have much Welsh – to be able to enjoy it too.  It is she who will be in my mind as I translate the rest of the novel.

cover of the book Yn y Tŷ Hwn

The book is fewer than 150 pages long, but decades of the main character’s past  are skilfully revealed through her recollection of telling incidents, and a few significant details. Older readers will recognise some of life’s patterns in the story; the younger reader may see how events and decisions in life can determine patterns for years to come. I hope I can do it justice; I hope I can produce a text as nuanced and subtle in English as the Welsh original; I hope Sian Northey will like it.

I’m the first mentoring recipient of a place reserved for a translator, and I might be the last, because the place specifically for a translator is being run as a pilot in Wales.

Photo by Thomas Owen on Unsplash; book cover courtesy of Gwasg Gomer. Words ©Susan Walton 2020.

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