In the eighth round, the translator's baton goes to Cologne-based translator Paul Berf, who German readers have to cherish for giving them the opportunity to immerse themselves in the impressively described world of Karl Ove Knausgård.
Translators have made outstanding contributions to the worldwide success story that Norwegian literature has become today and we are deeply grateful to them. To cast 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 Norwegian into German. We have entitled the series ‘The Translators’ Relay Race’.
Paul Berf (b. 1963) was born in Frechen near Köln (Cologne); at present, he lives in Köln. After leaving school, Paul did an apprenticeship in a bookshop and the same time enrolled at the University of Köln as a student of Scandinavian Studies, German and English. Later, he studied Comparative Literature at the Swedish University of Uppsala. His student years at an end, he began an academic career and workedfor a few years as a lecturer in Scandinavian Studies at the University of Köln but even at this stage he was translating texts that had caught his eye. In 1999, he decided to become a self-employed literary translator and has since translated prose and poetry from Swedish, Finland-Swedish and Norwegian. At the moment, he is working on a novel by the Swedish writer Aris Fioretos: the core theme of Nelly B’s Heart (swed. Nelly B:s hjärta, not yet been published in English), among many others, is the story from the inter-war years of the relationship between the first female aviator in Germany and the woman she loved.
Dear Paul, when did you decide to work as a literary translator and what were your reasons for making that decision?
There were occasional opportunities to try my hand at translating towards the end of my time as a student and also during the period when I was working as a university teacher. I completed two crime novels by the Swedish writer Henning Mankell and, even more important to me, poems by Swedish and Finnish-Swedish poets. One outcome was invitations to translation seminars in Finland and Sweden and I was made to feel very welcome by my new colleagues. However, the crucial reason for my decision was the realisation that I very much enjoyed the work, due mainly to the scope for being creative that it offered me.
What might you have done if you had not discovered translation?
I suppose it’s true to say: ‘anything for as long as it had to do with books’. It is indeed possible to argue that I began my professional career at the age or six or so when I was learning to read. After school I had a go at training to be a bookseller and in connection with my studies I dreamed of becoming publisher’s editor and thought it might be worth a try.
Where do you usually settle down when you are working on translations?
One room in my apartment has become my study and is furnished with a desk, bookshelves and a reading corner. Most of my work is done there but one of the great things about being a translator is that you can work practically everywhere. I travel regularly and with pleasure to Visby on the Swedish island of Gotland where the Baltic Centre for Writers and Translators is located. It has a special atmosphere that I find wonderfully conducive to concentration. In between these visits I go regularly to stay on an island called Runmarö in the Stockholm archipelago. This year, I will live there for two months in late summer and look forward to getting some work done.
As an established translator, you will sometimes have the privilege to pick and choose between commissions. What are you looking for when you make up your mind about a book?
In most cases, literary quality is a critical criterion. For a book to excite me and make me look forward to translating it, I must be convinced that it is a truly literary work – that is, in terms of its language. It has always been my goal to translate books so that their literary worth comes across as meaningful and important to a German readership. But honestly, I will often translate some book because I’ve been asked by a commissioning editor who is also a friend. Or because I have previously worked for that particular publisher.
Are there any writers whose books you take a particular pleasure in translating?
No, not really. Rather, I like change and, consequently, prefer to switch between different writers. Like actors, professional translators are offered the possibility to engage in quite different roles and this is something that I value as a great privilege.
Which Norwegian book should be read by every fan of literature and why?
Several come to mind but I have decided that the one essential book must be the novel Out Stealing Horses (trnsl. Anne Born, Harvill Secker, 2005) by Per Petterson. To my mind this is a marvellous and dramatically told narrative of a boy who grows up into a young man in the course of a summer when events make him aware of what it is to be an adult.Petterson’s prose is sublimely simple with a distinctive rhythm, which lends itself both to atmospherically dense descriptive passages and to the way the writer’s sensibility expresses itself striking scenes that shape the inner life and perceptions of the protagonist. Truly great art!
You were awarded the Jane Scatcherd Prize in 2014 with the motivation “In recognition of your congenial translation of the novelistic project created by the Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgård”. Your colleague Ursel Allenstein who passed the translator’s baton on to you, would like to hear your comments on the extent to which this mammoth translation project might have changed your life as a translator.
Little has actually changed in my life as a translator but things would certainly have turned out differently if, for years on end, I had translated nothing but books by Karl Ove Knausgård. However, from the start, I was determined not to abandon my other writers just because of this huge literary enterprise and, since there have been quite long gaps between each volume being published in Germany, every stage in the project became just another book to translate. At the same time, I can’t deny that when I read the manuscript of the first volume of My Struggle (trnsl. Don Bartlett vols. 1-6 (2009-2018), Harvill Secker), which was even before it was available to the public in Norway, I felt that this work was something out of the ordinary and really unlike anything else I had read before.
You have by now been translating literature for more than 20 years. What would be your advice to young translators or those who fancy the idea of choosing translation as their life’s work?
Two things that everyone starting out should know: literary translation is hard work and is relatively poorly paid if considered in terms of the time and effort involved. If that doesn’t frighten you off, and if you have the essential love of literature and the equally essential sense of how literary language works, then it is in many ways a quite wonderful job. When you set out, it is important to create a network of contacts by being in the good books of several publishers who trust you to work for them. And: in the beginning it does not do to be choosy. Instead, undertake whatever task comes your way. Translating is skilled work in which experience plays a major role and every completed translation brings with it new and valuable experiences.
To whom would you like to hand the translator’s baton? What question would you like to have answered by your colleague?
I would like to hand it to Ina Kronenberger who translates the Norwegian writer we have already discussed and ask her what it means to her both to read and to work on Petterson’s books.
Translated from the German by Anna Paterson.