Beginnings

It’s Friday, May 27, 2022, and I’m sitting at a Vietnamese restaurant across from my flat, getting fried spring rolls and coconut water. I didn’t plan to come here, but I’m feeling so tired, and it’s just the kind of a day for a treat. A group of older women sits at the table next to me, making it almost impossible for me to focus on my own words because theirs are that much more interesting. There is some precious advice to be found in listening to them. Like, if you need eye surgery in old age, do just one eye – it’s cheaper, and you only need one eye anyway.

I wonder what the ladies would tell me if I asked them for advice on my newest venture. Apparently, I’ve decided to enter the publishing industry. Alongside becoming an editor for a linguistics journal (RGG), I’d like to finally start working with fiction books. (My 7-year-old me is rolling her eyes, asking me why it took so long for me to figure out what she knew so well.)

Coming out of 26 years of schooling, with the last 6 years spent doing a Ph.D., I’m somewhat uncertain what kind of future I want to build for myself now, outside of academics. Since I’m not the best when it comes to commitment, I’m all over the place. In the past few days, I flew the flag of an editorial manager for a linguistics journal, I worked on designing a website for the association behind the journal, I did some poetry writing (and some dreaming of different possibilities of reciting them beyond just the mere old standing in front of the public, talking, and not knowing what to do with my hands), I worked on an app to teach Czech for foreigners, successfully avoided searching for a job, faked being a cleaning lady and got an offer to be a professional (read: paid) accountability partner. Phew, what a sentence. Sorry about that. You still here? insert a clicker here and in the beginning to get actual feedback on if people are willing to read these perverse sentences

Finally, I also did the thing that made me start this blog – I worked on my first ever book translation. And that sounds much fancier than it actually is because the fact is no one hired me. Yet.

While doing the finishing touches on my dissertation (written in Latex), I was compiling the 200+ pages over and over again, always having to wait for the compilation to finish. Obviously, I got bored waiting, and one of the things I did in the meantime was my Anki flashcards for French. I’m no longer sure about the thought process following that but saying it more eloquently than how it probably happened, it was something like this: French. Oh, look, my favorite book on the shelf above my bed. How pretty. Going to France soon. Must buy the French translation. Do they keep the literal translation of the title (unlike in German)? They do, nice. I wonder how it’s translated in Czech. Wait, it’s not? It’s not translated into any other language than French and German? What is wrong with this world??? book gets taken from the shelf, and the translating starts immediately, forgetting about my dissertation for at least an hour

And that’s how my translation of The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune started.

For about a day or two after submitting my dissertation, my life suddenly became more open than the mind of Magrat Garlick. I was waking up with the thought that – after a year of it being with me every day – I don’t have to write my dissertation. Crazy stuff. The feeling of freedom led to me yearning to do some creative stuff – and continuing with the translation seemed like an obvious and a very desired option. I soon needed to start searching for a job anyway. While I wasn’t putting much hope into someone wanting to hire me for translating anything, not to mention translating this book, I couldn’t have imagined anything better and figured that if I’m gonna do a fucking good job, maybe I won’t give them a chance to turn me down? I’m not a translator by training. Professionally, I’m a linguist. In my free time, I’m a language lover, a reader, a writer, and a people observer. I dare to think, though, that my fascination with words and stories would make me a good translator. So I stuck with the translation, and I want to go through the whole process of putting together the best example text I can and offering it up to whatever bosses are there next in this dungeon of getting a translation published.

Since I really don’t know how these things work and would like to keep notes, I decided (read: was recommended) to put them together in a blog and share them with the world. Who knows, maybe the things I’ll learn on the way will be of help (or at least interest) also to other people than me.