Translating “meanwhile”

I put that in quotes because it’s a silly idea really, for translators at least. Translating is always its own thing, you concentrate on it, do it almost for its own sake. Or rather, strike the almost. This is my experience anyway, even when one is just trying something out, it turns out to be intrinsically valuable.

But it is reasonable to say that projects come up while one is working on something else. In that sense, meanwhile is perfectly apt, and it’s the right word for two new projects that surfaced while I was on the first part of my Fulbright in Croatia earlier this year.

One is more of a commission. An agency approached me to see if I was interested in translating a work of history on Jasenovac by a major Croatian historian. We talked about it, and I decided to do it. I’m about 40% through it now. It’s supported by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and is slated to be published by Cornell University Press. The subject matter makes it not an easy book to translate, but I’ve learned many things I didn’t know before. This always happens, and it seems to be one of the main reasons I do this sort of work: I love learning new things.

The other is not certain yet. I stumbled across a brand new book of microfictions (my term) by an author whose work I’ve translated before, wrote to an English-language publisher to gauge interest. They wanted a longer sample and also copied the Croatian publisher, who asked if I could “help with” the sample if they had funds to pay me. I agreed, they sent the names of the pieces they wanted in the sample (about 20% of the book’s 117 stories), I translated them, they paid me, and now we’re waiting for the English-language publisher to decide. If not that one, I suspect another will be interested. The stories are very good.

This second “meanwhile” project is much harder from the standpoint of the language, as each piece is like a little prose poem, sometimes with a parable quality. Or maybe “emblem” would be a better term, a bit like the baroque genre. The overall conceit is a city under siege. The city is generalized. Each piece is a perspective on this besieged city, e.g., that of the clockmaker, the nurse, the journalist, the president’s daughter. Many are quite moving. I hope I get to do it.

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