Visiting the End

I am getting close to the end of this translation and feeling a bit light headed.

I don’t think I wrote much about the trip I took in September to Zagreb, to speak with my author, and then to Sarajevo to walk through the areas he writes so much about. It feels like a long time ago now, but I keep seeing the places as I translate lines that refer to them. It has helped a lot, since I had never been to Sarajevo before, and while I could translate the words, I really did not have a feel for the spatial dimensions and so much more that is simply implied.

The backache is nearly constant now, as the distinctive feature of translating prose works makes itself felt. So this is what it feels like to have translated over eight hundred pages of a single book with a little under two hundred to go. I wonder if the ache isn’t at least partly from the anticipated remainder, a little like one feels tired sometimes because of the list of things to do rather than because of the things one has just done. In fact, isn’t there more often a feeling of elation rather than fatigue at the end, after one has finished with something long and taxing? I suspect that will happen here too.

Based on what my author says about Sarajevo, I picked the right month to travel there. He has long passages of fog, mist, smog, snow, and ice, all of it rather grimy and dark, for the rest of the year. The trip also helped me to feel the pressure of the hills he often refers to, the central spaces, the Miljacka River, the street and general area where he spent a number of years as a youngster, especially its relative remoteness and insularity despite being a short, even if rather steep, walk to the center of town.

I was surprised to find it referred to as Šepetarevac (with the first letter as a š instead of as it ought to be, a plain s) in the first book by Jergović that appeared in English, Sarajevo Marlboro (Archipelago Books, 2004), especially as the name is emphasized so much. It has to be a mistake. I suspect mine will inevitably have some, too.