Katy Derbyshire on translating We’d Have Told Each Other Everything by Judith Hermann (Mercier Books)
Imagine the work of a literary translator. We spend our days at our computers, immersed in the lives of others – usually fictional characters. Our task is to examine every phrase, work out what it means and what it’s there for, what it does to us and how, then rephrase it in another language. Ideally, that phrase will have an equivalent effect on our readers.
It’s an intimate process. We’re poring over a writer’s work, thinking about their intentions, deciding how to interpret them. Remember getting a new album as a teenager? I would head straight to my bedroom, put the tape in the cassette player and unfurl the concertinaed sleeve notes to read along to the lyrics. Play, read, rewind, play, read, sing along, eject and repeat with the B side.
With the intense concentration of translating comes, for me, a profound imbalance. I’ve put myself in the characters’ shoes, filtered their thoughts, felt their emotions – but that focus is entirely in one direction. Of course it is, you’re saying; they’re not real people. As translators, our working relationship is largely with the text, not the author. In an essay for the website Words Without Borders, Rosalind Harvey writes movingly about translation and psychotherapy, the way we seek permission to move further away from the original:
What happens, though, when we translate memoir, or something like memoir?
‘What if we were to think about permission and movement as reflecting the idea that the translator is in some kind of relationship with the text, […] and that the eventual quality or nature of the translation tells us something about that relationship – whether it is positive or negative, or, in the terms used by psychologists who study attachment theory, secure or insecure?’
What happens, though, when we translate memoir, or something like memoir? That’s when the relationship becomes parasocial, similar to that between a fan and a musician.
Judith Hermann’s genre-defying book We’d Have Told Each Other Everything (Mercier Press) takes the form of three lectures, ostensibly on writing. As she tells us in her preface, however:
‘Working on these lectures was not easy. On the way from their beginning to an end, private subject matter surfaced unexpectedly in my writing; we shall see whether I’ll come to regret it.’
What follows is shocking for those who know her short stories and novels, cherished for their discreet, enigmatic, almost secretive structures. What follows is Hermann’s first foray into memoir: sharing details of her friendships; her childhood; her life in lockdown; revealing moments from a therapist’s couch. How much truth the book contains is part of its own enigma. Hermann teases us: perhaps it’s all made up after all. I don’t actually know; I chose not to ask.
What follows is shocking for those who know her short stories and novels, cherished for their discreet, enigmatic, almost secretive structures
One thing I do know is that it feels real, and raw, and painful and joyful. I spent months immersed in those emotions, Judith’s emotions as shared with us. Wallowing, if you like: play, read, rewind, play, read, rewrite. I came to know so much about her, while she knew next to nothing about me. Coupled with the admiration I have for her exquisite writing, it made me feel like a fangirl.
I first met Judith at a dinner for writers and translators on the outskirts of Berlin, about fifteen years ago. There was a lot of free wine and I remember a very intense conversation on the train back into town, but I don’t remember what it was about. We spoke again on another occasion, but that was it. Her previous books were beautifully translated by Margot Bettauer Dembo, who died in 2019.
One thing I do know is that it feels real, and raw, and painful and joyful
How did we fix the parasocial relationship? Judith and I have developed, I think, a tentative friendship. We met up before I started work on the book: tea in a café, lots of questions in both directions, soon verging into the personal. It helped that we know people in common – not from the closed world of German literature but from real life, from Berlin. Shared speculation about their lives greased the wheels of that first conversation as writer-and-translator.
Like many authors, Judith writes great emails. And so our relationship became more complex as I sent her occasional questions during the translation process. The plan was to meet up a second time so I could ask many questions at once, shortly before I submitted the translation. Illness prevented that; I think we were both disappointed. Instead, a very long phone call, including comparisons of the views out of our windows. Mine grey, the rear of a housing block, in Judith’s case more rural as the postman hove into view from the distance.
And then our final opportunity: the proofs. This time we got together at my kitchen table for a meal and an intense corrections session; she saw my home, met my family, ate my cooking. The questions came from Judith’s side now: What weight does this word carry, is it too heavy or too light? Can we find something less neat here? What if we tried…? I have to stress that this is unusual; though most writers are excited to be translated into English, few have had the patience and dedication to sit down with me like this. Yet the respect for my work was always there.
I hope the balance and trust we’ve built up will help me to translate more of Judith’s work, give me the secure attachment to her texts that enables me to move further away from the original, yet keep coming back to it. That seems to me much healthier than the reverent one-sidedness of before.
