The book market in Slovakia, a small country with population of five million, is dominated by translations, yet the visibility of translators remains low. DoSlov, a recently established translators’ and editors’ organisation has set out to change this by providing support to the profession in the country and improving the working conditions in the industry. Asymptote’s editor-at-large for Slovakia, Julia Sherwood, spoke with two of its founders, Barbara Sigmundová and Gabriela Magová, about the challenges they face and what they have achieved so far (despite the pandemic).
Julia Sherwood (JS): When did you start DoSlov and what made you start your organisation?
Barbara Sigmundová (BS): DoSlov was founded in 2019 by seven female freelance translators. Like many other literary translators and editors in Slovakia, we were dissatisfied with the steadily worsening working conditions and increasingly unfair publishing contracts. For years, there had been no collective attempt to speak out about these problems, to quantify them, and to try to effect change. There was a huge data gap which impeded any chance of improvement. So we decided to take the initiative. We conducted a survey of Slovak literary translators (the first in more than a decade) and found that the situation was even worse than we feared. That was when we knew we had to formalise our “working group” and start DoSlov.
JS: Can you explain the pun behind your organisation’s name? The Slovak word “doslov” means “afterword” but the use of upper and lower case suggests that there is more to it.
BS: “Do” means “into” and “Slov” means “words” so it echoes the idea that translators and editors shape ideas into words, but also the fact that our common working tool is the SLOVak language.
JS: How does DoSlov membership work?
BS: We have full members as well as student members. Without a membership base, our organisation couldn’t aspire to become a relevant partner to have a dialogue with state institutions, grant organisations, or even publishing houses. This has proved crucial during the COVID-19 crisis, as the Ministry of Culture has communicated mainly with representatives of associations, while those freelancers who haven’t managed to get formally organised have been overlooked. The membership fees are symbolic, but help us cover our basic expenses, as well as to co-finance grant projects. In return, our members can create a professional profile on our website, helping them become more visible to publishers.
JS: What are your main goals?
BS: One of the main goals of our NGO is to increase the visibility of literary translators and editors and bring these professionals together to raise awareness of their rights as authors, improve their working conditions, and contribute to their lifelong learning experience. Currently, after little more than a year of existence, we have around fifty members who translate from fifteen languages.
JS: What other institutional support is there in Slovakia for translators?
Gabriela Magová (GM): Since 2015, literary translators have been able to apply once a year for a scholarship from the Slovak Arts Council, for a period of two to twenty-four months. The scholarship, based on the average salary in Slovakia and not subject to tax, is sufficient to ensure an adequate income for translators. Unfortunately, some publishers confuse this support with the translator’s fee even though the rules clearly state that it is not meant to replace the fee. Even so, we are lucky to have this option, which does not exist in the neighbouring countries.
Translators can also apply for a scholarship from the Literary Fund (Literárny fond, litfond.sk) set at up to 350 euros a month, for a maximum of six months. translators have benefited from residencies abroad, but possibilities for literary translation residencies in Slovakia are mostly limited to foreign translators of Slovak literature.
JS: Several universities in Slovakia offer courses in translation studies, such as the department where Professor Anton Popovič used to teach in Nitra. However, their main emphasis seems to be on translation theory, rather than practical training. How useful have you found the theoretical grounding you received at university in your own route to literary translation?
GM: When I was a student, in the late 1990s, we had a few subjects devoted to literary studies, including translation studies. Not many textbooks were available at the time, and we had to rely on photocopied articles, often taken out of context and quite difficult to understand. I continued with translation studies at the Institute of World Literature of the Slovak Academy of Science, but the sense of disconnect between theory and actual translation remained. That’s why most of my fellow students from translation studies have become literature scholars rather than translators. And if they do translate literature, it is not as a direct consequence of their university studies.
BS: From my point of view, this has changed fundamentally over the past decade. For example, the Nitra Translation Studies Department that you mentioned is now strongly practice-oriented, especially focusing on audio-visual translation. It provides students with numerous opportunities to participate in translation projects for real-life clients (film festivals, etc.). They even have the opportunity to use a fully equipped dubbing studio in the department’s Media Center! As far as I know, the focus at other Slovak universities has also shifted significantly from the formerly theory- and philology-oriented approach to a more market-oriented one. Under the pressure of Slovakia’s current education policy, which strongly favours labour-market oriented curricula, translation and foreign language departments began to offer more practical courses on non-literary translation, computer-assisted translation, localisation, and interpretation, while Master’s students must participate in real-life projects as part of their compulsory training. While this is good news in terms of graduates’ occupational prospects, it’s not so great for the future of Slovak literary translation. The five universities that teach translation and interpreting (Bratislava, Nitra, Banská Bystrica, Prešov, and Košice) all continue to offer literary translation as an optional course, but literary history, theory, and reading in general is becoming increasingly marginalised in the curricula. Unlike Gabriela, I think that I could never have become a literary translator without my university studies. But I guess it all comes down to the mentors you meet, regardless of the curriculum.
JS: Did you learn from your survey what percentage of graduates in translation studies actually go on to become literary translators?
BS: Our survey was targeted specifically at literary translators and out of 117 respondents (who had had at least one book published), almost all had graduated from university (98%), most of them in the field of translation and interpreting (58%) or related philological fields (24%).
JS: What training opportunities are there for emerging translators to continue honing their skills, such as summer schools or mentorship schemes?
GM: As the entire country has a population of only five million, Slovak literature is small, and therefore most of the literary market consists of translations. So training in literary translation ought to be, and perhaps is in fact, much more important in Slovakia than in the so-called major literatures. However, I don’t know of any Slovak mentorship schemes for translators. But we are hoping to fill the gap.
BS: With DoSlov, we planned a series of workshops for 2020 precisely because we were lacking a platform for an exchange of knowledge among professional literary translators and editors of different generations, as well as for an active dialogue with linguists, lexicographers, translation scholars, rights experts, and so on. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic got in our way, and we managed to implement only a fraction of what we had planned. However, the feedback from the professional community was very encouraging and we hope to be able to switch back to live events soon.
JS: Although translations dominate the literary market in Slovakia, translators are still virtually invisible. What initiatives are you planning to take to raise the profile of the profession?
GM: In my opinion, the gradual trend of displaying the names of translators is the result of ad hoc pressure from individual translators and readers who have raised this issue publicly. This has resulted in some improvements: major booksellers have started listing the names of translators on their websites, although they had resisted for a long time, citing technical obstacles.
As for publishers, we would like to hope that the more enlightened ones among them realise that by working with high-quality translators they increase the prestige of their publishing house and that the name of a qualified translator is a guarantee of the quality of a book, which can contribute to its commercial success.
It is more difficult in the case of reviews and articles where the publisher or author has little influence. We have to keep raising this issue and “teach” the public that the translator’s name should appear in such materials as a matter of course. It is something we must keep on the agenda all the time and everywhere.
JS: Another issue, closely linked to the profile and status of translators, is remuneration. Can you share some of the findings of your survey that looked at working conditions and contracts for translators?
BS: The most alarming findings concerned the participants’ most recent published translation. The data showed that the average rate for a standard page of literary translation into Slovak has remained unchanged for at least fifteen years (the last available research on literary translation rates that includes data from Slovakia is the one done by CEATL from 2005–2006). Moreover, the rates reported by our participants showed only minor deviations from the average rate of 6.70 euros per standard page, before tax. No correlation was found between the rate and the translator’s experience (in terms of the number of translated books, source language, or genre). Only four out of 117 respondents stated that they received royalties from their last published translation. And, what is even worse, only three respondents said that they received at least some part of the fee on signing the contract or in the course of translation. The rest were paid only after the delivery of the translation or on publication. So, unsurprisingly, only 6% of our respondents said that they could earn their living from literary translation alone.
JS: Often the problem starts with contracts—do you provide advice to your members on negotiating contracts? And, on a more systemic level, do you see yourselves as advocates for translators’ rights?
BS: From the very beginning, DoSlov has closely collaborated with another NGO, LITA (the Slovak Society of Authors,) which strives to raise authors’ awareness of their rights and helps them manage their copyright and licensing issues. With LITA’s kind cooperation, we’ve been able to offer our members monthly online counselling sessions with experts on intellectual property. Slovakia’s current legislation doesn’t permit freelance artists to bargain collectively, so our lobbying capacity is very limited. It seems that the only efficient way to achieve fairer terms for literary translators is to provide them with information on the legal framework and advice on how to negotiate better contracts for themselves. And that is what we are trying to do.
GM: In the seminars we organise, we also point out to the translators that they should insist that their contract has a clause stating that the publisher undertakes to include the name of the translator in all materials promoting the work.
JS: If translators are not mentioned in book reviews, the merits or shortcomings of a translation are not likely to be discussed either. What is the situation in Slovakia in this respect?
BS: Can you really assess the merits or shortcomings of a translation without comparing it to the original? I don’t think so. But making a thorough comparative analysis could take many days (or even weeks), a great deal of effort and additional research (to say nothing of the educational background required of the reviewer). What would be an adequate fee for such review? 500 euros? In Slovakia, you get 50 euros for a review if you are lucky. That’s why most reviewers choose to ignore the translational nature of translated literature and consider it “merely” as literature.
GM: This has always been the case. With a few exceptions, very little space has been given to anything resembling a thorough consideration of a literary work, except in scholarly journals, which do not reach a wider audience. We used to have Revue svetovej literatúry (RSL, or World Literature Review), a unique magazine specifically dedicated to literature in translation whose editor-in-chief, Jarmila Samcová, insisted that reviewers focus on evaluating the translation. But in practice this rarely amounted to more than a sentence or two about whether the translation was “successful” or not. Assessing the quality of the translation requires rather more effort, as Barbara said. Taking into account the fact that everyone in our small country and its literary scene knows everyone else, such criticism is immediately taken ad hominem, and that there is very little tradition of critical thinking of this kind, it is hardly surprising that not many people make that effort.
JS: This takes me to Verzia, the journal you have recently launched, in which you want to focus on translation criticism. Gabriela, as the journal’s editor, why did you decide to start the journal?
GM: Sadly, RSL ceased publication some time after Jarmila Samcová passed away in 2017 so we decided to start our own magazine dedicated to literary translation. That was about two years ago. Our idea was to devote individual issues to a specific theme or world literature and create a platform for presenting foreign literatures that may not be commercially attractive but still offer interesting impulses to the target culture. At the same time, Verzia offers translators from these languages an opportunity to publish and present their work, as it may be difficult for them to have a book-length translation published in this small market. Another goal is to create a space for students or early career translators where they can gain experience under the supervision of established translators (and editors). And one of our principal aims is to start a section on translation criticism. We would like to provide translation scholars with an opportunity to learn to write criticism in a non-academic style, comprehensible to a wider readership, and thus give our readers a behind-the-scenes look at literary translation.
The theme of our first issue, published last year, was “isolation.” This year we are planning a Japanese issue, another will be dedicated to Miklós Mészöly, a Hungarian author born a hundred years ago, who wrote at the turn of modernism and postmodernism. There will also be an issue on postcolonial literature, and, if all works out well, a German issue.
JS: How much importance do you attach to the notion of fidelity in translation?
GM: In our region, thinking about translation is a constant tension between “fidelity” and “translation shifts”; it is an old-school legacy. We actually have several schools of translation, of which the one with the most practical application is perhaps Ján Ferenčík’s school. Critics often rely on its five principles: textual completeness, semantic identity, formal identity, “good Slovak,” and prioritising meaning in any clash between the principles of semantic and formal identity. We have many theories, but real criticism is lacking. New trends, of course, bring a more differentiated perspective (from translation as a service, through translation as creation, to translation as art), but I am afraid that again, these are mainly theoretical.
JS: What, in your view, makes a good translation?
GM: You have probably just asked the most difficult question in the world. For translators.
BS: Obviously, there are many possible views on what makes a good translation, often complementary, sometimes contradictory, and there is probably some truth in all of them. For me a good translation is the result of a translation strategy that is “made to measure” for each source text and target context. When I was analysing and subsequently translating Borges’s short stories, I found inspiration in Antoine Berman’s criteria for evaluating a translation: poeticality and ethics. In a nutshell, Berman suggested that literary translation should work as a fully-fledged work of literature in the target language, while respecting the original at the same time. It sounds simple; however, anyone who translates knows that to achieve this balance is the greatest challenge of all.
JS: What are your future plans, both in terms of DoSlov and your own translation projects?
GM: I would like to complete the translation of a selection of short stories by Edina Szvoren, an excellent contemporary Hungarian short story writer. In Verzia, we are working on the Japanese issue, which is scheduled to appear at the end of March.
BS: A month ago I finished the first draft of my translation of Nicole Krauss’s new book of short stories, To Be a Man, and right now I’m working on the Argentinian author Claudia Piñeiro’s Quién no. With DoSlov, we are planning several online workshops this year and another two surveys among literary translators and editors. Of course, we have many other longer-term plans, but most of them include face-to-face socialising, so until we’re all vaccinated, we have to put them on hold.
(More detailed results of the DoSlov survey looking at working conditions and contracts can be found in an article written by board member Natália Rondziková and published in the Bridge Translation Journal.)
Gabriela Magová studied Slovak and English language and literature and completed a PhD on Slovak translations of poetry from English. She translates Hungarian fiction and poetry, works as an editor for Slovak state radio, and is a co-founder of DoSlov and editor of its journal, Verzia. She has translated works by György Dragomán, Krisztina Tóth, three novels by Sándor Márai, and Antal Szerb’s Journey by Moonlight. Her most recent translation is László Krasznahorkai’s Melancholy of Resistance.
Barbara Sigmundová studied English and Spanish and earned a PhD in Translation Studies on the reception of Jorge Luis Borges’s prose in Slovakia. She works as a freelance subtitler and literary translator and teaches audio-visual translation at the Comenius University in Bratislava. She is the chair of DoSlov and assistant editor of its journal, Verzia. Her translations include Borges’s collections Ficciones and El Aleph, The Only Story by Julian Barnes, and Milkman by Anna Burns. Her translations of works by Nicole Krauss and Claudia Piñeiro are forthcoming.
Julia Sherwood was born and grew up in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. Since 2008 she has been working as a freelance translator of fiction and non-fiction from Slovak, Czech, Polish, German and Russian. She is based in London and is Asymptote’s editor-at-large for Slovakia.
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