In an enlightening episode of the Audio Signal Podcast, Marco Ciappelli enter into the intricate world of stories, storytelling, and the pivotal role of translation with renowned writer and translator Alex Shvartsman.
Guest: Alex Shvartsman, Translator and writer
On LinkedIn | https://www.alexshvartsman.com
On Twitter | https://www.twitter.com/AShvartsman
Website | https://alexshvartsman.com
On Facebook | https://facebook.com/shvartsman.alex
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Host: Marco Ciappelli, Co-Founder at ITSPmagazine [@ITSPmagazine] and Host of Redefining Society Podcast & Audio Signals Podcast
On ITSPmagazine | https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/marco-ciappelli
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Episode Introduction
In the world storytelling stories transcends mere narration, but represent a bridge that connects diverse cultures and languages. The recent episode of the Audio Signal Podcast, hosted by Marco Ciappelli, featured a fascinating conversation with Alex Shvartsman, a returning guest who embodies the essence of multifaceted creativity in the universe of science fiction and fantasy.
The Art of Translation and Storytelling
Shvartsman, a prolific writer and an astute translator, shares his journey from consuming science fiction and fantasy in his native language to becoming an expert in translating literature in the Anglophone world. His narrative is not just about the transfer of words from one language to another but an intricate work of cultural nuances, idiomatic expressions, and the emotions that resonate through storytelling.
The Translator as a Cultural Ambassador
The discussion unveils a profound perspective on translation, shedding light on it as a form of art that demands a deep understanding of both the source and the target cultures. Shvartsman views his role as a translator akin to being a cultural ambassador, ensuring the essence and the soul of the original works are preserved while making them accessible and relatable to a new audience. This process, as shared by Shvartsman, involves creative decisions that could mean straying from literal translations to capture the underlying emotions and cultural contexts effectively.
Navigating the Complexity of Languages and Emotions
One of the key highlights of the episode revolves around the complexity of translating nuanced literary works, such as those involving puns or culturally specific references. These challenges underscore the translator's task as not just a linguistic but a creative endeavor, requiring a delicate balance between fidelity to the original text and adaptations to resonate with the new audience.
Conclusion: The Unsung Heroes of Literature
As the conversation between Ciappelli and Shvartsman unfolds, it becomes evident that translators are the unsung heroes who widen the horizons of literature, allowing stories to traverse linguistic barriers and enrich cultures beyond their origins. This episode not only celebrates the art of storytelling and translation but also invites listeners to appreciate the intricate process that allows stories to be told and retold, across borders and generations.
This episode of Audio Signal Podcast highlights the crucial role of translation in storytelling, offering insights into the complexities and the beauty of bringing stories to a global audience. Shvartsman's experiences and perspectives provide a compelling narrative on the cultural and emotional depth of translation, making it a must-listen for anyone passionate about stories, literature, and the art of translation.
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Transcending Boundaries in Storytelling: The Art Of Translation | A conversation with Alex Shvartsman | Audio Signals Podcast With Marco Ciappelli
Please note that this transcript was created using AI technology and may contain inaccuracies or deviations from the original audio file. The transcript is provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a substitute for the original recording, as errors may exist. At this time, we provide it “as it is,” and we hope it can be helpful for our audience.
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[00:00:00] Marco Ciappelli: Well, hello everybody. This is Marco Ciappelli. Welcome to another episode of Audio Signals. And, uh, last time that I have, uh, this guest, uh, at this point, a friend of mine, we're sharing, uh, plans and, uh, and what we're going to do in the next few months before we start recording. Um, we had a great conversation and my indecision was, if you remember, Alex, welcome to the show for the people looking at you.
Um, We were like, this is a conversation that could go into audio signals or redefining society because it's very much was both technological and storytelling because we were talking about AI. and the application in art and all the form of art, but in particular in writing, because that's what you mostly do.
Although I remember when you introduce yourself, you introduce yourself with a person wearing many hats. So I'm going to do this. I'm going to let you introduce yourself once more for the people that don't listen. Didn't listen to the first episode but I would definitely invite and put the link to listen to that one about AI and the arts And today i'm not going to say what we talk about yet I'm going to do it after you introduce yourself and feel free to to drop it dude Say what is the plan for our conversation today?
So alex Welcome to the show again
[00:01:26] Alex Shvartsman: Thank you. Uh, thank you for having me back. Uh, I'm, I'm Alec Schwartzman from Brooklyn, New York. And, uh, as Marco said in his introduction, I wear many hats, uh, that all pertain to science fiction and fantasy. Uh, I write, uh, novels and short stories. Uh, I have several, uh, fantasy novels published to date.
Uh, and about 120 different short stories. I edit anthologies. I have about 15 different anthologies, which are collections of stories by other authors that are out. And you can see one of them that we talked about in the last episode, uh, over here, the Digital Aesthete. Uh, I also translate fiction from the Russian and I've worked with video game companies, movie studios, uh, TV production companies, publishers, et cetera, to help bring.
Uh, great creative works, uh, from the Russian language to the Anglophone readers. Um, and they do lots and lots of other stuff like game design and talking to, you know, talking, you know, some technology consulting. So it's all sorts of like weird different hats that Essentially come down to creativity and being able to, uh, do things that I find fascinating and interesting and not boring, which I think is a very important part of life.
[00:02:40] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah, I love that. And, uh, and I think we touched on that last time too, which is when you have the creative mind, you kind of need to use it In different places right in different adapted to different situation But it's important that you stay still in the realm of the things that is your core like in your case Uh sci fi and and all that come with that.
So You mentioned that you translate and that's the hint Of what we're going to talk about today and that was an idea that came up I think right after we finished recording the first episode And I think it also comes from the fact that uh, you know, i'm italian. I speak two languages Spanish too, but I wouldn't translate from spanish and um, and we were talking about different cultures and you had this idea of why don't we talk about the importance of Translating, which is not just, uh, grammatical.
Uh, language adaptation, but there is actually the whole culture behind it. And you kind of need to be a writer in order to, in order to write. So I was like, wow, that sounds just great about storytelling because we all grew up. With reading, I don't know, Hemingway or Swift or Steinbeck and, you know, Shakespeare itself.
And I mentioned, remember, Dante, uh, that you actually need a translator in Italian as well, because he can't read that, you know, what he wrote back in, uh, in the 1300s. So, uh, great topic. No script whatsoever. So where do you want to start?
[00:04:25] Alex Shvartsman: Well, I'll start at the beginning. I, um, so I grew up in Ukraine with Russian as my first language, Ukrainian being my second language, and then eventually English.
And so my first experience with science fiction and fantasy was reading it in translation. I was reading primarily works by American, British, and French authors. And they were, you know, scarce, they were difficult to obtain, uh, living in the Soviet Union. Uh, but the ones that I could get my hands on, uh, they were, you know, I, I didn't speak English at the time, so I was reading them in Russian translation.
And so the value of translation is incredibly important to my own development as a reader and ultimately a writer. Because those are the foundational stories that influenced me more so than anything else at the young impressionable age. And so, um, when I first started writing fiction, which took me a very long time to get into because I kept thinking my English would never be good enough.
You know, because it is my third language and because, you know, I came here as a teenager already. So it wasn't something that I picked up at a very young age. Um, I have an accent as you can hear. Uh, I certainly still make an occasional, uh, you know, grammatical mistake. Uh, so it was all things that, you know, caused me fear and prevented me from, uh, from, from trying my hand at writing.
And when I did finally overcome it and start writing fiction, I I was as surprised as anybody to start getting stuff published and, and, and actually succeed to at least a modicum of success in, in this field. So once I, uh, I've been doing that for a while and I got my, you know, uh, expertise where I feel like I can write confidently and comfortably.
Um, I also kind of remembered the joy of reading translated fiction and thought, wouldn't it be fun? Yeah. If I took a short story that I really liked and translated it for my Anglophone friends to also be able to enjoy, because there is very few, uh, short pictures, pieces of short fiction, especially contemporary short.
Speculative essentially, that are translated from Russian and so I obtained the author's permission and I translated the story. It was a great success, people were very interested. They enjoyed it. They wanted more. Uh, and so I kind of stumbled into this process where I would just. You know, curate my own translations, because I would contact the authors and invariably they said yes, because Everybody wants their work to be read in English.
It's still kind of like the the most important language for um, for speculative fiction at least. Uh, and so I would find, I would translate the story and then I would submit it to uh, prestigious short fiction markets in the same way as I would submit my own work. And those editors were very excited as well, because they were not getting me.
Uh, very many translations at all from, you know, for many languages. I mean, you know, to this day, translations are fairly rare and most editors go out of their way to seek them out because they want different perspectives and exciting fiction from around the world. And so these stories, uh, were getting published in most of the top science fiction journals and, uh, and anthologies.
And then, uh, Uh, someone reached out to me from a video game company asking if I would do some, you know, some work for them for hire, uh, and this kind of snowballed into projects with movie studios, with, uh, you know, you know, translating scripts and treatments and things like that with, uh, uh, you know, with, with, with production companies, with publishing companies.
And so I've done, uh, a great body of translation work, most of which by necessity has not actually been seen by the public because a lot of the time you translate even things like complete novels that are purely for internal consumption and so like I would translate a novel for a major video game company set in one of the universes and it would be read by people in other languages within the company but they had no intention of publishing it but they would still pay me.
So a lot of that work is not available. What is available is A great many short stories that I've translated from a variety of authors, and I've worked with authors from Ukraine, I've worked with authors from Belarus, from Israel, uh, you know, from Kazakhstan, from, and of course from different parts of Russia.
Uh, so, uh, because Russia is the lingua franca of that entire region, just like English is kind of a, more of a global language as well, not just spoken in the United States and the UK.
[00:09:10] Marco Ciappelli: Uh,
[00:09:10] Alex Shvartsman: and many of these works are available online for free. So people are, are interested. Uh, welcome and encouraged to check them out.
Uh, and I spent a lot of time thinking about translation and talking about it at conventions and, uh, on panels and podcasts like this, because it's a really important way and I kind of see it as being a cultural ambassador because you're taking a great creative work, uh, from one culture and one language and you're bringing it and modifying it by necessity.
Uh, to people who do not speak that language and sort of trying to do your best to make sure that they can enjoy it in a similar way to how the native speakers would enjoy the original work.
[00:09:51] Marco Ciappelli: Right. So an observation here is, um, you know, I, I think I learned. Most of my English as a teenager by translating songs from music, just try to understand, you know, what the doors were saying, what Jim Morrison was saying with that song or Pink Floyd or whatever it was.
Um, but, you know, it took me a while and what I can just think in the language, like in English or dream in English. And, uh, and yeah, I'm like you. I mean, I do. I do have some issues sometimes with a word or another, but what I am thinking is, it's not just, again, not just the language, it's understanding the culture, right?
And I realize sometimes that there are certain things that just cannot be translated. Because it's It's kind of like that joke. It doesn't work in that language so uh Where is that thin line that as a translator? as a You know you adopt also the book or the movie or whatever it is and We we how much creative freedom do you get in order to deliver?
That story without changing the intention of the writer. I think that's You That's the trick.
[00:11:15] Alex Shvartsman: So the answer to that question largely depends on the purpose of your translation. Uh, it really varies. If you are working with, uh, an academic translation. So if you're doing something, let's say you're taking Dante.
Right? And you're creating an academic translation for students to study the original work and to comment on it, etc. Your job is to be as faithful to the text as possible. You, you know, you will use copies, footnotes, and explanations, and you will sacrifice readability. Uh, you will pretty much throw readability out of the window and drive over it with your car, uh, just so you can stay faithful to the author.
When you're doing literary translation and your primary purpose is for the readers to be able to enjoy, uh, the end result, uh, then your job is to betray the author as much as possible. Uh, you, you're, you, you, you're working for the reader, not for the author. So you will make whatever necessary changes and adjustments you have to in order to Uh, breach that gap in understanding that you're talking about.
So if there's a concept that is cultural, that is difficult to translate, if there's a pun that doesn't work, you know, like something relies on a, on a rhyme that doesn't work in the target language, uh, your job is, and it's part of the, the greatest fun that I have as a translator working on these things is solving these kinds of puzzles, figuring out, okay, what do I do with this text?
Uh, that will essentially, my goal is to make sure that when you're reading it in English, it evokes the same feelings and emotions in you as the original text does in the readers who are interacting with it in the Russian language. The text does not have to be identical. You find ways, and there's many, many techniques, uh, that you would work on in order to make those changes.
Um, I will offer you an example.
[00:13:11] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah.
[00:13:12] Alex Shvartsman: Uh, I translated a story a number of years back, uh, which was largely considered to be untranslatable by fellow translators because not on it, it, so this is a, a magical realism story, uh, by K eight Arena, uh, which relies on, uh, essentially, uh, the plot relies on the young protagonist writing things down in order to influence the world through magical means.
Uh, writing things down and misspelling them. And so, the title of the story itself in Russian is with the word BS misspelled so that if you read it spelled correctly, uh, the title of the story would mean without a name or untitled. But if you read it the way that the title of the story was spelled, it would be read as Demon of the Name.
And the whole Bias Nazvania thing is actually used in the plot of the story, so it is difficult to walk too far away from that. And there are many, many intentional misspellings that create essentially like this magic, or maybe create the magical influence, maybe it's actually just a real world and the child is imagining things.
So it's kind of a that's why the story is magical realism. Uh, so it was a bear to translate that story, uh, but I did it and it was published and republished and, uh, uh, you know, very well received. So what I did with the title in English is the story title in English is untilted. So it's essentially the word untitled that's intentionally misspelled and untilted, uh, You know, gives that like the tilted thing, you know, gives that like weird shaken element, uh, that I was looking for.
Yes, I had to sacrifice the whole demon reference because that would be very difficult to, uh, to come up with, but there was no actual demon in the story. It was just the way to kind of show that a small spelling change can completely influence and change the, the meaning of the text. And so that passage in the text just goes from, you know, the, the child writing.
I'm titled at the top of the of the node that he's writing and changing it to untilted. So that's, that's the sort of thing that you have to do in the sort of creative solutions you have to look for, uh, in order to, uh, not only translate, uh, but also make the story accessible to, to your readers.
[00:15:40] Marco Ciappelli: Right, right.
Now that's. I mean, when you went through the title, I'm like, I mean, it, it is based on exactly what you don't want as a translator, which is misspelling words and not understanding the meaning. So I kind of felt like it when you throw it there that it was untranslatable. And, uh, and I think in the end, I mean, did you have a back and forth with the, with the author that wrote the book?
Excited. Because I think that's another thing, like, do you work with the author, or you're doing something that is posthumous, and so there is no way to work with the author.
[00:16:22] Alex Shvartsman: In this particular case, I was very fortunate that the author is around, alive, and understands English well enough to be able to actually read and approve the translation.
That is the best possible case scenario.
[00:16:35] Marco Ciappelli: Right. You're doing it right. Yeah, you're almost like Co rewrite in it.
[00:16:42] Alex Shvartsman: Well, in most cases, the author will maybe have just a few, you know, very select comments. They're not really seeking to completely rework your translation, unless something has gone horribly wrong.
But that's, this is the best case scenario. Very often you will work with authors who simply do not have good enough, but you know, knowledge of English to be able to, Uh, a review and, and give you feedback. Sometimes they will ask their friends to take a look at it, who, who do speak English, just so that we make sure that the translator didn't just completely, you know, just go off on their own doing something weird.
Um, and yes, I have worked, uh, with works that are posthumous as well. And that's the worst possible scenario because you don't have the author that you can reach out to in any language and just say, Hey, I'm I don't understand what you did here. What did you mean when you wrote this? What were you trying to say?
Having access to the author is a huge privilege in that sense. And it does absolutely make your job easier. Uh, when you're working with a text by an author who has passed, then you have to. Just try to, I mean, if, if it's a famous enough text and there's probably some academic, uh, reviews and, and, and, and articles about it that you can read that may help you understand it.
So if you're translating a classic work, for example, uh, but if you're translating a more obscure text, then your best bet is to just have other speakers. Uh, you know, who, who carry both languages, review the translation and hopefully identify anything that you may have misunderstood. Now, no translation is perfect, uh, even absolutely professional translators who do this for a living, uh, you know, that, that's all they do.
They still make mistakes and sometimes they, the mistakes could even be like somewhat intentional, they're just making a creative choice. Uh, rather than a mistake. Uh, and this is why, uh, it is not a technical endeavor. It's absolutely a creative endeavor. And, and those decisions are what separates your translation from anybody else's.
And if you, if you look at any popular work, if you look at, let's say, the Iliad, There are probably at least a dozen different translations and you can almost track how the language change changes and how the translations change over the ages because that's the work that has been translated many many times into English over hundreds of years.
And you can see how modern translations are Handling things with modern sensitivities and and kind of like modern understanding and they're taking a lot They're making a lot of creative choices that are very different from the original works And so anybody who is very interested in the art of translation Could take a classic work from another language and just compare the opening pages Which are which are usually free to preview on on Amazon and places like that And just kind of read the opening page of each and see what different translators have done.
Uh, because usually it's going to be very different and fascinating.
[00:19:41] Marco Ciappelli: So there is one thing that I think is very important and you kind of hint into it. So time, right? Like the period and the change of the language, the culture, but also be faithful. To the context, right? I mean, I can't translate Shakespeare today and or Victor Hugo and and put the computer or something that wasn't there on any reference to some language, new words that we're using today.
So that's definitely one of the very important thing, but also context in term of cultural context. And I'll give you an example. I always think that When you watch a movie, for example, or you read a book like I mentioned Victor. I mean, I'm like, you know I'm gonna try to read the Hatchback of Notre Dame and being from Early 1800 I believe but don't quote me on that.
But I think it is about that time. It's such a different way to to write. It's kind of slow. It's very descriptive. It's very, you know, in the particular of the first scene where there is the big festivity going on in Paris. And, and then I think like, yeah, but at the time you had to do that because we didn't have TV or photography or so the artist, the writer had to be extremely careful.
Visual in depicting what was going on. So again, context of what do we have, the way we think people in that time, in that city, in that part of the world versus another part of the world, another time, and it, it seems to me, it's very, very daunting to consider all of that. And I agree with you. It is not a technical thing.
It's very much sociological, it's very much creative, it's very much a lot of things, but certainly not technical.
[00:21:47] Alex Shvartsman: Well, in this kind of a case, you absolutely have to think long and hard of what the voice of the story is going to be in English. Um, very few translators today are going to choose to match the archaic language of the original text.
Right. So you still want to modernize. And when I say you modernize the text, I certainly don't imply that we should introduce anachronisms into the story, like, uh, like mentioning the computer or a car, like, or, or anything like that, what you mentioned. What I mean is that, uh, the text of the story is flowery and very.
Um, I should say inefficient and not the way that, uh, American and British readers have been trained to, to kind of consume novels. And the concept of a novel as we know it today is pretty much defined by Hemingway. You know, he's pretty, he is the one who really, Reshaped the, you know, like he kind of got rid of a lot of the flowery language that we had prior to, to, to, to his works.
And so during his time period that, uh, we've kind of gotten closer to what we understand today as the format of a novel. So even if you read a work that was originally written in English, uh, and you go back to the, to the 18th century. Uh, you kind of feel that difference of like how flowery it is. And so when you're translating a work by Hugo or, uh, or Tolstoy or, or, or, or anyone from, you know, from back then, you have to find a happy medium where you're not completely reworking, uh, their, their clearly genius work for it has to be for to have survived, uh, the test of time like that.
Uh, but at the same time, you want to make it accessible to the current readers. So when you're translating Shakespeare, you know, people reading Shakespeare in English, even native speakers are often, you know, it's almost like a foreign language to them because there's so many words and so many phrases that are being used that are out of use.
So when I read Shakespeare in English, I probably have to go to the dictionary quite a lot. But when I read him in translation in Russian, I don't need the dictionary at all because the translations were being performed in the 20th century and while the language is still Uh, trying to emulate this beautiful form, you know, these beautiful sonnets, this, you know, the way that Shakespeare wrote, uh, I recognize all the words or almost all of the words.
So I think that's a good, uh, balance to strive for where you're still keeping like some of the flowery stuff, but you're also not intentionally leaning into the archaic words and making it more difficult for the, for the reader. Uh, you know, because you, again, if you're translating this book for the purpose of people reading it for pleasure, If you're translating it for an academic press, and the, and you're publishing it maybe along the side with the original French text in the same book, then you want to be as close to the original as possible, slavishly so.
But the text will come off very stilted. And often, people choose not to read translations because their expectation is that the work will be stilted. Because unfortunately, even professional translators, very often, they're not themselves writers. And so, um, they produce works that aren't, that don't flow as well in the English language.
And, and even with a lot of interference from their editors, uh, it doesn't get fixed 100%. And so when I, uh, me and other translators People who translate and write both when we work on our texts, we try to smooth it out as much as possible so that you, the reader, can appreciate the text and not stumble over the fact that, like, yes, of course, you will have the, uh, the setting and the, you know, the setting will be in another country and the names of the characters will be from another country.
And so you're going to get that sense of this is not taking place in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
[00:25:47] Marco Ciappelli: Uh,
[00:25:48] Alex Shvartsman: but you're also. If we do our job right, going to be able to enjoy the smooth experience of reading a novel that you're accustomed to, uh, thanks to Hemingway and those who came after,
[00:25:59] Marco Ciappelli: right? Well, a lot to think about here, because I'm envisioning a couple of things, like, for example, if you are.
JK Rowling when you have Henry Potter read all over the world and you probably get to the second book and you know Maybe even after the first, you know, it's going to be translated In every language, right? And then you have to adapt it to to the book I mean the book to the movie the movie to the video games and there is always a never ending Adaptation that you have to that you have to do and you you need to think about the audience and in that case You She probably has some kind of creative control over that or whom for her.
And then you have other situation where, again, um, you don't get the feedback from, from Shakespeare, you don't get the feedback from Dante. And you made me think as, as an Italian, as a kid, you know, you, you do all those three big book, um, when you're way too young to really understand what's going on. And.
It's not really written in Italian. You need the translation, even as an Italian. And then in school, you, you teacher choose the, the expert notes that that is being interpreted by who they believe did a better job, not much into the translation, but into explaining what Dante meant when you meet this in this part of the Inferno or in the Paradiso and and sometimes the interpretation is different too.
Right. Absolutely. It's, it's, it's a daunting job.
[00:27:50] Alex Shvartsman: I mean, if you, once you know that Virgil is his guide, right, if you haven't read Virgil and you don't know what his writing and his philosophy and everything about him was like, then how much are you really missing, right, from the work?
[00:28:05] Marco Ciappelli: The
[00:28:05] Alex Shvartsman: people that Dante wrote.
Uh, you know, you know, wrote, you know, wrote, wrote, uh, the books for, uh, the people who were able to read and who had the finances to buy the book. And they would've all probably read Virgil. That's his expectation, right? As a writer.
[00:28:20] Marco Ciappelli: Mm-Hmm. .
[00:28:20] Alex Shvartsman: So it's like, if I'm making a reference, if I'm writing today and I'm making a reference to, well, let's say JK Rowling, who I just mentioned, most of our contemporaries will be familiar with her work.
But if somehow I'm lucky and my work survives 500 years. People are reading it 500 years from now, and if I make a reference to Harry Potter, there's no guarantee they're going to know what that means. Uh, so yeah, it's not just a language problem. It's a cultural problem. When you, you know, you always take, uh, you always, you're always taking a risk when you're adding cultural references into your story because those references may not be understood or may be understood differently.
Uh, even 10 or 20 years down the line, let alone centuries.
[00:29:03] Marco Ciappelli: Let me ask you one more thing and I think we'll have this conversation going in the future because I'm thinking now we could talk about adaptation or just translation and then I'll talk about the connection with movies or with TV series or video games and you have the experience in all of that, but in this case, I was thinking that if you have a choice and you do, because you speak fluent and you can write fluently.
And I can do that in Italian and English. Do you feel that you can express yourself better in a language or in another, or do you think one story is more fit for like Russian or one for English thinking also the reader? So again, it's not just about, the language that you choose, but is Who is your target audience because I I have the conundrum all the time
[00:30:03] Alex Shvartsman: so, uh as a writer, um, the conundrum is removed from me, uh, because While my russian is actually very good.
My vocabulary is good I can't write in Russian,
[00:30:14] Marco Ciappelli: and I
[00:30:15] Alex Shvartsman: can't translate professionally into Russian. Uh, a popular misconception is that when you have a translator between two languages, uh, most people assume that it's a two way street. And you kind of, you know, like if you translate between Russian and English, then you can effortlessly just, uh, work in both directions.
But that's not the case. Almost all professional translators work from a target language, uh, from a source language into a target language. So for me, I have a lot of experience writing in English. And so I can read and understand and absorb in Russian, and then I can bring it to the Anglophone readers in English.
Uh, I have absolutely no skill in translating literary translation from English into Russian, nor could I write my fiction in Russian without probably taking a couple of years to, I mean, certainly if I put my mind to it, I could do both after a while, but it would be a lot of work and a lot of relearning.
So, uh, my job is to bring, to import this culture from the Russian language into the English language. And so, I don't really, I can express myself, so if we're talking, and we both speak both languages, and this often happens in the immigrant community here where I'm from, Among other, um, Russian speakers. A lot of the time, whichever of the two languages you're speaking to each other, you will pepper it with the words from the other language, because you will tend to opt for whatever language has the most precise.
Word or phrase that you can express what you're trying to say. Mm-Hmm. . Yep. Uh, but for literary translation, that's, uh, almost everyone I know, uh, who's doing this, uh, for, you know, who's doing this professionally. They have a language pairing that they're working in, so they're not going to, uh, attempt to translate it, you know, to, to translate the other way.
[00:32:04] Marco Ciappelli: Hmm. Well, I, I guess I have that issue because if I, if I can, if I can decide, sometimes even just. An email or a letter or anything or copywriting, for example, you know, I could say, well, if I have to write it in Italian, it's going to be a different approach. It's not just a different language is a different approach because I have to appeal to that culture from an advertising perspective, of course, but also I think when, when you're writing a short story or story, uh, you have to decide, where do you start?
I'll listen. For me and I and I still I still am in that conundrum myself, but But it's it's interesting to I think for the audience here We could kind of like summarize here if you if you want to what are I don't know that the the main step that you need to take as a as someone that is in charge of a translating a writing piece into another language.
And the question for you is also, does this, do this step change depending on the language or the culture I'm translating into? So I'm thinking, you know, if I'm translating in Japanese, which I couldn't, I mean, how much more of a cultural approach I have to take versus English, Italian to French or Italian to Spanish or something similar.
[00:33:33] Alex Shvartsman: The most important element is that you have to know and understand your audience as well as possible. Uh, typically the best translators are ones for whom the target language is native and not the source language. I am actually the exception to that. Since for me, the source language is a native language, uh, and I'm not alone.
There's a number of great translators who are, uh, you know, who have that as well. But generally speaking, uh, it is preferred that if you have an imbalance between the languages, which most of us do, very few speak both languages with exact same fluency, that. The, the, the, the, the literary translator should be more fluent in the target language than the source language.
And the reason for that is, again, uh, your job is to please your audience. Your job is to make the translation as enjoyable, accessible, and, you know, uh, understandable. by your readers and your readers are going to be reading it in the target language. So whether you're working in, you know, translating into Japanese, into Russian, you know, uh, any language at all, um, you will have different challenges based on how that language works.
Uh, you know, whether they have, for example, many languages, including Russian, have A formal U and an informal U, which English does not, so anytime you're going to translate a conversation or a text from, especially a conversation from, from English into Russian, you have to Choose are, how are these characters related to each other?
How close are they? Will they use the formal you or an informal you? Mm-Hmm. , which is a choice that the person originally writing the text in English never had to face at all.
[00:35:15] Marco Ciappelli: Yeah. Uh,
[00:35:16] Alex Shvartsman: you know, so these are, these are challenges that are unique to different language pairings, but at the end of the day, um, you want to make it so that you're never throwing the reader out of the story.
Uh, that it makes sense because if you're in that kind of story, if a, uh, uh, uh, a, a, a commoner approaches the king and starts talking to him with an informal you, the reader will be like, wait, what? Like, is he intentionally being rude? Is he just reckless? Like, why, why is he doing this? Right? So, so you have to think about those choices and be.
Really, really conscious of them and of the social, uh, you know, uh, social interactions that are appropriate in that language and at the time of the story too, so that's, that's where that kind of stuff comes into play really. And, and, and it's a great puzzle. And one of the funnest things for me, because anybody can sit there and translate straightforward text, right?
Like, it's not that interesting if there's no challenge in it, but once you get it, I
[00:36:17] Marco Ciappelli: can do that, but at
[00:36:20] Alex Shvartsman: least because, uh, the AI does not understand any subtext, exactly. I was using, I was hitting
[00:36:26] Marco Ciappelli: you. I was.
[00:36:27] Alex Shvartsman: Yeah, idiomatic language, if you're using any, you know, anything that where you're saying, you know, your words are saying one thing, but you're clearly, you're meaning to something else and AI or any kind of automated translator, like Google Translate and similar, they're completely incapable.
Of understanding that. So for now, my job is very safe. Like, I don't know if that's going to change in, in, uh, in, in, in the next few years.
[00:36:54] Marco Ciappelli: And I love, I love that you use the example of the formal you because we, we do have that in, in Italian. Right? So, uh, there is, So much you have to consider how long you've known this person.
Is it older than you? In Italian, you normally ask somebody older than you, or if you, even if it's not older, but you just met in a business environment, um, you ask permission. If you can use you instead of he. Right? So there is definitely a lot and I can see how the target language should be the original culture as well to get all the nuance that you just described.
So it is a puzzle. I do use that word quite a bit. Um, that is a puzzle. And, uh, and I think that's, that's the fun part. That challenge to to do it successfully I guess and um, and I hope the audience will get this as a fun interesting Conversation then then now when they do read something or when they do Listen to something in another language.
Maybe they have to think about all of that. So, and I have a bird here that I don't know if you can hear it, but it's really pissed right now. So,
[00:38:11] Alex Shvartsman: I, I think you may have heard my dog snoring as well. She was sleeping next to me. I spoke to her. I'm like, wake up, stop snoring.
[00:38:18] Marco Ciappelli: That's, that's all good. That's all good.
We're in the nature here. All right. Well, Alex, this was again, no doubt about it. A great conversation. I knew it was going to be like this. And I don't know, maybe if we decided to chat again after all this summer travel. I like the idea of the adaptation to from one media to another. I think that will be a very, very fun conversation to have.
[00:38:43] Alex Shvartsman: Uh, experience with that, but
[00:38:47] Marco Ciappelli: we could bring someone with us and, uh, and have that, uh, that conversation. But I think it's a topic that is very important for storytelling and there's been a show for storytelling, storytellers and stories. I think it's really important in a global world that, uh, that we're all sharing a lot of the same culture, or at least we should.
Consume more of the other people culture to understand the difference and that allow us to live better together So I found the moral to the story as well here And at this point I want to thank you for being on this conversation with me again Always a pleasure, and I want to thank the audience for listening to us and, um, follow and subscribe and there'll be all the notes to get in touch with Alex and to listen to our prior conversation and definitely read all the books and the stories that you wrote.
So, uh, thank you very much.
[00:39:44] Alex Shvartsman: Thank you so much. And if anyone is interested in checking out some of these translations on the stories, uh, many of them are available online for free and you can go to my website, which is just my name, alexschwarzman. com. And just click on the bibliography page and there's a section for translations there.
So, uh, yeah, you can definitely sample some of that and read some, some of my nonfiction writing on translation, uh, on the website as well.
[00:40:08] Marco Ciappelli: Perfect. You guys do that. And I'll catch with you on the next episode of Audio Signal Podcast. Take care, everybody.