Photo of Rebecca Simpson courtesy of Miranda Johnston
Staff reader Neha Bagchi talks with NER 44.2 translator Rebecca Simpson about her unconventional path to literary translation, functioning as a “medium,” and her translations of Mercè Rodoreda’s poetry.
Neha Bagchi: How did you come to translation in general and, more specifically, literary translation?
Rebecca Simpson: I studied French, Spanish, and a bit of Latin in school. Encountering Lorca through Bodas de sangre left a deep impression on me, and then, while studying English Literature at university, I took a final year paper on the European avant-garde, where I discovered Lorca’s El Público. Such a different work from Bodas de sangre! The surrealist play from the early 1930s had been published only in 1976, had never been performed, and was not yet translated into English; I wanted to translate it when I could.
I was involved for several years in experimental theatre, performing, researching and devising, and I later moved to Barcelona to study mime at the theatre school. I taught English part-time, but—helped by a little money my grandfather had left me—managed to translate El Público. It took me a couple of years, on and off. With confidence in the extraordinary play and believing in my translation, I approached what I considered to be the most suitable publisher for the work in the UK. I was told kindly but unequivocally by the editor that they only published translations made by famous English-speaking writers. So, I learned the hard way how things worked!
I tried several carefully selected theatre companies, but there were no takers, so I wrote to the García Lorca Foundation. By that time, an official translation was underway and, although the Foundation invited me to send them my translation, I never heard back. But that is how I discovered I loved literary translation.
I continued to do a small amount of literary translation, by now from the Catalan too, some including poems and plays I am still looking to publish. Over the years I have been employed to translate several new opera libretti. I took the CIOL exam in early 2020, which enabled me to present myself for a translation grant from the Institut Ramon Llull of the Generalitat de Catalunya (Autonomous Government of Catalonia), and to approach publishers and magazines. So, it’s been a long process to get going as a fully professional literary translator, but I’m very glad to have done so.
NB: What might you do differently if you were to start your translation journey all over again?
RS: Acquiring academic training and certifications earlier would have allowed me to advance sooner professionally. However, learning on the job is very much my style. And I have made work of my own, which means my skills as a writer—so important for the literary translator, in my opinion—have been exercised and honed. I honestly cannot say what I would have done differently, as my path as a translator has been so bound up in the way my life has developed and unfolded. Incidentally, a case like mine used to be considered strange, but nowadays there is even a term for a combination of different jobs, professions, and projects: a portmanteau career!
NB: You have translated works in forms that range from academic to commercial to literary. What kinds of translation project(s) do you find most personally or intellectually satisfying?
RS: My great love as a translator is poetry and poetic drama. When translating poetry, I have often felt that it is the most complete form of reading—an experience that takes me deepest into a work. Funnily enough, I now know that Josep Carner, Mercè Rodoreda’s mentor in poetry, used to say something similar.
NB: What do you find trickiest or most difficult about translating Rodoreda’s poetry into English? To what extent does Catalan translate “easily” into English, and where do you find yourself having to make difficult choices?
RS: Difficult choices abound! I’ve had several words that drove me to distraction. Mercè Rodoreda began writing during a period of consolidation of the rules of Catalan orthography and grammar, and within a long history of poetry. She was determined to contribute significant work to Catalan literature (especially the novel), so every word of hers is carefully chosen. Catalan dictionaries are excellent. I sometimes consult a Catalan-Valencian-Balearic dictionary[1]. I also consult with colleagues, of course, and my Catalan partner.
One problem I encounter when translating Catalan into English is that possessive adjectives are used in English where Catalan generally uses the definite article: for parts of the body, clothes, belongings, sometimes for family members, and so on. I may not wish to specify my/his/her/their/your/our and yet that is what is called for in English; sometimes I’ll seek a way round it. Similarly, personal pronouns are not generally used before verbs in Catalan, so deciding on the grammatical subject occasionally requires careful consideration.
In terms of the lexicon at our disposal, including phrasal verbs, English is so rich that I have found I must not ‘over indulge’ where the Catalan is, in fact, intentionally austere. Here is an example from the sonnet “Plany de Calypso” (Calypso’s lament): in line 7, I initially translated the verb “reir” as “chortle,” but later decided on the more literal translation and common word “laugh”: gushing water “that laughs and cries.” The complexity is in Calypso’s emotional state, and I concluded that a different verb would distract, thus detract, from Rodoreda’s careful building towards the powerful ending.
NB: As a literary translator, do you consider yourself “invisible” or try to make yourself invisible? If not, in what ways do you show yourself in your particular translations?
RS: I am trying to make the author’s work visible in a new language! Two analogies from other areas of my work come to mind, which are not unrelated, I think: as an actor I pursued the idea of achieving a neutral body, through mime training and later through different kinds of body work; I sought an instrument that, as far as possible, would not be conditioned by chronic tensions or postural holding patterns, and I eventually created and taught an effective method of training for others. And when I was younger, as an informal interpreter in theatre workshops and talks, I developed my own way of interpreting that was almost simultaneous, but with the speaker giving space for the translation. When the audience kept looking at her and not at me as I translated, I knew I was doing a good job. For me, as translator, interpreter, actor—in a non-esoteric sense—one is a medium.
On the other hand, the translator’s work must be acknowledged, but that is something else altogether. For example, the current push for the name of the translator to appear on the cover of a translated novel is absolutely correct in my opinion.
NB: I’m struck by how you knew you were doing a good job when the audience kept looking at the speaker, not at you. My current take is that there is no “perfect” lens (or medium), and that the translator is not and cannot be invisible, and, consequently, we must not only acknowledge our selves and positionality in our translation, but also celebrate it and use it: every new translation builds out the world of the original, and no individual translation is “the definitive one.”
RS: I really like the idea that different translations “build out the world of the original.” However, I would not want to abandon the distinction between a translation on one hand and, on the other, a version of another writer’s work or a new work “after” author X. I, too, find “the definitive translation” a distasteful term, because it’s exclusive; but I would argue that the idea of “a” definitive translation—and the possibility of more than one—may still be useful. Thank you for your questions.
Neha Bagchi writes fiction and poetry. She translates poetry from Bengali and Hindi/Urdu into English, studies translation theory, and is working on a critical analysis of Tagore’s “Gitanjali” in translation. She is also working on a novel about grief, featuring a haunted bookshop and a woman with a third arm. She has an MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State University.
Rebecca Simpson graduated with a degree in English literature from the University of Cambridge, where she also kept up Spanish and French studies. She began to pick up Catalan after moving to Barcelona and later studied the language. Having translated for many years, in 2020 she took the CIOL (UK) Translation Diploma to focus on literary translation. She also writes opera libretti and is a voice actor. Her translations of Mercè Rodoreda’s poetry were made with support from the translators program of the Institut Ramon Llull (Generalitat de Catalunya).