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, whose translation of Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy (Navona) has just been revised and a sentimental journey through France and Italy (Adesiara) was reissued a few months ago, as well as many other books, also for children and young people . We visit him at his home, in Reus, the city where he has lived all his life and which last year named him an illustrious son.
He started translating because he wanted to learn the language, whereas now translators do it because they know it.
Yes, I have experienced the change from relatively amateur to professional translators, and the fact is that before, although not in English or French, there were many indirect translations, based on another translation.
It was another era.
If we don't count the languages more accessible, there were more indirect translations, but for example Joan Sales made good translations of Russian works without knowing Russian. Sometimes, if one has several translations at hand to compare, one can make translations that are fine without much knowledge of the original language. Ezra Pound translated from languages he didn't even know, but instead had many other translations in mind.
They say that the classics must be retranslated often.
I don't know if I agree. The version of La divina comédia 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 sagarreja, 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, has modern music, and is effective. On the other hand, in general Josep Carner is indeed more outdated, as a translator, because he is left with an old and inflexible language. You can't make linguistic models by translating, you have to take advantage of what's there to turn it into regulations.
Why did you feel the need to translate?
First it was to learn more English. I went to England as a reader and got involved. At the same time, when you don't know how to write your own work, you take other people's works, and I've usually been lucky enough to translate things that I liked, rather than commissions, but I've never felt obliged either by deadlines, or by works.
He dedicated himself to it calmly because he worked as a teacher...
Obviously. A literary translator has to work hard to earn a living. I am not really 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, people who really translate and do it very well. I was a teacher and, on top of that, I translated, which was still a hobby at a certain point.
Some works may not be worth it if it is not as a hobby?
And so, obviously, if it was to earn my living, bad luck. I have no complaints about it, but with the translations I have done I would not have supported the family. I suppose that all of this comes from a sociolinguistic situation, from considering the fact of Catalan in current Spanish society.
He had to learn it the hard way.
Literature has a whole series of records, and when necessary I have also consulted books on science or navigation, engineering, which I have no idea about, but I asked for advice from people who knew. The sense of the arrival language also counts a lot. Sometimes you don't even need to know the starting language in detail, but you do have a certain instinct that shows affinities between things. Translating, sometimes I see that a certain unity of themes, be it love, be it exile, be it 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 the Trim and his 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 it in university classes. He was an extraordinary man and teacher, and from his classes and his History of Universal Literature I got to know some of these works.
The fact that Ulysses was banned also weighed.
It was another incentive, and it's as if we were saying everything that wasn't Padre Coloma was forbidden... In the film The Dance of the Damned, Montgomery Cliff's character is beaten for reading Ulysses, which was also forbidden in the USA and Russia and everything. These are things that when you are young, with a taste for forbidden things, motivate.
He first 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 finally the English original. Ulysses is the last great work of the Gutenberg galaxy, or one of them, and then... the deluge, as they say. There are other important works, but not with this mastery of the language. And some coincidences in terms of language, Irish and English in Ireland, and Catalan and Spanish here, which makes them appreciate this aspect of my translations. A peripheral fact that is clearer in the Galician or Catalan translations.
For example?
For me to translate citizen is one thing, and for Spanish to translate paisano 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 revised, is a work of 1767 and read today is still quite experimental.
There are several experiments, yes. There are groundbreaking literary visions within the Western tradition that are a rupture within the tradition, following it and knowing it, yes. Tristram Shandy is one, Ulysses another, like the Baron of Münchhausen or Kafka in German.
Tristram Shandy is a much quoted but not widely read work...
Because people like a literature of beginning, knot and denouement, we are marked by Aristotle and the units of time and place, and that is not the case here.
Are your translator tastes the same as your reader?
There is a certain affinity, but above all there is a love and interest in language, in language games, this ability of language to express various things. When Sterne talks about moustaches, for example, it's great, because he's not really talking about moustaches, he's talking about other things.
Is that why you have a mustache?
Ha, ha, ha! It's just that he also talks about noses without talking about noses... There are many double meanings. It's clever literature, it plays a lot with the wit and it makes some people not interested, who maybe want a Dickens-style story, and well, I'm interested in Dickens too, but I also 'they are interested in these works that really 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 very much like an academic century, there is Sterne, but also the Marquis de Sade, for example. Romanticism, against which they say it is the result of rebellion, is sometimes much more conservative. The Spanish picaresque, for example, is groundbreaking and has a great influence on 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 well-meaning tradition that do not interest me so much .
Did Sterne have much influence in Catalonia?
strength Josep Pla talks about it, he was very interested and some of his descriptions remind me a lot of some passages from the novel, like a description of a cathedral, or some of Plan's digressions in travel texts.
Would you like 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 myself, I don't think it would contribute anything. Everyone 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. Just as one can learn another language, one can also learn another way of looking at society.
When you revise works like Tristram Shandy do you go back to the original and do the whole process again?
I check everything, but generally I don't make many changes, beyond a word or a nuance that I see that I didn't translate well. For example, in Ulysses at the beginning Boc Mulligan said in some edition that it was rabassut and now it's a slice... Things with a lot of detail that you refine, or that you have overlooked, which are also there. The funny thing today is that there is an enormous amount of critical equipment, 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.
