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mrsjadecurtiss · 6 years ago

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@captainwordsmith thank you for the question! :D

!DISCLAIMER! Nothing of this is set in stone... since i’m not producing for an official comic or TV show, i keep myself the freedom that i can sometimes change things up if i find a better design idea.

For any history/fashion buff reading this, I’m really sorry if i name things wrong xD this is more about what i’m looking for when i look up references, but i always also change things up or combine them.

So, since the seven kingdoms are loosely based off europe, i always thought it a given that the fashion in them is different from region to region :D When i look at a character or house i get like... an idea in my head, and i try to finetune research until i find the real life fashion that mirrors it. While i always name a country it’s never really 100% consistent since i’m not making accurate historical art... i always mix it around with several influences/time periods, and im more about getting a look that’s semi-consistent in itself than a look that’s necessarily consistent with a historical period. after all im trying to make fashion for a fantasyland... So this is more of a list of what stuff i look up when researching.

Also, unless speciifed, if i say a country’s name i either refer to folk clothing, or medieval fashion and up to the 16th-17th century.

The amount of info is based on how often i draw the people from the region, so sometimes a lot, sometimes very little (yet!).

There’s also my pinterest wall where i collect references, nothing i uploaded myself just stuff i favourited from browsing the site

The North

The North makes me think furs, and clothing from solid materials. My mental image is always primarily slavic countries, but with added scottish and scandinavian influences since it’s a huge region and should have differences in itself.

House Stark: Since they are the main northern house and have many important characters, i try to give them a more standard "fantasy” appearance; they are kind of like an introduction to both the north and the series itself, so while i want to already start with the furs and all, i still like to kind of keep them like the readers and show watchers would expect. though i saw a really rad polish eddard and it makes me want to up the slav with these guys

House Karstark: what i would call “high russian”... I don’t really have a deep reason for this it is just the mental image that immediately springs to my mind. Maybe their sigil reminds me of that aesthetic

House Bolton: Elegant clothing, not too fancy but not conservative either. I first kind of got an idea for their vibe when i saw someone describe roose as “westeros’ vlad the impaler”; so usually when i look for references i try to stick to romanian and hungarian clothing, and stuff that fits in with that fashion; The dreadfort lies in the east, so hungary/romania/ukraine seems fitting to me.

House Ryswell: Very loosely scottish influences... also for the women, 14th century french/german vibes

White Harbor: They migrated there from the south, so i try to give them a more “southern” fashion (ie fashion that does not look like the rest of the north). Influences from france/italy, and netherlands.

House Umber: Vaguely russian, but not very elaborate. Kind of simple, big, warm, clothing (they are the closest to the wall), but with those cool hats.

House Dustin: Pretty celtic, invoking an idea of “the first king”. Maybe a king arthur vibe added... normannic...

Riverlands

When i read descriptions of it, i always think germany... Green, with a river through it, and medium climate...

House Frey: really vibe me as german, flemish or dutch, so that’s kind of what i’m going for with their clothing. Also some 16th century influences, i often see paintings in museum’s where im like “thats walder!!”

also these hats

House Tully: Kind of a conflict with the german/dutch thing i want to have going on, but the name is irish and they have red hair so irish fits... usually a case by case decision how i mix it

Vale

this is hard to specify because i can’t quite name what exactly im seeing in front of my inner eye... It’s this sort of, really medieval style, maybe 12-15th century, influences english and german?

The eyrie is so far up and kind of magical seeming, it reminds me of a fairy tale... so that is the vibe im slightly trying to achieve, this innocent medieval vibe you get from history books geared at kids. Maybe also sort of a king arthur feel.

Obviously neighbour to the riverlands so it can have similar fashion at times... exchange of trends....

And since It’s near Essos we can also look at cultural exchange there. It would make sense if a vale lord or two had mixed heritage...

House Royce: Their seat is runestone, and runes are on their sigil, so maybe these crowns... or some fantasy dwarf elements... Also general celtic influences (very vague and i WILL research more about celts when i actually draw members of this house). Hope when i research, that i will find a good idea on how to differentiate to two cadet branches well.

Westerlands

House Lannister: I’m seeing the Lannisters as like, really hip english and french fashion. You know the awesome hats, and beautiful dresses... The hair up in this horn-like headgear... jewels and ornaments...

Not so sure on the rest of the westerlands houses since i don’t “see” the characters around as much, i didn’t form a good impression... But I’m thinking solid english/french folk. Not the same as the ryswells, more of a rennaissance flair.

The Reach

House Tyrell: something in me wants bosnian Tyrells... The way the reach’s described in Dunk&Egg makes me think of my summers there, and they have brown hair/brown eyes. Though realistically (as in, what seems intended by grrm) i’m getting a huge french vibe (highgarden like those french gardens), so i’d strive for a good mix. I just need to differenciate it from the Lannisters, probably by keeping the mediterranean influence strong.

House Hightower: Burgfräulein vibes

Crownlands

Nobility/King’s Landing: Should scream “king’s court”, im thinking just the coolest looking medieval fashion i can find. A bit more modern, rennaissance-y, maybe. And stuff like this

House Targaryen: very boring but whatever the influences for LotR elves are, plus generally european kings, those with all the drama that martin was inspired from... i will need to work out something right proper for future targ drawings tbh

Dorne

House Martell: I had a drawing or two using the indian influence that is popular in fan art, but i'm not sure if i want to keep it... ivansbadart gave me the idea for north african influences, i might use morrocco myself, and i think i might also look into middle eastern fashion a bit. Or i mix a bit of both, considering the Region’s history of both the martells and the rhoynar... Most importantly i need to agree with myself on what my main inspiration for the rhoynish look will be.

Stormlands

Mainland: I don’t really have an idea for the stormlands at all, i can’t remember if any of the books ever had a segment there... i just have zero impressions so far.

House Tarth: Toying with a greek vibe, since it is located in the narrow sea... maybe mixed with a bit of italian.

Iron Islands

I really really have to get into researching a bit for this location... whenever i want to draw greyjoys my mind’s just like “uuuh vikings” and that’s that. this is theon

#as you can see i draw characters from some regions more often than others....#also i left out anything from essos because the post already became so long #though i draw some places in essos more often than like 2/3 of these xD #hope this is what you were looking for in terms of design philosophies :0 #my art #asoiaf #long posts #captainwordsmith

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teufelied-blog · 6 years ago

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My trip to India

This was during my second year of university, it was summer and my friends and I wanted to go somewhere for 2 weeks to travel, so they chose India, I minded a bit at first since I was not fond of this country but at the same time was really reading into Paganism and the connections of the Indo-europeans, as well as the Swatsika so I agreed. My desire to go there was one based on the fascination of connections with ancient Indo-Europeans.

Now a little about India, the country ovbiously is a developing country, I mean we could not even drink the water, so we had to bring our own. Also, they dont have western style toilets and toilet paper, except in some hotels so this was a challenge. Personally, I never used one of those, as the smell was unbearable and it was really just un-sanitary.

The very north of India and some Sikh populations of it were fair skinned Indians, looking similar to Med-Europeans, dark hair and dark eyes. They had a caucasion face, a bit symmetrical, not too bad. The rest of India had a very brownish skin tone, some very undesirable facical structures but caucasion features a bit. The south of India had a very dravidian, very dark people with negro features.

Arriving at the airport, we had to pay someone to carry our luggage and get a ride to our residence. Immeditatley, outside the airport we noticed the garbage everywhere and were exposed to many homeless people. They also have this amusement ride where you sit on the back and a person with a bike transports you to your destination.

However, India also had some very modern buildings and huge malls, wasn't rubbish everywhere certainly, nevertheless the beggars and poverty was widespread everywhere. In the cities, it was more modern but still unbearable bathrooms.

Most of the street food was unsafe to eat, although my friends did, because the utensils and machinery was never washed.

The people in general are very family orientated and celebrate many festivals, and have a great sense of community. There are also many wild animals, such as dogs and cows roaming freely, we saw many cute puppies at a cemetry but were warned not to touch them due to many diseases they may carry.

3/5 of my friends were girls, and the indian men and women stared at them endlessly, the guys especially stared at them as if they were food porn. The look in their eyes was frightening and uncomfortable. They are able to communicate in broken English and are charmed by white people from Europe, as they believe us to be moral. (Even though they charge us ovbiously higher prices to scam us).

Now, finally, we arrived to what I was curious about their religious institutions. They go to a temple called a "Mander", it is filled with statues and idols of their respective Hindu gods.

The Mander's(temples of theirs) are very elegant and often made of marble and aesthetic materials, they look very beautiful.

However, there is immense poverty and homeless people who are very religious, but not allowed to seek shelter in these temples weather its cold or burning hot.( as I was informed). Inside the Mander, they have a black rock they refer to as a "shivling",basically you pour milk on it for blessings, and all this milk exits out their sewage system, milk was being wasted on a rock while people were starving outside.

My friends, went to do it, we were given bags of milk for it, but I came across a beggar who was literally shaking and staring at the milk, clearly he had not eaten in many days. I gabe the poor man my milk and my guide told me he said "God bless you". I have to wonder, was the blessing of a humble beggar more that of a esteemed stone which has no real purpose?

I had understood the mentality of the people and how it works, the religious institutions were for people with money, all the poor people, who I viewed on the level of animals were literally on the level of Trash to them. Behind their elegant religious institutions, were mass poverty and despair. There was nothing Aryan or Indo-european in this.

Most of their "Saints" were unable to answer my questions theologically and were deflecting and telling me some bullshit.

The society was very capitalist, and they viewed people with less money as trash.

Also, the caste system didnt make sense to me as these "Brahmin" looked like negros.

Most of their religious institutions were hollow, meaningless, lacking anything pure or organic. Everything was about making some money. The modern Hindu faith is debased and fit for such a degenerate people.

I was greatly dissapointed by my trip, there was nothing Aryan or Indo-european here. Just a decayed people, with morals that of animals. Most of the people cannot understand their own faith. It would be accurate to say their a insecure god fearing people, not god loving.

I wouldnt go back there, hardly anything beautiful or romantic was found. Ironically, my friends said they experienced great culture food and a new outlook on life, the irony. People dont see beyond the deception.

This is why Im also hesitant make connections with "Indo-europsans" its true, our ancestors spoke the same tongue and had the same gods, but the connection of blood is eternally severed. I will stick to norse Paganism, because Indo-European faith of Hinduism is distorted and no longer belonging to us.

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relationshipadviser-blog · 6 years ago

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'It's a silent conversation': authors and translators on their unique relationship

New Post has been published on https://relationshipqia.com/must-see/its-a-silent-conversation-authors-and-translators-on-their-unique-relationship/

'It's a silent conversation': authors and translators on their unique relationship

From Man Booker International winner Olga Tokarczuk to partners Ma Jian and Flora Drew leading authors and translators discuss the highs and lows of cross-cultural collaboration

On the night of last years Man Booker International prize ceremony, two winners swept up to the podium novelist Olga Tokarczuk and her translator Jennifer Croft but a third was back at their table cheering louder than anyone. I was thrilled to bits, I still am, says Antonia Lloyd-Jones. What makes this unusual is that Lloyd-Jones is the Polish authors other translator, who has been working with her far longer, but wasnt responsible for the winning novel, Flights. With a shared purse of 50,000 at stake, was there not even the tiniest bit of envy? Were a team of course its Olga and Jennifers win, not mine, but its great for all of us who have spent years trying to popularise her books outside Poland, and its great for Polish literature in translation, says Lloyd-Jones. This was a major breakthrough after almost 30 years of work. And it has done sales of my own translations a lot of good. Nifty scheduling by the indie publisher Fitzcarraldo has meant that these include Tokarczuks Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, a quirky eco-thriller very different from Flights, which has won Tokarczuk her second Man Booker International prize longlisting. This years shortlist will be announced on Tuesday.

Its not just Polish novels that are enjoying a boost. Sales of fiction in translation were up in the UK by 5.5% last year, with sales of translated literary fiction increasing by 20%. As the UK turns inwards, caught up in an increasingly bitter fight over leaving the EU, readers are looking outwards, with literature from mainland Europe accounting for a large part of the growth. Jacques Testard, who publishes Tokarczuk, is part of a new wave of independent publishers who hope for further integration of translated fiction into the mainstream, pointing out that it is only in the UK that foreign literature is corralled into a separate compartment from that originally written in English. In France, where a fifth of all books are published in translations, youll find Balzac and Bolzano, Calvino and Carrre on the same shelf in bookshops. Its only in the Anglosphere that it gets set apart.

That separation is in evidence in the awards world, as well as the bookshop, with the Man Booker International the biggest among a host of grants and prizes for fiction in translation. How did Croft and Lloyd-Jones decide who would take responsibility for the Tokarczuk novel that eventually went on to win? Its a matter of trust, says Tokarczuk. Im definitely not the right translator for Flights, says Lloyd-Jones, but when it came to Drive Your Plow, Olga said I should do it. She joked that, at 57, she and I are more like [the eccentric narrator] Duszejko, and, well, theres some truth in that.

A matter of trust Translators Antonia LloydJones, left, and Jennifer Croft, middle, and novelist Olga Tokarczuk.

Team Tokarczuk might be close but they are not as intimately connected as the Chinese novelist Ma Jian and his translator Flora Drew, who is also the mother of their four children. Flora is the only person who has translated my books into English. She came to interview me in Hong Kong on the eve of the handover. Her Chinese was very good, so I gave her copies of my books, and said, half-jokingly, that she could translate them into English if she liked. It was a strange thing to say, but there was feeling of destiny, says the novelist. Their most recent collaboration was on China Dream, a ferocious satire charting the mental breakdown of a corrupt local government official. It was published in English last autumn but is unlikely ever to be read in the original Chinese which Ma nevertheless regards as the master copy because censorship in China is now so extreme that even Hong Kong publishers no longer dare defy the ban that has long prevented his novels from being published on the mainland.

Ma speaks little English, so he talks through Drew in life as well as work. Is it a challenge to separate the professional from the domestic? The Ma Jian I translate is a very different entity from the Ma Jian I live with, says Drew. There is never any confusion. I never feel Im translating the words of the person Ive just had supper with, or whos just taken our children to the park. Knowing him so well though means I can in some strange way become him, and write the translation not as a friend or a translator, but as Ma would if he were writing the book in English. There are times during the translation when I feel we are having a silent conversation with each other that we dont have time for in real life. Many of his books have references to places we have been together, dreams of mine that I have told him about or things our children have said.

Relationships between writers and translators are not usually so close, and not only because they can often live thousands of miles apart. Sam Taylor, a French specialist now living in the US, is also on the Man Booker International longlist with Four Soldiers, a novella by Hubert Mingarelli set near the Romanian border in the last days of the Russian civil war. He proposed the book himself to its publisher Granta. His output in the last couple of years also includes two controversial novels, Lullaby and Adle by the Paris-based Moroccan-French writer Lela Slimani. In neither case did he meet the authors before taking on the novels. I dont remember having any direct interaction with Lela on Lullaby, although she wrote me a very nice thank you email afterwards, he says. With Adle, I had a list of about 15 questions that I sent to her after translating the book (and before revising it). She answered those questions and we exchanged a few emails.

The pairing with Slimani is particularly striking in that Taylor is male, while Slimanis work is strongly sexualised and centred on the female body. Did either of them ever question whether it might be a job for a woman? Of course not! says Slimani. Littrature is meant to be universal. I write about women but I hope men can identify with my characters. And Sam understood in a very subtle way my characters and also my style, what atmosphere I wanted to instil, what music I wanted to create with my words. It is magic when you feel that someone understands and respects your work so much. When I read my book in English I always think: thats the exact word I would have chosen.

Taylor was aware of gender as a potential issue, although, he says, neither Lela nor the books female editors ever mentioned it. In the original French, all genitalia, male or female, is called simply sexe, which is a very neutral word. There are no neutral words for genitalia in English everything tends to sound either scientific or pornographic or comical so I used the word that, in each case, seemed to best fit the context. But I didnt want to be a man imposing my viewpoint or sensibility on a female protagonist and female author, so I highlighted most of those word choices in the text and asked Lela and my editors if they thought this was the right word. I dont think any of those choices were changed or even questioned, but it seemed important to put them up for discussion.

When I read my book in English I always think: thats the exact word I would have chosen Lela Slimani, left, and Sam Taylor

A novelist as well as a translator, who fell into translation after giving up a career in journalism to write books in France, Taylor doesnt take everything he is offered. I turned down the chance to translate Michel Houellebecqs Soumission because the Charlie Hebdo attack occurred a couple of days after I received the offer. I have no regrets about that, he says (the job went to Lorin Stein, former editor of the Paris Review, who has since gone on to translate two novels by Frances new enfant terrible douard Louis).

The literatures of French and English might be different, but as Taylor points out: Most European languages (and certainly French) are underpinned by a roughly equivalent set of philosophical values and a shared history. What of those languages that are the product of cultures with little common ground? The traditional answer has been that they rarely get translated, though research commissioned by the Man Booker International prize revealed the situation to be slowly improving, with a growing demand for Chinese, Arabic, Icelandic and Polish languages.

Chinese and English are as far apart as any two languages could be, says Drew. I can read a book in French easily, but after all these years, Chinese is still a struggle there are many characters I dont know, or have forgotten, classical allusions that I miss. Chinese has no tenses and is more concise than English, so meaning is often inferred through context. But although Chinese sometimes feels like a different universe, Im always surprised by how much can be translated how images and metaphors can work across cultures.

Among the initiatives that encourage a wider range of writing in translation is the new EBRD prize, which awards 20,000 to a book from the interestingly arbitrary landmass served by its sponsor, the European Bank of Research and Development (which extends from the Baltics to central Asia and the Mediterranean countries of Africa). Last years inaugural prize went to the Kurdish/Turkish writer Burhan Snmez translated by mit Hussein. This years was won by the first Uzbek novel ever to be translated into English, The Devils Dance.

Hamid Ismailov. Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian

Its author is Hamid Ismailov, a genial 64-year-old journalist who came to London shortly after being forced to flee Uzbekistan in 1992 and has had a day job at the BBC ever since. He was matched with his translator, Donald Rayfield an emeritus professor of Russian and Georgian by a new translator-run publishing house, Tilted Axis, set up in 2015 to champion neglected languages. When I meet up with them in the BBCs London headquarters, their rapport is striking. I was the last person to choose for this, jokes Rayfield, but as the Russians say: If theres no fish, a crab will do.

Rayfield not only had to learn Uzbek to translate the novel, but had to bone up on Tartar, Farsi, Tajik and Kyrgyz as well. How many languages does Ismailov speak? When you speak Uzbek, the novelist quietly explains, you understand many Turcik langages and with Russian you can understand many Slavonic ones. He is a translator himself, working in both directions between Russian, Uzbek and various European languages. Several of his own novels have been translated from Russian into English, but the impossibility of getting an Uzbek novel by a banned writer into the hands of any readers at all inhibited his reputation in his mother tongue until the internet solved the problem for him. He published The Devils Dance in chapters on Facebook and it went viral through the Stans the five formerly Soviet countries in central Asia for whom his central character, the real-life early 20th-century writer Abdulla Qodiriy who was executed in 1938, was a hero. The pair are less forthcoming about a third name that appears on the novels title page John Farndon credited with translating the poetry in the novel. There was no conversation. I was somewhat taken aback by changes to my original translations, recalls Rayfield.

The difficult birth of The Devils Dance in English underlines the extent to which translation is not only a two-way but a three-way relationship, with the publisher the person who takes the financial risk as the third partner. Tilted Axis was set up by Deborah Smith partly with the prize money from her 2016 Man Booker International win for her translation of Korean author Han Kangs The Vegetarian. Smith made substantial cuts to The Devils Dance (though it still checks in at more than 400 pages). Her decision to bring in a poetry translator was in line with a time-honoured tradition in which a named poet works from a literal translation rather than the original.

Smith is better placed than most to understand the demands of cultural transposition: as translator of three novels by Han, she had to negotiate Korean systems of religious belief, family relationships and linguistic practice. She too learned the language specifically to translate the novels and found herself at the centre of a storm when her translation of The Vegetarian was challenged on the grounds of accuracy.

A scene where I had the main character close a door with her foot instead of her arm is one Korean academics like to bring up, she says. There were 67 [errors], by the way. I like to state that publicly in case anyone mistakenly assumes its something Id want to hide. The errors were corrected in later editions and Han Kangs faith in Smith is unshaken. Smith is currently living in South Korea and working on a novel by another female Korean novelist, Bae Suah, which is due to be published by Jonathan Cape next year. Shes not about to diversify into other languages just yet. Im trying to find different ways to spread the translation gospel: publishing, teaching, mentoring. Writing about all aspects of translation: the flow between languages, the discourse around it, all the people who make it happen.

Faithfulness, as opposed to accuracy, is always a difficult issue, as novelist Tim Parks concedes. I think theres usually a mistake of nuance on every page of every book. Sometimes scandalously so, he says. As an author and a translator he has experience in both directions, and he stresses that translators are often the best readers. I have a Dutch translator who keeps writing to me and telling me about the mistakes Ive made in my own books. It can be spelling or continuity, and shes always right. Just occasionally its really embarrassing, but people like that give you the chance to fix the next edition.

Parks has written that: The translator should do his job and then disappear. The great, charismatic, creative writer wants to be all over the globe. And the last thing he wants to accept is that the majority of his readers are not really reading him. His readers feel the same. They want intimate contact with true greatness. They dont want to know that this prose was written on survival wages in a maisonette in Bremen, or a high-rise flat in the suburbs of Osaka. Which kid wants to hear that her JK Rowling is actually a chain-smoking pensioner?

But translators fall into different camps, described by New Yorker critic James Wood as originalists and activists: The former honor the original texts quiddities, and strive to reproduce them as accurately as possible in the translated language; the latter are less concerned with literal accuracy than with the transposed musical appeal of the new work, he wrote. Any decent translator must be a bit of both. Or, as the cultural critic Marina Warner has put it: Should a translator respond like an aeolian harp, vibrating in harmony with the original text to transmit the original music, or should the translation read as if it were written in the new language?

The biggest disagreement we had was whether to use the word bathroom or lavatory Jay Rubin and Haruki Murakami

Its obviously a simplification, but I imagine I would be closer to the activist side of the spectrum, says Taylor, whose less aeolian approach set him at odds with one French writer, Maylis de Kerangal. Her novels French title was Rparer les Vivants, and Taylor called his translation The Heart, while the Canadian poet and translator Jessica Moore chose the more literal Mend the Living for this story of the day in the life of a donated heart as it is rushed from one person to another. The translations were commissioned simultaneously by editors in the UK and the US, and both won awards (Mend the Living scooped the Wellcome prize while The Heart won the French-American Foundation prize) but De Kerangal has ruled that Moores is more faithful to her writing and she should therefore do all her future novels: It is so fascinating to see what choices were made at every turn. The opening sentence, for example, feels completely different to me in our versions, says Moore. Even the dead boys surname is different, though interestingly its Taylor who kept De Kerangals Limbres, while Moore went for Limbeau.

According to another busy translator, Frank Wynne, problems often arise when a writer thinks they have a better command of English than they actually do. One of his worst experiences was with French film director Claude Lanzmann who was hugely intrusively involved in the translation of his 2012 memoir The Patagonian Hare. He binned the original Italian translation and redid mine line by line. He insisted on using the phrase leonine contract to mean a contract in which one person took the lions share. I didnt in the end meet him and it might have been useful if I had, so that hed gone into it with more of a sense of trust.

A translator from both French and Spanish who had novels in both languages on the longlist of last years Man Booker International and is currently based in Mexico Wynnes relationships with writers tend to be brisk. Some dont reply at all. The trouble is the more successful a writer is, the more languages there are. One of his top-selling authors, the French crime novelist Pierre Lemaitre, deals with the problem by collating questions from all his 35-40 translators into a round-robin crib sheet.

Jay Rubin, one of the four translators who have made the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami into an English language superstar, says he learned early on to correspond sparingly. The worst thing I did was with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I got together with him in Tokyo and drove him absolutely crazy for a whole day giving him little questions one after another. This is not a very kind thing to do to an author.

Rubin co-translated the book Bird Chronicle with Philip Gabriel, because it ran to three volumes, and its length defeated him. Did they collaborate? The biggest disagreement we had was whether to use the word bathroom or lavatory. (Murakami ruled in favour of bathroom.) But, he says, All of us stick pretty closely to the tone and style of Murakamis writing, and thanks in large part to the simplicity of his style, the voice is pretty consistent. There arent that many ways to say Sunday was another fine clear day.

If that sounds like damning with faint praise, the compliment was returned by Murakami, when he wrote the introduction to a well-received recent anthology of Japanese short stories edited by Rubin, which Rubin himself then translated. Some [stories], of course, could be characterized as representative works, but, frankly, they are far outnumbered by stories which are not, wrote the novelist. How did that make Rubin feel? I giggled when I read that frankly, he says. But youre getting the unvarnished Murakami view of the book.

Some of his dialect I intuited. Other terms, rife with violence and obscenity, he politely translated into Italian for me Jhumpa Lahiri on Domenico Starnone

For Ann Goldstein, translating a more recent superstar, Elena Ferrante, there was no such back and forth. She had no direct contact with the author, whose true identity is a closely guarded secret. She was chosen on submission of a sample translation of a previous Ferrante novel, and corresponds with her on email via her publisher. Though the novels themselves werent written in Neapolitan dialect, the dialogue in the HBO TV adaptation partially scripted by Ferrante is. My role has been translating them so that HBO can read them, says Goldstein.

Just how difficult Neapolitan can be, even to someone steeped in Italian, became clear to the author Jhumpa Lahiri when she took on two novels by another of the southern Italian citys writers, Domenico Starnone. Lahiri moved from the US to Rome and dedicated herself to writing in the language of her host country, the progress of which she documented in a fascinating bilingual book, In Other Words. Immersion in standard Italian didnt prepare her for some of Starnones language though. Some of his dialect I intuited. Other terms, rife with violence and obscenity, were politely translated into Italian for me by Starnone himself, she has said. Lahiris working relationship with Starnone is a passionate cross-cultural conversation, which for their latest collaboration, Trick, took in Kafka and Henry James. At a public launch in London last year, an overawed fan asked if it was necessary to know so much. Not at all, replied Lahiri. For most readers, its just a story of a grandfather left in charge of his four-year-old grandson.

Starnone is now going to translate Lahiris English introduction for the Italian edition of her new Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories. But she is saving the biggest challenge for herself: the English translation of her own first novel written in Italian. Dove mi trovo has already been published in several other languages. The idea of my own creation in Italian not having a life in English yet is interesting, she says. The problem is: how do I turn myself back on myself? Mentally I have to go into a place where Im two people. Is self-translation the most intimate relationship between a writer and a translator? Perhaps not. In Chinese, says Ma Jian, a soul mate is described as zhiyin someone who understands your music and that is what Flora is to me.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us

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