Whether you translate Ulysses by James Joyce or Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James, the essence of translation is the same. This was made clear last week to the students of the Editor master program at the University of Amsterdam, where Textcase participated in a panel discussion on the art of translation.
Together with Dutch author Renate Dorrestein, translation duo Erik Bindervoet and Robbert-Jan Henkes and director of translations for the Dutch Foundation of Literature Maarten Valken, we spoke about the challenges of translation.
Questions included: How close do you stay to the source text? What if you come across mistakes? All speakers agreed that translators face an almost impossible task: making a text accessible to a different language and culture. Small errors can be corrected, but the author’s style remains. Whether it takes 8,5 years for a book translation (Ulysses by Henkes and Bindervoet) or six weeks (Fifty Shades of Grey by Textcase).