Another Way To Breathe

Firstly, thank you.

Regarding thinking of other languages, the process is basically this.

1) Oooh. This is going to cause people problems in translation.
2) Do it anyway.
3) Apologise to translators whenever I meet them.

I suspect that I called a book “DIE” causing no end of German Problems by magic may have meant you could guess this.

As a writer, I’m interested in what a specific language can do. I like to push it, play with it and see how many layers I can get in a moment. This sometimes means puns. With my stuff there’s some elements of the work (and not even puns) which are nightmarish to deal with. Take WicDiv’s repeated use of “Okay”. It’s very specifically about the ambivalence and flexibility in that word in English, and only works in the story because we use it in every single place in the story so it haunts it. That isn’t always possible in another language.

I also have utter respect for the art of translation - the comparison only comes to me right now, but a translator is a similar type of collaborator to a certain kind of artist, if you squint. Translation is both transformation and recreation, and based around all manner of micro and macro decisions of what is actually important in text, whether it can be turned into another language, plus the specific problems of the form (i.e. length of balloons).

Translators I’ve spoken to generally seem to have enjoyed the task. We’ve also been involved in some translations in terms of talking about key bits like titles, and highlighting things which are important but are not obvious at this stage. 

And I’ve never read my books in translation. I only speak a tiny bit of German until recently, a matter of some shame. I’ve actually started learning Italian this year, so maybe I’ll be able to read them. I have Bao’s lovely WicDiv editions around the house.