In the book fair month of October, the final round of our "Translators Relay" goes to the impressive translator Elke Ranzinger, who escaped the daily routine of the theater to become a translator.
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.
Elke Ranzinger was born in Passau (1980). As a student in München and later in Bergen, her subjects were Drama Studies, Nordic Studies and Modern German Literature. After spending several years as literary adviser at the regional theatre in Linz, she moved to Berlin where, since 2015, she freelanced as dramatic advisor while focusing on her work as a translator of Norwegian fiction, plays and musicals. Currently, she is about to join Helga Flatland on the tour to promote the publication in German of Flatland‘s novel Eine moderne Familie (A Modern Family trnsl. by Rosie Hedger, published by Orenda 2019). Then, before the beginning of November, Elke returns to her desk, where Tore Renberg‘s black comedy Tante Jane is waiting to be translated.
When did you decide to become a literary translator and what motivated you?
Actually, it was less of a considered decision and more like acting on a sudden idea, which astonishingly but luckily had become reality. I was almost thirty-three years old and had made theatre the centre of my life ever since I was sixteen – initially as a stage extra, then as a director’s assistant and finally as literary and artistic adviser. For half my life, the theatre had meant everything for me but, at one point, I asked myself if it was enough and if I was to carry on the same way as before – might there not be some other place for me to develop my potential more fully? Since the theatre business gives you no time to ponder such questions, I decided to resign and prescribe for myself a year off: a time without goals, or initiatives or plans for the future.Truly, a break from everything. I was prepared to wait and see where events would take me. In any case, I wouldn’t return to a permanent post in the theatre but I wanted to keep working with literature and language. I had remembered that, while working on a play, I had once translated about ten pages of Knausgård‘s My Struggle, volume 6, because of some important, thoughtful reflections to keep in mind for the production, and we simply couldn’t postpone the premiere for years while waiting for the official translation (at the time, volume 1 had just been published in German). And I remembered how much I had enjoyed doing the translation and, also, that I had devoured Tore Renberg‘s Vi sees i morgen (See You Tomorrow trnsl. by Seán Kinsella, is published by Arcadia, 2014) while on holiday in Norway. ‘Gosh, how I’d love to discuss the book with my friends,’ I thought. ‘But most of them don’t speak Norwegian!’ One thing led to another and, now, five years later, I have translated not just that book but five more, as well a few musicals, plays and short stories. So, generally speaking, I dare call myself a literary translator.
What is it about being a translator that you particularly like?
Translating, to me, means immersing myself in the authors’ incredibly different linguistic worlds created, until I’m ready to rethink and rewrite their flights of literary imagination in German. It amazes me as well as makes me smile with delight to think I’m allowed to spend whole days on such transformations, widening of my horizons and creating ‘beautiful’ sentences.
In 2018, you spent two weeks as a guest in the ‘hotel for translators’ in Oslo. How much do such stays in Norway matter to you?
Before I went in for translation, I went to Norway roughly every third year and spent a month there, walking to find peace in nature and, yes, in order to have time to myself, alone – in this way, I got as far north as at the Polar Circle, where I experienced the constant day light and had to re-examine my grasp of the phenomenon of time in ways that still stay in my mind.
Nowadays, I try to be in Norway at least once every year and mostly go to Oslo in order to keep my Norwegian up-to-date and to continue building or strengthening my private as well as professional contacts – and, also, to experience myself at least sometimes and in place, whatever social and cultural changes take place. In the translators’ hotel, I got to know three colleagues from other countries and that was terrific fun – we were able to engage with each other in our shared foreign language and discuss the cultural differences between our various places of origin. Every chance of getting one‘s head above the parapet is enriching, I feel.
Have you come across any Norwegian word that you wish had a German equivalent? If so, please explain.
Absolutely! But why can’t I think of what the words are, now that I‘m asked? Anyway, there are words that I sort of ‘feel’ the meaning of in Norwegian and they seem just as hard to translate every time.
This autumn sees the publications of your translation of the family novels Eine moderne Familie by Helga Flatland (Weidle Verlag) and of Tage in der Geschichte der Stille by Merethe Lindstrøm (Matthes & Seitz Berlin // Days in the History of Silence transl. by Anne Bruce, published by Other Press 2013). Your colleague Thorsten Alms, who handed you the translator’s baton, likes that kind of writing very much and asks you what is it about it that enchants you?
The shifting relationships in a family always generate dramatic tensions. I love drama. And difficult, dark situations. I draw consolation from such narratives. And resolutions offer the possibility of bringing order into the world once more. Losing leaves you with chances to take. But I’m less interested in what will happen next or whether all will be resolved. These two books, different as they are in dramatic structure and stylistic approach, are both about characters searching for answers.
Your colleague also wanted to know what you have been able to bring from your many years in the theatre and into your work as a translator?
It was timely that I left theatre work when I did since I could still take with me an idealistic conviction that art can change the world, and a vision of the world that had been hammered out during many dramatic productions and discussions and which has so far guided me in my translation projects. It will always matter very much to me that my creative work should keep in circulation themes and lines of thought that I judge as important for society. In that sense, the two occupations are not that far apart: as literary adviser in the theatre, I was assisting in the transfer of a text written on paper into a live presentation of stage and, as translator, I transfer text written in on language into another. Both roles demand close, critical examination of the textual structure.
Which Norwegian books should every enthusiastic German reader of literature have read?
What to answer as a translator who has worked only on books I love?
No, I can’t think of a work that everyone should read but since I don’t regard big, thick books on subjects like theatre, music, literature, art and life as challenges but rather as guides to living, I cannot avoid mentioning Johan Harstad‘s Max, Mischa und die Tet-Offensive (translated by Ursel Allenstein, Rowohlt Verlag, so far unavailable in English) . After the Frankfurt Book Fair , I look forward to in particular to reading Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel’s new translation of Tarje Vesaas‘s Das Eis-Schloss (Guggolz Verlag // The Ice Palace, trnsl. by Elisabeth Rokkan, was published by Peter Owen 2009 and is now available in Penguin Modern Classics, 2018).
Is there any one particular encounter or event at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2019 that you look forward to especially?
I am so pleased that of the writers of works of fiction that I have translated, all are going to appear in the ‘honorary guest’ pavilion. I will of course be present in the audience for all their talks. Above all, I’m looking forward to listening to Merethe Lindstrøm, whom I have so far only encountered in her books and in correspondence.
You are the last person to take part in our exercise in serial interviewing that we call ‘the translators‘ relay race’. The idea was to illuminate the important, demanding work of translators. What would you wish for the future of the profession of literary translation?
First of all, I would have wished not to be the one who carried the baton during the last lap to the goal line but instead that the race would continue beyond the German borders and out into the world so th baton could be handed on to translators from Norwegian all around the globe. You see, I believe that translation is an occupation that receives too little attention from just about everyone. Which is what I would wish for all us translators – not only to feel better about ourselves personally but also to help us be self-confident and tough enough to stand up for decent contractual conditions and the continued role of what we do, for instance in the context of digitalisation of texts. If people in general don’t know what our work entails, we will soon come to seem replaceable and of little value.
From the German by Anna Paterson.