With thanks to the publisher for the review copy
With so many books out there being publicised all over the place by big publishing houses, there are some truly excellent novels that must get lost amongst them all. I suspect Life in Translation is a literary novel a lot of people won’t have heard of. Published by Holland Park Press, it is a novel about that curious creature the literary translator, spanning more than three decades, taking in London, Paris, Lima and San Sebastian along the way. Beautifully written, engaging and intelligent, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I particularly enjoyed the Peruvian section – a country I may not have read about before.
“The first thing that strikes you about Lima in winter is the greyness, everything muted under the low cloud layer. It’s something to do with the city’s location trapped between the Andes and the cold Humboldt current. For a few short months there’s a kind of summer. The first patches of blue appear in the sky around late November, and people’s spirits rise.”
The narrator is a man making his living as a translator, dreaming of literary fame he has spent years working on his translation of an important Peruvian novel that maybe no one will want to read. He seems destined to never complete the work, the manuscript lying untidily in a box for years. Sometimes struggling to make ends meet, a series of dead end jobs and a strange period working in a huge multinational company whose policies infuriate him, he finally settles into the translation of Latin-American fiction.
Beginning with his time as a postgraduate in Lima, Peru, the narrator charts the progress of his career and his relationships with the various people who float in and out of his life over the years. Friends and enemies, lovers, family and colleagues appear, disappear and reappear as our unnamed narrator often struggles to maintain relationships, repeating the mistakes of the past, choosing the wrong partners, often misunderstanding both himself and the people around him.
In 1980s Lima, he is an ambitious young man, socially unsure of himself, smitten by a fellow student Gabi, a Peruvian girl who is all confidence and sensuality. While in Lima he works on the translation of a short story, meets the extraordinary Julia Pinto Hughes – a particularly well written character – and experiences an earthquake.
“Julia Pinto Hughes was, of course, an old adversary. A woman so ruthlessly self-serving that powerful men were said to climb out of ground-floor office windows to avoid her. A woman who had almost sunk our edited collection of essays, and who’d tried to destroy the career of a colleague who’d dared to help us. And, as it happened, a woman with whom I’d only just failed to have a one-night stand a quarter of a century earlier.”
In the 1990s he lived in Paris, working as a translator for a large company whose hierarchy and policies on the future of translation leaves him tearing his hair out.
In later years he meets up with old friends at conferences, contributes to a book of essays that descends into controversy when Julia Pinto Hughes finds reason to feel affronted at the editing of her piece.
The narrator’s story is told through a series of inter-linked episodes – which create a wonderful picture of a life a career and a man’s rather circuitous route to maturity and hopefully happiness.
“I make sure people know I’m a translator, not an interpreter. Interpreters are the flashy ones at conferences, who translate on the hoof: the adrenaline junkies, high-wire artists, prima donnas. The larger the auditorium the better they like it. Whereas the translators are the backroom boys and girls of the language world.”
What Anthony Ferner does so well with this novel is to portray a community of translators with their ambitions, frustrations, arguments and petty jealousies. He also acknowledges brilliantly what a difficult and unglamorous career it is too, with the translator so rarely in receipt of the praise they are due.
This does sound good. I’ve a friend who’s training to be a translator, so I’ll definitely let her know about this!
Oh yes do, I would hope she would be interested in reading it.
Lovely review of what sounds like a very good book. I do like that quote about the nature of literary translators vs their flashy counterparts, the interpreters. It reminds me of certain sections of A Heart So White by Javier Marias, a novel which features some wonderful scenes involving simultaneous translators!
Yes, I hadn’t ever thought about how translators might view interpreters. Of course, that is just the view of the central character. 😉
I love the distinction between translator and interpreter. I am going to run that past our translation department and see what they make of it.
Ha yes, I enjoyed that too. I wonder what they will think. Of course that is just the view of the central character.
Fine review. It sounds very interesting. I think “writing” the translation must be even harder than writing the actual book. Amazing to have a mind that can do all of that.
Gosh yes, I think so too. I have read some wonderful novels in translation, and I often wonder how the translator does it.
Lovely post Ali, and what an interesting sounding book. I love translated books so I really must keep an eye out for this – sounds right up my street!
Yes, I do think this would be of interest to people who enjoy reading translated works. I am happy to send you my copy if you would like it. Let me know.
Aww, thank you! That would be lovely! :DDDDD
Can you email me your address again, I know I have it somewhere, but best to check.
Will do! 😀
In another life I would like to have been a translator. These days I content myself with being fascinated by the translation process and so am really looking forward to reading this!
Yes it’s a fascinating profession isn’t it. Languages and me don’t mix, I just can’t learn them. So, I find it particularly brilliant that people can do this.
How true it is that there are many really good books that get overlooked because all the attention is on the big names….. Love that distinction between translators and interpreters. I look on translators as the unsung heroes – the whole thrust of their work is that it is invisible, so that the author’s own words shine through. But there is such a skill involved in achieving that
Yes, absolutely the skill of the translator is so often overlooked. They are invisible aren’t they? That’s a good way to describe it.
Oh this sounds brilliant – you’re going to have to create a Lend To Liz pile, aren’t you! Especially as I work with translators!
Ha, I’m sending this to Karen, so you could always negotiate with her, to either have it first or afterwards. See comments above
Oo this does sound good, and I haven’t heard of it. I love reading about translation in any form.
So glad to hear you like the sound of this one Simon.
[…] lovely review book was Life in Translation by Anthony Ferner an excellent novel about the trials and tribulations of a group of translators. […]
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