In the 11th round, our translator baton goes to translator Thorsten Alms, who translates works from four countries and three languages. In the interview he talks about what it was like to translate Simon Strangers novel "Keep Saying Their Names", which is based on true events and includes eighty years of history.
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.
Thorsten Alms was born (1966) and raised in the Lüneberger Heide regionin northern Germany. He pursued Scandinavian studies, History, and Linguistics in Bonn and Lund. Since 2003, he has worked as a literary translator from Swedish, Finland Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian into German. He is currently translation A Summer with Ellen by Agnete Friis from the Danish. The novel is forthcoming in 2020 from Eichborn.
Dear Thorsten, when did you decide and what motivated you to translate books?
It was a long and serendipitous process. I’ve always been passionate about literature. Directly following my studies, I translated a book and had a lot of fun doing it, but after that I worked for a few years in new medias. When the company folded during the financial crisis, however, and I was given the opportunity to translate a second book, that is when I took the first steps toward becoming a freelance translator.
Which genre do you most prefer translating?
Variety is the most important factor for me. I started out translating a lot of crime novels, but now I fortunately work within a diverse range of genres, from suspense and literary fiction, to dignified horror and nonfiction—and add to that the fact that I work from four different countries and three languages, all of which keeps me on my toes. I will admit, however, to having a particular weakness for contemporary family sagas/dramas—I take an almost scary pleasure in that genre.
Do you ever feel the urge to write your own book?
Often and never. As a translator, I am of course compelled to gaze deeply into the toolbox of literature to see how it’s crafted (and also how it should not be crafted). This represents a leaning in one direction. But in the other direction, one has to ask oneself how much work and even agony goes into the effort of writing a book. As a translator, I have to work alone, but at times I am also in dialogue with the author. Whereas the author, in their writing, only has themselves to contend with. So, the short answer: Rather not.
In 2019, you translated Vergesst unsere Namen nicht by Simon Stranger for Eichborn Verlag (Keep Saying Their Names, Knopf 2020). Stranger’s book is a novel based on actual events encompassing an eighty-year history and spanning four generations. It tells about the torture of Jews in Norway during the Second World War. What about the book do you find particularly notable and what kinds of translation challenges did you face in tackling it?
The most notable aspect for me is that both the victims and the perpetrator are granted the same attention and even empathy in the text. It is quite a narrow line to follow, crafting this construct, to ensure that the perpetrator perspective does not suddenly gain more weight. As a translator, you naturally have to work attentively in order to maintain this balance.
Technically challenging was, of course, the fact the book’s structure was ordered alphabetically by keyword, albeit not quite as strictly as in a dictionary. It was necessary to reorder the structure somewhat, for example the section “L like Love” (or in German “L wie Liebe”) had to migrate from the Norwegian capital “K” (kjærlighet) over to “L”, or the Norwegian letters Æ, Ø and Å all had to be shifted to fit under the letter Z. By making some associations and sleeping over it, I was eventually able to find the right German word in most of the cases, but sometimes I also found myself reading through all of the words under a single letter in Duden.
Your translator colleague Ebba D. Drolshagen, who has handed you the baton for this interview, is very impressed with your work on Simon Stranger’s writings. She would like to know how you are able to distance yourself in your work from the very difficult torture scenes. And, considering that your main language of focus is Swedish: How are you able to keep up your Norwegian? And 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?
These scenes are almost unbearable to read. However, it is precisely because these are real and documented events that it is important in the later translation to work very thoroughly in order to do justice to the victims and the historical truth. The tension between outrage and this unemotional portrayal are in fact the driving force of the novel.
When it comes to the question about the languages, from the very beginning, I have never made much of the differences between the three Scandinavian languages, and I have worked with equal enthusiasm on Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish literature (even today, if there’s time enough). This has worked quite well so far. It’s rather the cultural particularities about which I sometimes have to turn to locals for advice.
And to answer your other questions: Yes, we'll see each other at the book fair in Frankfurt (I'll definitely be present at the opening ceremony) and hopefully soon in Wolfenbüttel!
What do you do when you are not translating?
Family, travel, museums, reading (according the pleasure-principle)
Which Norwegian book do you recommend that every good German literature enthusiast should read?
I always recommend the works of Kjell Askildsen, high-dosage literature, which is by the way forthcoming as a set in German (translated by Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel, Luchterhand).
Is there anything you are particularly looking forward to at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2019?
Simon Stranger will be there on a reading tour and I am definitely planning to meet him. Otherwise, I am excited to let myself be surprised (preferably together with other seasoned attendees).
To which of your translator colleagues would you now like to hand the baton, and what would you like to know about them?
I wish to hand the baton off to Elke Ranzinger, who has recently translated, among other things, the books of Helga Flatland (A Modern Family, Weidle Verlag) and Merethe Lindstrøm (Days in the History of Silence, Matthes & Seitz). Since I, admittedly, am very fond of family novels, my first questions is: What do you find provoking about this type of literature? And because you have also been involved in the Theatre for quite some time: What do you bring from that context into your translation work?
Translated from the German by Becky Crook.