Joaquim Mallafrè (Reus, 1941) is the great translator of James Joyce's Ulysses into Catalan, yes, but not only that: other classics have passed through his hands such as some plays by Samuel Beckett or the work of Laurence Sterne, of whom he just to review the translation of Vida i opinions by Tristram Shandy (Navona) and a few months ago Un viatge sentimental per França i Itàlia (Adesiara) was republished, in addition to many other books, also for children and young people. We visited him at his house, in Reus, a city where he has lived all his life and where last year he was named an illustrious son.
He started translating because he wanted to learn the language, while now translators do it because they know how.
Yes, I have experienced the change from relatively amateur translators to professionals, and before, although not in English or French, there were many indirect translations, based on another translation.
It was another time.
If we don't count the languages more at hand, there were more indirect translations, but for example Joan Sales did good translations of Russian works without knowing Russian. Sometimes, if one has several translations to compare, translations can be made that are fine without a great deal of knowledge of the original language. Ezra Pound translated from languages he didn’t even know, but instead took many other translations into account.
They say that classics often have to be retranslated.
I don't know if I agree. The version of the Divine Comedy by Andreu Febrer (from 1429) is very close to the original and is very interesting, and has things that Sagarra or Mira do not surpass. Sagarra sagarrea, yes, but he makes masterful adaptations.
What is lost on one side is gained on the other?
Yes. Sagarra has an impressive sense of rhythm, he has modern music, and he is effective. On the other hand, in general, Josep Carner is more outdated as a translator, because he has an old and not very ductile language left. You cannot make linguistic models by translating, you have to take advantage of what is there to turn it into regulations.
Why did you feel the need to translate?
First of all it was to learn more English. I went to England as a reader and started doing it. At the same time, when you don't know how to write your own work, you take the works of others, and normally I have been lucky enough to translate things that I liked, rather than on assignment, but I have never felt obliged by deadlines or by works. .
He was able to do it calmly because he worked as a teacher...
Evidently. A literary translator must work hard to earn a living. Deep down, I am not a professional translator.
But he has translated and taught translation, not quantum physics!
Okay, but I don't come from the world of professional translation like, say, Dolors Udina or Xavier Pàmies, who really translate and do it very well. I was a teacher and I also translated, which was still a hobby at a certain time.
Maybe some works are not worth it if it is not as a hobby?
Of course, if it were to make a living, it would be bad. I have no complaints, but with the translations I have done I would not have supported my family. I suppose it all comes from a sociolinguistic situation, from considering the fact of Catalan in current Spanish society.
He had to learn.
Literature has a series of records, and when necessary I have also consulted books on science or navigation, or engineering, which I have no idea about, but I asked for advice from people who knew. The meaning of the target language also counts a lot. Sometimes you don't even need to know the source language in detail, but you do need to have a certain instinct that shows affinities of things. Translating, sometimes I see that a certain unity of themes, be it love, be it exile, be the double, as for example, Don Quixote and Sancho, or Bloom and Stephen, in the case of Ulysses. In Tristram Shandy there is also a whole series of dualities, between Trim and her master, the idea of the knight and the servant has always had a certain literary interest.
Where did the interest in complex works such as Tristram Shandy or Ulysses come from?
Dr. José María Valverde told us about them in university classes. He was an extraordinary man and professor, and from his classes and his History of Universal Literature I learned about some of these works.
That Ulysses was banned also mattered.
It was one more incentive, and as if we were saying everything that was not Father Coloma was prohibited... In the movie The Dance of the Damned, they beat Montgomery Clift's character because he reads Ulysses, which was also prohibited in the United States. .and even in Russia. These are things that motivate you when you are young, with a taste for forbidden things.
First he read it in French.
Because I didn't know enough English to read it. And then, the Spanish translation by José Salas Subirat, South American, and at the end the English original. Ulysses is the last great work of the Gutenberg galaxy, or one of them, and then... the flood, as they say. There are other important works, but not with this mastery of the language. And certain coincidences in the language thing, Irish and English in Ireland, and Catalan and Spanish here, which means that they have appreciated this aspect of my translations. A peripheral fact that is clearer in the Galician or Catalan translations.
For example?
That I translate the ciutadà is one thing, and that in Spanish the paisano is translated by the same figure is very different, and it is a single word. On the other hand, the Spanish translation was quite good.
Tristram Shandy, now published in revision, is a work from 1767 and read today is still quite experimental.
There are several experiments, yes. There are literary visions that break the Western tradition that are a break, following and knowing the tradition, of course. Tristram Shandy is one, Ulysses another, like the Baron of Münchhausen or Kafka in German.
Tristram Shandy is a widely cited but not widely read work...
Because people like a literature of beginning, middle and end, we are marked by Aristotle and the units of time and place, and that is not the case here.
Are your tastes as a translator the same as a reader?
There is a certain affinity, but above all there is a love and interest in language, in language games, that ability of language to express various things. When Sterne talks about mustaches, for example, it's great because he's not really talking about mustaches but about other things.
Is that why he has a mustache?
Ha ha ha! The thing is that he also talks about noses without talking about noses... There are many double meanings. It is an intelligent literature, which plays a lot with wit and which makes some people not interested, who perhaps want a story in the style of Dickens, and well, I am also interested in Dickens, but I am also interested in these works that really They advance literature. There are great authors of the 18th century who have been forgotten, and there are some very important experiments in literature although sometimes it is seen as an academic century, there is Sterne, but also the Marquis de Sade, for example. Romanticism, against what they say is the result of rebellion, is sometimes much more conservative. The Spanish picaresque, for example, is groundbreaking and greatly influences English literature, as does Don Quixote, and on the other hand, there are works that are very good but that are within a bourgeois or righteous tradition that do not interest me as much.
Did Sterne have a lot of influence in Catalonia?
Quite. Josep Pla was very interested in it and some of his descriptions remind me a lot of some passages in the novel, such as a description of a cathedral, or some of the Planian digressions in travel texts.
Were you not surprised to be the first to translate these works?
I don't know, because curiously, for example, there is an early reception of Joyce here, what happens is that they are small nuclei, deep down this is a small country. Before the war there was a greater influence than after, of course.
But no one began to translate them.
Well, Mosén Manuel Trens had translated a part of Ulysses, he was attentive to what was out there. Then came the war and repression, which meant an important cut. But Catalonia is a land of translators and there have been important translations, such as those of Carles Riba. Due to the fact that for a time there was no possibility of personal creation, translation has been a way for many authors. Few languages should have as many Shakespeare translations as Catalan.
Would you have liked to write your own work?
I would have liked it, but with what I have translated I have already seen that it is not necessary to make a fool of yourself, I don't think it would contribute anything. Each one is simply made for certain things.
What are your favorite books, as a translator?
I have been lucky enough to always translate things that I like, and I try to do it as well as I can. In the same way that one can learn another language, one can also learn another way of seeing society.
When you review works like Tristram Shandy, do you go back to the original and do the whole process again?
I review everything, but in general I don't make many changes, beyond a word or a nuance that I see that I hadn't translated well. For example, in Ulysses at the beginning Buck Mulligan in some edition was rabassut and now he is rodanxó... Details that you refine, or that you have overlooked, that too. The funny thing today is that there is a huge amount of critical apparatus, I can consult 200 sources between books and articles.
Will the reader who rereads Tristram Shandy find much difference?
I don't think a reader will go page by page looking for the changes, which are generally not significant.
Catalan version, here
