〖  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?

One thing that has stunned me is how translators approach their work differently. With some, I’ve been in regular contact and they ask lots of questions about details and jokes in the original. The Finnish translator, for example, noticed that several characters in my novel Collected Works are wearing a striped shirt. In Finland, that kind of jersey has a connection to a specific brand, but she wanted to know how people in Sweden perceived striped shirts. It was a great question, because I realized the shirt itself meant something in all of these instances, but not the same thing as in Finland. I could tell her: « Here, in the 1980s, the striped shirt would have been a kind of punk rock thing. But for a child in 2012, it’s typical middle class thing to wear. » It made me think about all these other translators that did not ask about the striped shirts.

I have a very good friend who is Italian, and after she read Collected Works in Italian, she remarked to me that my characters never say what they want. « They are restrained and emotionally held back, and nothing ever really happens. » I think in the Swedish original it’s quite clear that things are said between the lines, but to her that just didn’t happen. I think that even the most accurate translation is, to some extent, a different book than the original. I’m only the writer — when the novel is in print it’s no longer mine to control; it belongs to the readers and the translators.

Lydia Sandgren is a Swedish psychologist and author. Her debut novel Samlade verk (2020) was translated in over fifteen languages. The English translation, Collected Works, will be published in April 2023 by Pushkin Press