My article on electronic art in public spaces has been translated into English! I’ve been asked to proofread the translation and make any changes or corrections I feel are necessary. How strange to be translated into my own language. How wonderful to be translated. Translation is difficult. I’ve translated a few pieces by others and found it difficult to represent their words as theirs and not as mine. I’ve translated a single piece of my own and found that almost harder, though of course I ended up rewriting and adapting more than simply translating.
Now I have to stop myself from drenching the translation in red corrections. Easy, girl, the words already left you, they’ll be fine on their own. But they bear my name! And I didn’t write them! Not exactly. How strange.
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Johanka
Just wondering, which language did you acquire first – English or Norwegian? Or was is both at the same time, so you can’t tell which is the “stronger” one?
LiL
Johanka’s questions.
And then: I find it harder to translate myself (hah, I can’t even say translate my writing) than to translate others.
Jill
I learnt English first, and always spoke English at home, growing up, so English is the language of my heart and emotions. Though I spoke only Norwegian at school after I was eight, and Norwegian with almost all my friends. For the first half of my twenties I switched to almost all Norwegian, at home and at the university, but when my daughter was born I couldn’t speak anything but English to her. That’s why they call it mother tongue, I think, it’s so natural to speak to your babies in the same way as your mother spoke to you.
I’m fluent and accentless (well – mild Australian accented and strongly Bergen accented) and write like a native in both English and Norwegian, but I dream in English and think in English and now most of my professional writing is in English, and my home language is English too – so yes, English is slightly dominant, I’d say.
I’m going to have to just pretend I never got a chance to change the translation, I think.