My translation of “Bloody Awful in Different Ways” is just one reading of many possible readings of the fantastic Swedish novel titled “Jävla karlar” by Andrev Walden. My approach was led by certain expectations from the commissioners (at first Andrev’s foreign rights agents, later my London publisher) and conventions in the world of fiction. But it’s also led by my own conscious and unconscious biases, my taste, my sense of humour, which side of bed I got out of, and so on.
In a different set of circumstances and on a different day, my reading and thus my translation could have been very different. Any one of a hundred colleagues might have taken on the job instead and delivered their reading of the original. What’s exciting is that having delivered my draft, a whole new reading experience begins. My superb editor Ella noticed something that had passed me by.
In almost all instances, there is a nice pattern whereby nicknames don’t use the definite article (e.g. Little Cloud, Fish Lips, Cyclops…), apart from the nicknames for the fathers, which do (e.g. The Plant Magician, The Murderer…). I’d love to maintain this pattern if we can – is there an alternative nickname that might work for the Greek?
How hadn’t I noticed this? What a beautiful little pattern in a book marked by its patterns and repetitions. Two of Andrev’s playground pals (Greken and Spanjoren in the original Swedish, pencilled in my first delivered draft as ‘the Greek’ and ‘the Spaniard’) needed to change names. There followed brainstorming in the margins before we approached Andrev himself to ask for permission.
I have some doubts about the nicknames Moussaka and Paella but these doubts are mostly founded in the fact that I never once saw these boys eat moussaka or paella in real life. The readers however, won’t be troubled by this fact so let’s call them Moussaka and Paella.
Thus we secured Andrev’s blessing to make the change, and the Greek and the Spaniard became Moussaka and Paella (no definite article, see) in order to preserve that pattern. Personally, I was sorry my own tilt to name the Greek ‘Spanakopita’ had failed…