ATA Conference - Session IT-6 & IT-7 reviewed by Rafa Lombardino
Thanks to Rafa Lombardino for this contribution to our blog.
“I’m the Best-Selling
Italian Author in America, But it’s Giles They Read in English,” Says Beppe
Severgnini
Rafa Lombardino *
During the 53rd Annual Conference organized
October 24-27, 2012 by the American Translators
Association (ATA) in San Diego, I attended a session entitled Author and Translator: A Success Story.
It was coordinated by the Italian Language
Division and divided into two one-hour presentations by Italian to English
translator Giles Watson and Italian author Beppe Severgnini.
The first part of the presentation was
intended to introduce two characters who really need no introduction.
Severgnini is the best-selling contemporary Italian author in the United
States. Watson is nothing more, nothing less than his voice in English.
They have been working together for over
twenty years, when the translator first contacted the author to offer help with
his writing. “He wrote me and asked if he could point out a few mistakes I had
made,” Severgnini recalls, mentioning his 1990 book Inglesi.
“Then he sends me this 5-page letter explaining all the factual errors in my
book.”
From this constructive criticism, a dynamic
relationship was born. “We are much the same age,” Watson begins to highlight
what brought them together. “We both come from middle-class, professional backgrounds
and, perhaps most importantly, we both had a classics-oriented secondary
education, which gives us a shared love of language.”
They also complement each other due to
their differences in personality and behavior, not only because of their
culture and heritage―one is Scottish, the other one is Italian―but because of
the roles they play as well.
The translator is quieter, methodical, and
chronological. The author is passionate, entertaining, and anecdotal. They said
it was the first time they ever got together for such a presentation, but as
one of the audience members pointed out, they could easily quit their day jobs
and become a stand-up duo, for their timing and interaction were pitch perfect.
Like a couple, they are jokingly bickering
one minute, then finishing each other’s sentences moments later. Like brothers,
they seem to always have each other’s back. Like best friends, they highlight
each other’s qualities. And, as ideal business partners, one picks up where the
other one left off.
An
Italian in America ― Their first collaboration came
in 1992 with L'inglese. Lezioni semiserie―a parody of phrasebooks with
actually useful English sentences and expressions for a tourist’s everyday
practical use.
Then, after spending a year in the United
States as a correspondent for Italian newspaper La Voce, Severgnini decided to turn
his American experience into what came to be his 1995 hit Un italiano in
America. When the time came to have it translated into English, he
decided to contact his new best friend. "Mr. Watson, why don’t we just
work together, so you can help me before the first edition comes out?” he
proposed.
Severgnini wanted to make the book
available in English following a small-scale publishing strategy targeted at
expatriates. “We were foolish enough to do something nobody wanted to do,” the
author says. But their efforts paid off: An
Italian in America, in English, was published in Italy in 2001 and the
following year it debuted in the USA under the title Ciao, America! An Italian Discovers the U.S..
"You read the Italian, you read the
English, it's all there. You don't miss anything and there are only a few
twists," Severgnini complimented his friend Watson. "I was being very
indulgent with some of the more florid phrases,” the translator quickly
replied. “When an author thinks about his writing, translating it becomes easy.
When he doesn’t, it's like cleaning up after a party," Watson returned the
compliment.
Success
― Severgnini said that nobody seemed to be paying
much attention to the book months after the English version came out in the
United States. Since he had been working as the London correspondent for Corriere
della Sera for quite some time, he knew several journalists in the
United States and invited them all to attend one of his talks in Chicago.
"I thought they could act as a bridge
for the book," he admits. "But the miracle happened in Washington. It
was literally a Miracle on 34th Street," he adds. That was when the book
got on CNN’s radar, and the rest was history.
Readers liked what they read so much, they
started to flock to the author’s former house in the U.S., similarly to what
happened in Italy after the release of Frances
Mayes’ Under the Tuscan Sun. Fans wanted to take pictures in front of the
property and, sometimes, tried to visit the garden described at length in the
book.
"The new owners ended up selling it
because of the lack of privacy,” the author pointed out. “I went to see them
one time and they said, 'Sorry, we can't readmit you.' I told them, ‘You bought
it, but the house will always be mine.’"
When a younger couple moved in and fell in
love with the history behind the location, they promptly welcomed him in. They
even posted a sign that read something like ‘Home to An Italian in America:
Pictures are free. To visit the garden, bring a bottle of wine.’
Negotiations
― The follow-up work for English-speaking audiences
came with La Bella Figura: A Field Guide to the
Italian Mind (originally La testa degli italiani). The book
was released in 2006 in the United States
and, the following year, in hit the shelves in the UK.
This time around, as the writer wrote it,
the translator translated it. “The process generated problems of its own,”
Watson recalls. “When the publishers received the first draft, they decided a
few changes needed to be made.” Luckily he was using a Computer-Assisted
Translation (CAT) tool, which came in handy to capture exactly what had been
altered during multiple edits, thus streamlining the process.
With the first translated book, the
contract followed a "take it or leave it" approach, with the scale
slightly tilted to the side of the publishers. Watson then joined the Translators Association with The Society of Authors
in London to be in a better position to negotiate future contracts. It was
only with their third collaboration that the situation improved for the
translator.
“I gave them [the publishers] two options:
a higher fee per word, or a more reasonable fee plus royalties. They went for
the higher fee,” Watson explains. When asked what he thinks about royalty
payments, the translator said that speculating about sales is for publishers.
“It's not something with which a translator really ought to be involved. You do
your job, they pay you, and you walk away. I earn my living by translating and
like to be able to plan my income as much as possible."
The translator noted that publishers are
resistant to paying royalties on translations. A book can also take months to
be translated, so currency fluctuations can have a serious impact on payments.
“If possible, make sure the contract is denominated in your currency,” Watson
advises. “If not, arrange for payment in installments. Otherwise you may find
yourself losing or gaining significant amounts of money. I have already done
both.”
Watson had yet another suggestion for his
colleagues attending the presentation: "Pay your contributions, pay your
taxes, charge more." He went on to explain that in Italy, his country of
residence, literary translations are treated as creative writing. Nevertheless,
he chooses to invoice all his translations―technical or otherwise―as work for
hire with value-added taxes, so as not to have part of his income challenged by
tax authorities for being non-VAT and, consequently, contribution-exempt.
Controversy
― On their third and most recent collaboration, Mamma Mia! (originally La pancia
degli italiani), there was more potential for controversy. The author
says that, predictably, the book didn't sell well in Italy because of the main
character: Italian Prime Minister and Media Mogul Silvio Berlusconi.
“But I wanted to have it translated
everywhere. If La Bella Figura was
basic Italian, La pancia was a PhD in
Italian life," he compared.
Severgnini confesses that it was hard to
write about such a controversial character, who is the embodiment of the best
(optimism) and the worst (unreliability) in Italians. “He is Chavez, Putin and
Sinatra all together. A stereotype trigger.”
Nevertheless, his goal was to shed some
light on cultural differences between Italy and different parts of the world.
“If I make someone laugh, it means I won.”
Translation
Dynamics ― The second part of the session was
reserved for a more hands-on explanation of how the dynamics work between
author and translator. According to them, the perks of collaborating together
for several years include understanding how the author uses his native
language.
A few slides showed side-by-side paragraphs
from the books Watson and Severgnini worked on together, highlighting the word
count and keystrokes of each version. Whenever the English translation ended up
being longer than the original, Watson confessed to being self-indulgent.
Watson also explained that literary
translators have to find a balance between the knowledge of grammar structures
and how to take a more conversational approach. This is especially true when
translating the work of authors such as Severgnini, whose use of language gets
close to screenwriting and chronicles of daily life events.
“If you're on the same wavelength as the
writer, your first draft is already good,” Watson explained. “The second and
third drafts are for you to shorten it and hear the language in your head. The
words have to come easily. You can't just sit there and wait.”
“That’s British understatement. You're in
America, you can boast!” Severgnini jokes. “He is really fast and we're used to
each other. It is like two cars that leave together from the same starting
point, take different paths, but arrive at the same place,” the author said,
complimenting the translator once again.
_______________
* Rafa Lombardino was born in Santos, a coastal city in the State of
São Paulo, Brazil, in 1980. She has a technical high school degree in Data
Processing and graduated in Social Communications and Arts with a major in
Journalism. She has been working as a translator since 1997.
She is an English into
Portuguese translator certified by the ATA and a Spanish into English
translator certified by the University of California, San Diego Extension,
where she currently teaches classes about the role of technology in the
translation industry.
Currently the President and CEO
at Word Awareness, Inc. a
small network of professional translated established in California, Rafa has
been dedicating more time to literary projects, mostly in partnership with
self-published authors, completing five EN>PT books and one PT>EN book in
the past two years.
On her spare time, she also
coordinates the literary project Contemporary Brazilian Short
Stories, dedicated to
publishing the English translation of contemporary short stories written by
Brazilian authors, and collaborates with eBookBR.com, a website that publishes
news about the world of electronic books.
Rafa moved to the United
States in 2002 and now lives in Santee, San Diego County in California, with
her husband and two children.
Contact:
mercoledì, gennaio 02, 2013
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