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The Translator’s Voice is a new column from Ian J. Battaglia here at the Chicago Review of Books, dedicated to global literature and the translators who work tirelessly to bring these books to the English-reading audience. Subscribe to his newsletter to get notified of new editions as well as other notes on writing, art, and more.
While we novel readers love to tout the depth novels provide compared to other mediums, it’s important to acknowledge where that ends. Generally, outside of a few principal characters, the thoughts and emotions of other characters in a book are opaque to us. It’s perhaps this mirroring of real life that appeals to many of us, showing clearly the limitations of what we can know.
Of course, art is also about breaking these boundaries wide open and offering us readers a more expansive view of the world than the one we’re normally able to experience. While One Hour of Fervor—the new novel by Muriel Barbery and translated by Alison Anderson—stands on its own, it also exists as the other side of a coin, the conversation partner with her earlier novel, A Single Rose. Both novels follow the same storyline, of a French mother and daughter in France, and a Japanese father separated in Japan. While A Single Rose shows the French side of events, One Hour of Fervor acts as a slight prequel, showing the Japanese characters: all through Barbery’s distinctly-philosophical interiority, deep sense of aesthetics, and thoughtfully translated by Alison Anderson.
I spoke with Anderson via Zoom from her home in Switzerland about adapting to different styles of writing, returning to characters years later, and about approaching one culture through the language of another.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Ian J. Battaglia
You’ve translated dozens and dozens of books in your time. Do you translate the same way every time? Do you approach each work the same, or do you have to reinvent it every time?
Alison Anderson
It varies. I’ve changed a lot over time.
I’ve changed some of my habits, just for expediency and [also] from experience. At one point I got much faster, and now I’ve slowed down again; I’m more careful about the wording, doing it very slowly and more thoughtfully, maybe going back over things sooner.
I don’t read the book before I translate; some translators are like that. I think most do read it first. You could argue that it’s not very safe, or very advisable not to read it first, especially if it’s like a crime novel or something like that. But what I find is when I don’t read the text first, it keeps it fresh. If I’ve already read it and I know everything that’s going to happen, then for me, it seems like more work. That’s just me personally. Starting right from scratch, just cracking it open (or, well, on the computer), on day one, I read the first sentence and off I go, having no idea what the book is about. And sometimes I do trip up, but I go back over the translated text the very next morning.
Then I revise [again] when I’ve finished a first draft, first on the computer; and then I print it out, hard copy, and go back over it with a red pen; and then I enter all the changes, and depending on the type of book it is, I’ll read it one more time on the computer.
Anything that is inconsistent or didn’t make sense when I first read it will, by then, make sense. That’s how I work, 1,500 words a day usually, depending on the difficulty; sometimes a bit less. Sometimes I do a certain number of pages a day; it [can be] easier to keep track. Every book is different. Some are like Muriel’s book: very intricate, very detailed; every word, every punctuation mark counts. Other books are more “readable,” and they go faster. It really depends on the book.
Ian J. Battaglia
You mentioned that you changed the speed at which you work. Was there something that precipitated that or was it just a natural process?
Alison Anderson
Well, I used to go very fast because, first of all, I was younger, and I had more energy, and it was my sole source of income. So in addition to doing a novel, I would be doing articles, or another book—I used to do art catalogs, for example—so I sometimes had two projects going at once.
So I had to be a little faster. And then when I decided I didn’t want to work as much, when I realized that I was getting steady work and I didn’t have to worry so much, then I started turning down jobs—usually, the extra jobs—and I was able to slow down.
Translators in the [United] States very often have another source of income, as university professors, or creative writing teachers, or whatever. I know that my British colleagues, on the other hand, who generally are also just completely freelance, also do about 1,500 words a day and might have several projects going at the same time.
Ian J. Battaglia
Wow. That feels like a good clip to me, but…
Alison Anderson
Yeah, it depends on the book. There might be some books where I’ve only done 1,000 [words] a day.
Ian J. Battaglia
You’ve collaborated with Muriel Barbery quite a bit. Could you talk a little bit about your relationship?
Alison Anderson
She’s probably the author I know the best. I’ve met her several times, [and] we’ve collaborated from the beginning.
The first book was The Elegance of the Hedgehog. I asked to translate it. I contacted the publisher and had to do a ten-page sample. I don’t know if there were other translators who were interested in doing it. The same publishing house has been publishing all her books, so I’ve done them all, and they’ve all been very different.
The first two were The Elegance of the Hedgehog and Gourmet Rhapsody; [Gourmet Rhapsody] was sort of a prequel to Hedgehog, so it was the same kind of humor and so on. And then after that, she wrote the two fantasy books, which was out of left field for me. I wasn’t expecting that at all. There had been a long silence when she didn’t write anything; maybe five, six, seven years. I can’t remember how long it was between the Hedgehog and the first fantasy novel, The Life of Elves.
So that was completely different. And now, the two Japanese novels which went back to something that was much more pared down, [more] sparsely written, but very beautiful and poetic. I had to adjust. I’d say there were these three different styles I had to adjust [to], from the humor, to this elf world with vast descriptions of imaginary landscapes, and then the relief and pleasure of discovering a more concise style, with A Single Rose—but where Muriel herself was much more adamant that every word should count, and be translated very precisely.
We’ve always collaborated, for all six books. At some point in the process, she will get a copy, either the galleys or the Word document; I think this time I sent her the Word document, so, earlier in the process, even before it went to the reviewer at Europa. She goes over it and answers my questions because I usually have lots of questions for her. Then she gets back to me with comments and says, “No, this isn’t what I meant,” and “can’t you find a better word?” or, “This sounds awkward in English,” or “Can’t you say that?” Fortunately or unfortunately, her English, or at least her understanding, is very, very good. *laughs* So she’s always after me to improve things. And, I might add, I’ve learned a lot in the process.
Other authors [might] just say, “Oh, just thank you for your translation” and that’s it, and they’re not [really] bothered with what I do, but Muriel keeps me on a very tight rein. So it’s really a collaboration in the final stages, between the reviewer at Europa who is usually extremely helpful as well in ironing things out, then it goes back to Muriel, and she has more comments, and then it comes back to me, and we finalize the last things that are not clear on the galleys.
Ian J. Battaglia
Wow, that’s such an interesting process.
Alison Anderson
Well, that’s one extreme. Amélie Nothomb, on the other hand, gives me carte blanche; the novel is there, I just translate, it goes to the reviewer, [then] comes back to me. I re-read it again because her language is very subtle and precise. I want to make sure I’ve obtained that same mixture of elegance, irony and precision, the way she likes it. And then off it goes.
[Nothomb] only complained once, about the very first book of hers I translated, which was called in French, Ni d’Eve, ni d’Adam, which… what’s the translation in English? It’s when you say, “I don’t know him or her from Adam,” I think. In English Eve gets left out, but in French she’s there. So it doesn’t work in English, and because the novel is about this young woman who goes to Tokyo and gets engaged, I just called it Tokyo Fianceé. She disliked it so much that she made a remark about it in her next novel.
Ian J. Battaglia
Wow!
Alison Anderson
Well we laughed, it was sort of ironic, she wasn’t being nasty.
Ian J. Battaglia
You mentioned the “eras” of Muriel’s writing, and this book and A Single Rose form sort of a complete set with one another. Did that change the way that you approached it, having this previous work to refer back to? Do you see them as one complete whole, or are they separate to you?
Alison Anderson
Well, yes and no. No, in that there were about two years between the two, so I’d moved on and had done other things and I’d sort of forgotten A Single Rose.
I did go back and reread bits of it and double-check things to make sure [everything was] consistent. After the fact, yes, One Hour of Fervor and A Single Rose could be read as a single work, but I think One Hour of Fervor [is] still a standalone book. I don’t think you have to have read A Single Rose. Obviously, she reversed the order, so A Single Rose comes afterward anyway.
At first, I didn’t like Rose in A Single Rose. I thought she was a somewhat stereotypical French character—you know, unsmiling, snooty. I preferred the story, the setting, and the language.
But [with One Hour of Fervor], I liked Haru immensely. I became very attached to him. [This book has] sort of changed the way I see Rose as well. If Muriel had written them the other way around, I probably would have been a lot more sympathetic towards Rose.
Ian J. Battaglia
It’s so fascinating because, with this book, it’s like the principal character is absent. Rose is off in France, and everything about this book sort of revolves around her, but it’s seen from such a unique perspective.
Alison Anderson
In a way, knowing the “sequel” A Single Rose, it sort of fills in [the rest] in the back of your mind. As I was translating it, the [other half of the] story was there. I knew what was going to happen between Rose and Paul, for example. So as I was translating it A Single Rose would fill in elements of the story.
It’s kind of strange, translating something that happened before, when you know the sequel. But it didn’t really alter the way I translated it.
Ian J. Battaglia
This book is translated from French but deals almost exclusively with the lives of a mostly Japanese cast and people in Japan. What was that like, approaching one culture through the language of another?
Alison Anderson
It [was] a bit daunting, because I don’t speak Japanese other than kanpai (cheers) and konnichiwa (hello) and things like that. But it was interesting. I loved it. I did research, and if I had questions I just asked Muriel.
I would look up the places and things she describes—[tea ceremony, temples, districts in Kyoto, etc.]. I would look them up, and thanks to the internet, everything’s there. When I started my career, there was no internet yet, and I had to go to the library to look things up. Hopefully, I got everything right.
Ian J. Battaglia
You’re the second translator this year I’ve spoken to who’s had something like that: I also spoke to Morgan Giles, who translated a book from Japanese, the book deals with Korean characters.
Alison Anderson
I’ve had several translations [like that] from French, one was set in Spain, another in Argentina. Lebanon, Egypt, Israel. For the one that was set in Israel, there were a lot of Hebrew expressions. I found a friend of a friend here who helped me out with some of the Hebrew expressions, just to transliterate them correctly into English.
Even with the Japanese, I had to double-check everything because [French and English don’t] always spell Japanese words the same. I had a disagreement with Muriel [along these lines] about matcha tea. In fact, it is spelled the same in French and English, but she wondered if English needed the “t,” as it often doesn’t (think, Chekhov and Tchékhov…)
We also disagreed over the diacritics, the lines over Tōkyō, which I recently learned are called “macrons.” I said, “Come on, nobody in English writes Tokyo with these marks.” And she just kept putting her foot down. She said, “I want them.” And we’d had to go back and change everything that was already in A Single Rose.
And so this time I knew to write Tōkyō, Kyōto, all those words, with their “macrons.”
Ian J. Battaglia
Could you talk a little bit about some of the main things you have to keep in mind when translating from French to English? Are there things that are always front of mind? I know that the gender of different words comes up a lot, right?
Alison Anderson
Because I’m bilingual and I live in a French-speaking culture here in Switzerland, I generally just translate the way I speak, instinctively. I don’t really stop and think [about it].
But I just translated a book by the Prix Goncourt winner from Senegal, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr. His French, in places, seems very old-fashioned, or at least behind the times (but then much of French still is), therefore to refer to all of humanity many authors, including MMS, still write “l’homme.” Okay, sorry, no this isn’t right. Women hold up half the sky, right? So on this issue, I was very sensitive, and I had to go through and use “human beings,” “humanity,” “humankind,” “men and women,” [etc.]; I was constantly double-editing.
With Muriel, it’s a little easier, I think. She’s not always taking the side of men, I think it was a bit more straightforward with her book, but yes, I’m always very careful about [gendered words], and I often use “they.” Ten years ago that wouldn’t have been correct, but now you can slip it in when you don’t know the gender of the person.
Ian J. Battaglia
Like you mentioned, I also found this book really poetic with its prose. Were there any particular phrases or anything that kept echoing through your head or anything that really stuck with you, specifically?
Alison Anderson
The main thing with Muriel, is that she tries very hard to avoid repetition because she dislikes it when a word gets repeated; but she sometimes does it herself deliberately, for effect. But we would have constant disagreements about when it was okay. I’d send her paragraphs from the opening pages of A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway, to show her it’s not as bad in English as it is in French to repeat something, especially if it’s done in a lyrical, effective way.
There was something in the very beginning [of the book]—I’ll give you that example because I remember it: when [Haru is] in his bed dying, she uses an expression regarding three aspects of Haru’s life: “sa vie avait tenu à trois fils”; in English we can say “His life is hanging by a thread.” But this isn’t what Muriel’s French is saying; so that’s where I decided to use the [word] “narrative.” And she argued, “It’s not a narrative,” and I said, “Yes, but I’m trying to keep the idea of the three threads, the three narrative threads of his life.” Because we can speak about a “narrative thread” in English, which they don’t necessarily [say] in French.
So that was one of those cases where I had to juggle with what is possible in English and what is said in French, to preserve an image, or something a bit more literary, rather than simply say “there were three sides to his life,” or “three parts of his life,” or “two important people,” or whatever.
I really had to stick to my guns about that one, because Muriel didn’t like the idea of it; “What’s this ‘narrative’ doing here? I didn’t write ‘narrative.’” This is the sort of thing that can arise with authors who really pay attention to their use of language, word play, idioms—which can be very tricky to translate, but rewarding, too.
Ian J. Battaglia
Is there anything else you want people to know about this book?
Alison Anderson
Well, the story is also very interesting. I found it very moving, the idea of this neurotic woman who doesn’t want to share her child with the father, and how he takes it.
I shouldn’t generalize, but in my experience, a few people I’ve known and so on, some men have had to struggle to be given either partial custody or even access to a kid if they’re not married. But some remain indifferent. They say, “Oh, well, she wanted a kid. She didn’t get in touch with me. Well, I don’t see my kid.”
So the fact that this Japanese man goes to all this [trouble] to learn who his child is; he has the means to hire a detective, a photographer… But it’s not creepy, it’s very tender, and all the sadder because he cannot meet his child.
I found it really touching, and sort of disturbing at the same time. Because it becomes his whole life in a way. He doesn’t get married. He doesn’t really connect with his mistresses, on a deep level. His parents are far away and old and not the same social class anymore and all that.
Ian J. Battaglia
Yes, it’s sort of a bittersweet thing; he’s trying to honor her wishes and keep a distance from Rose, but he can’t help but be obsessed.
I thought that Haru was just such a fascinating character. The level of intensity and care that he brought, not only to how he thought of Rose, but to art and women and tea and sake; he’s just a very thoughtful sort of character. Seeing [the events of A Single Rose] through his perspective was so interesting.
FICTION
One Hour of Fervor
by Muriel Barbery, Translated by Alison Anderson
Europa Editions
Published on January 30, 2024
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