The Translator Relay: Ebba D. Drolshagen

Translators and their outstanding work have made Norwegian literature the worldwide success story it is today and we are deeply grateful to them. To shine a light on their demanding work and get to know the individuals better, we have initiated a series of interviews with the men and women who translate from the Norwegian into the German.

In addition to translating Norwegian literature within different genres, Ebba D. Drolshagen is also the author of several non-fiction books. She is currently in the spotlight with her popular Instructions to Norway (in German: Gebrauchsanweisung für Norwegen), which offers an entertaining introduction to Norway and Norwegians. The book will be published in a new and updated edition this year – in connection with Norway as Guest of Honour at Frankfurter Buchmesse. In addition Ebba has translated a literary travel guide to Oslo written by Erik Fosnes Hansen, which will also be published in connection with the book fair. Ebba’s translation of Mona Høvring’s Something That Helps (in German: Was helfen könnte) was published in spring and has received a lot of positive attention.

When did you decide to work as a literary translator and what were your reasons for making that decision?

The story is very unglamorous because I never really decided to go in for translation. Sometime after my student years, I happened to read an American non-fiction book that I thought tremendously worthwhile. A friend of mine, who was translating for Suhrkamp, heard me rave about it and said: ‘You have to translate it.’ I followed her advice, offered the translation to Suhrkamp and they actually took it on. Afterwards, I had other offers of jobs and I accepted them. I’m convinced this is how it happened for many in my generation: we came across translation more or less by chance and discovered it was right for us.

Where do you usually settle down when you are working on translations?

At my desk. Once or twice every year, I go away to live somewhere else for a couple of weeks. Then, I sit somewhere with my travelling typewriter (a small MacBook), usually at a dining-room table. Research for the book I’m working on, which is usually part of the translator’s work, I do sitting in an armchair or on a sofa.

What are you looking for when you make up your mind to translate a particular book?

For many years, I really couldn’t afford to pick and choose which book to translate. It was my job and I had to pay the rent. Nowadays, it seems I’ve been given a great gift in that just about everyone with whom I’m in regular touch has interesting projects on the go. So, I am never bored anymore and only very rarely feel long-suffering. In recent years I have been very lucky and translated almost exclusively books that I find delightful , both as literature and purely linguistically – for instance, the two novels by the wonderful Mona Høvring.

This year, Piper Verlag publishes a new edition of your popular travel guide Gebrauchsanweisung für Norwegen (A Norway Manual). What made you write this book?

The ‘manual’ isn’t a travel guide, and the idea isn’t to sell Norway and the Norwegians for tourist consumption. Rather, my reason for writing it was that I had become incredibly fed up with hearing, over and over, how terrific the midnight sun is and how stunning the fjord landscapes are. The more this kind of thing was repeated, the harder I found it to get a grip and not start raging: Come on, it‘s a country! Actual people live in it! When Piper offered me to make a contribution to their series ‘A Manual for...’, it seemed to me to be a great, once-in-a-lifetime chance to write about Norway. It has been my most successful book by far.

How come that you have such excellent insight into Norwegian society?

I realise that another great gift has come my way: whenever I hear or see or read something, I tend to ask ‘What’s this about?’ One example: in 2000, Crown Prince Haakon held a press conference to introduce his wife-to-be to the country. Rumour had it that her past had been quite colourful but the lady seated at Haakon’s side, Mette-Marit, looked so remarkably contrite and sanitized that I had an instant vision of the ‘repentant sinner’, ready to promise everybody that she had changed her ways. I thought this experience characteristic of a shared Norwegian moral and felt convinced that much about the country will never be understood without taking into account the strong imprint left by its protestant history.

Apart from my questioning mind, I have so many highly educated, intelligent and kind friends in Norway who are prepared to answer my questions patiently and also talk good sense to me when I go over the top with crazy ideas.

Which chapter did you especially enjoy writing and why?

Honestly, every chapter in that book is my favourite (the exception was writing about music because I understand practically nothing about it). Still, discussing the national costume really appealed to me and it shows: it is one of the longest chapters in the book.

I have rather ambivalent feelings about Norwegian folk dress or bunad, as they call it. On one hand, it is lovely and flattering and I know enough about it to appreciate the wonderful embroidery. On the other hand, I can’t help thinking how strange it is that in Norway, the wealthiest country in the world, the ideal (even if not always reached) is that the women should themselves make their best outfit, stich by stich. Besides, the bunad is an almost essential garment, owned by some 70 percent of the women and a still higher percentage of the men. Some have more than one dress set despite the expense: the full bunad costs around 40.000 kroner and, often, much more. There are more than 400 regional variants of the dress, so that if you decide to pick one of them you must first decide with which locality you want to identify yourself. Everyone who puts on the bunad sends a message to the world: I am from Norway. But, to other Norwegians, his or her choice answers a question that matters hugely to them: Where do you really come from?

If you were to pick out just a few of the particularly amusing things that characterise Norway or the Norwegians – some ‘fun facts’ – what comes mind?

My colleague Gabriele Haefs is the true Queen of Fun Facts about Norway(1). Never mind, here are four facts to baffle foreigners:

* In the Easter break, Norwegians consume 35 million oranges and clementines;

* During the days leading up to Easter, every second book sold is a crime novel;

* 30 percent of all Norwegians of working age are employed in some public post;

* On several stretches of railway, the train driver keeps a hunting rifle in his cabin because he must shoot injured elks or reindeer if they have run into the train.

Your colleague Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel greatly admires your work and your personality. He handed you the translator’s baton and would very much like you to say something about what your ‘linguistic duality’ means to you, in your life as well as in your work.

Norwegian was the first language I learnt but also the first that I have forgotten, because I was born in Germany but arrived in Norway during my first year. Then, when I returned to Germany at the age of five, my Norwegian mother spoke to me in German and it seemed to take just weeks for me to forget all my Norwegian. A few years later, I travelled alone to Norway to visit my grandparents. They knew hardly any German at all and then the Norwegian I had learnt as a small child suddenly came back. From then on, I prattled happily in the difficult Ålesund dialect as spoken by a five-year-old – which became very clear indeed to me when, in my early twenties, I began my university course in Norwegian. I had to set about to learn how to speak the language as a grown-up. Still, these early years meant that Norwegian to me has a vague aura of a native language and that my German accent is not very marked.

The conclusions I draw from my past history is that my ‘linguistic duality’ is not really very highly developed (especially in the light of my master’s essay on ‘the bilingual brain’!). Then I observe my colleagues and note that almost all of them learnt their source language late in life and as a foreign language – and I’m amazed. Until it dawned on me that it doesn’t apply in my case. Norwegian has belonged to me since forever, and feels as natural as German. Just in a slightly different way.

To whom would you like to hand the translator’s baton? What question would you like to have answered by your colleague?

To Thorsten Alms. Not only do we not know each other personally but more than that, I was not aware of having a colleague called Thorsten Alms. My ignorance might well be due to his main source language being Swedish and also to the fact that we haven’t yet met at any events for translators. Thorsten came into my field of vision for the first time when I read Simon Stranger‘s documentary novel Leksikon om lys og mørke (Keep Saying Their Names)(2) and I again and again asked myself when it would be published in German translation. Eichborn Verlag sent me Thorsten’s translation and this was when I saw his work for the first time –he had solved the stylistic challenges in such a beautiful, masterful way that I read the entire book again in German.

I have two questions to ask Thorsten. First: during the work on the Stranger book, how did you manage to distance yourself from the utterly terrible scenes of torture? And, secondly: since your main source language is Swedish – as far as I know – how do you keep up with Norway and Norwegian? (more questions but just between us: will we meet up in Frankfurt in October? And do you ever come to the big get-togethers for German-speaking translators in Wolfenbüttel?)

Is there any one particular encounter or event at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2019 that you look forward to especially?

I was surprised at the strength of my reaction at the announcement that Norway would be the ‘Guest of Honour’ at the 2019 book fair. I was on the brink of bursting into tears. It is particular choice of guest of honour that has been impatiently awaited for a long time by those of us who translate from Norwegian. Margit Walsø and the small NORLA team have worked for this goal for years. Now, a large group of staff from NORLA and the Norwegen2019 team are cooperating in order to succeed with this huge project. I am already certain that it will be a spectacular book fair and a splendid success.

For me, the most wonderful aspect of this is not one person here or there, or some special date or occasion – the wonderful thing is that my Norway, my Norwegian literature will come to my home city.

(1) 111 Gründe, Norwegen zu Lieben. Eine Liebeserklärung an das schönste Land der Welt (111 reasons for loving Norway. A declaration of love for the most beautiful country in the world) by Gabriele Haefs (Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, new ed. 2019)

(2)Keep Saying Their Names by Simon Stranger has been bought for publication in the USA by Knopf Doubleday. It was published in 2018 by Aschehoug as Leksikon om lys og mørke.

Translated from German by Anna Paterson.