Contact Me about My Services
Social-Sciences Translation
My social-sciences translations, with a focus on sociology, anthropology, and political science (especially political theory) aim to be as limpid and direct as these disciplines from around the world tend to be—not that I operate under the illusion that social fact amounts to material fact. On that note, I must say that eight years of translating scholarly prose academically with a graduate school grounding in translation theory, has made me hyperaware of social custom. For instance, it is inescapable that English readers do not tolerate repetition of words nearly as much as readers of other languages, notably French and Russian.
Translatees include (papers by) Chowra Makaremi (anthropology), Sylvie Matelly (geopolitics and security), and Gisèle Halimi (women’s studies), Tristan Dagron (history of metaphysics) and, poised at the limits of what the French call the human sciences, feminist advocacy). You can read my translation of a Humanité interview with Henri Sterdyniak about the state of the Spanish welfare state here. I have translated an enormous number of abstracts for papers from the sociology of information alone, perhaps more than nearly any other human in the world. In recent years, I have also incidentally delighted in taking the opportunity to enroll in several free open-enrollment university courses from around the world to brush up on specific social-science topics like counterterrorism.
Literary-Studies Translation
Literary-studies translation is a peculiar beast. Scholars of novels and poetry and film often use the most rarefied and exquisite terms of art and turns of phrase. The resulting translation may preserve keywords but radically transform content in a quest to preserve the author’s style and intentions. It is often an important consideration that the shape of a source language is important to scholars in a destination language. I strive to strike a balance between preserving form and closing a linguistic contract with readers; it is ludicrous to present a new audience with unalloyed gobbledygook or, to use an expression popular in Paris in the late eighteenth century, galimatias. At the same time, it is just as ludicrous to alter foreign concepts themselves as the translators of late eighteenth-century Paris once did, so that their idea of the correct Frenchness could be attained.
It could very well be I have translated more literary-studies abstracts from French into English than anyone else in the world. My favorite translation subjects include: process theology; Cosmism; the history of sacred texts; the history of the French book and the French publishing industry in the nineteenth century, literary-theory texts with aspirations to Continental philosophy; and the history of the francophone and russophone avant-gardes from Romanticism and Decadence onward. Translatees include Henri Bergson,…Stéphane Mosès (historical linguistics) and Stéphane Haber (studies in Critical Theory).
Read my critique of two of Georges Perec’s novels, which includes several Perecquian constraints, as per the wishes of my editor at Full Stop.
Self-Help/Spirituality
If only self-help translation were the simplest translation I do. This kind of literature, whether in Russian, English, French or another language is normally straightforward and positive. But it takes quite a bit of effort in advance to grok the logic of an inspirational work. It is therefore important to work with a creator or facilitator or even a tradition like the Jesuit treatise to get the tone and idioms of a self-help document right so that people in a new culture grasp it and can apply its lessons to their own lives.
Marketing
+Transcreation
Transcreation is at the heart of my career. Sometimes my projects really do involve that proverbial switching of metaphors from UK English to get an idea through a US English audience. I have been able to tell quite a few clients dealing in luxury goods and other retail niches: This idea sounds palatable to Americans. Or: most Americans would not understand this slogan. And often with much less research and introspection: This marketing approach does not make sense to me.
Fiction Translation
How do I translate a novel or prose poem? Sometimes everything must change so everything can stay the same. I learned that years ago when I translated an eighteenth-century memoir that I’m not supposed to talk about for a discreet client. See Active Pitches for a list of the books I have translated or are in progress—all of which deserve to be read by anglophone readers.
Incidentally, my own fiction can be found in journals like Hobart Pulp and ExPat Press.
Research
I have extensive in-country knowledge from France, Belgium, Russia, and other ex-Warsaw Pact Eastern European countries in particular after spending close to two years of my life outside my native US. My formative experience was an English teacher in France is not unrelated to my general thirst for gigs in intercultural communication. This general inclination of mine as an adult has led me, to offer just a few examples, to short-term work in language curriculum development for projects designed to help learners of Ukrainian, Polish, West African French, Latin American Spanish, Thai, Indonesian, and Tagalog. Let’s talk.