〖  Found in translation  〗

We asked nine writers not what was lost but what was found in translation, as a text is given new surfaces and new depths. What’s the rightest or wrongest or closest or strangest thing that a reader of yours has found in a new language? What’s something you wish would be found?

My first novel Interior zero was translated into German as Null Komma Irgendwas in 2018. The book is about Cristina, a thirty-something in a long-distance relationship, who can’t find her place at work and who parties in clubs where she can only afford one glass of the cheapest wine. Her mother left long ago to work in Spain. The book was adapted for theater in both Romania and Germany. If you’re a writer and, like me, are worried that all your characters speak in your own voice, it might be reassuring to know that an adaption for the stage solves that problem very effectively: each character has another actor’s voice, rhythm and something of their personality.

The set designer in Romania chose a blue-gray dress for Cristina, reminiscent of factory workers’ overalls. Cristina’s job in the novel is in a corporation but their allusion to workers’ imprisonment in factories makes perfect sense. Besides, while jobs at multinational corporations were always seen as a symbol of youth and success, in recent years they have finally begun to be subject to some criticism in Romania.

The focus of the Romanian stage adaption was on migration and the protagonist’s relationship with her mother. Economic migration was a mass phenomenon in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as many young people went to Western Europe to work and left their children behind in the care of grandparents. It’s a social problem that we and other Eastern European countries know all too well. The focus in Germany was on the working relationship in the office — the mother-daugher bond was a less relevant story arc there. I think that that particular Eastern European context is too powerful and complex to properly translate.

The two adaptations complemented each other. Cristina from Romania and Cristina from Germany (dressed a bit more colorfully, with glasses that looked surprisingly like the ones in my Facebook profile picture) make the Cristina of my novel whole.

Lavinia Braniște is a Romanian poet, novelist and translator from English, Spanish and French. A second edition of her novel Sonia ridică mâna (Sonia raises her hand) was published by Polirom in 2021.