Larissa Kyzer is a translator’s translator, which is to say that in addition to her award-winning work as an Icelandic to English literary translator, Kyzer has firmly immersed herself in the international translation community, and is dedicated to creating space within the industry to “actively invite more people, more voices in.” As co-chair of the PEN Translation Committee, in 2019, Kyzer launched the Jill! reading series, a bi-monthly event highlighting the work of women and non-binary translators and authors. Following Larissa’s recent stint as Translator-in-Residence at Princeton University, we corresponded about the origins of Jill!, translator visibility, sneaking Icelandic words into English texts, and why translating Kristín Eiríksdóttir’s outstanding novel, A Fist or a Heart, felt like a “gift.”
—Sarah Timmer Harvey, January 2020
Sarah Timmer Harvey (STH): Your translation of Kristín Eiríksdóttir’s novel, A Fist or a Heart, was awarded the American-Scandinavian Foundation’s Nadia Christensen Translation Prize in 2019, and was included in Library Journal’s Best Books of 2019. What drew you to Kristín’s writing?
Larissa Kyzer (LK): Although I’d long been a fan of Kristín’s work, getting the opportunity to translate it feels more like kismet. I’d read her first novel, Hvítfeld (White Fur) as a student at the University of Iceland—it’s still one of my favorite Icelandic books—and I also loved her collection Doris deyr (Doris Dies) so much that early on in my translation studies, I attempted to translate her short story “Evelyn Hates Her Name” just for the fun of it. At the time, however, that was still beyond my capabilities. For one, my language skills weren’t up to snuff yet, but more than that, I also just really had no idea how to even get started translating something in earnest.
Fast forward a few years to when I was finally starting to get my professional feet under me and was asked by the Icelandic publisher Forlagið to translate a sample of A Fist or a Heart for the upcoming Frankfurter Buchmesse. The sample really caught people’s attention, and I was lucky that Gabriella Page-Fort at AmazonCrossing was willing to take the leap and allow me, still an emerging translator, to translate the whole book. Since then, I’ve translated a couple of Kristín’s poems, as well as two short stories—including, I’m proud to say, that same short story that not so long ago felt like a nearly impossible challenge!
But to get to the point: I love Kristín’s writing and feel like my own writing style, which necessarily comes through in my translations, really gels with hers, even though we write in very different ways. I sometimes say that translating an author whose work doesn’t quite click for you can feel like putting on a wet sweater—it’s doable, of course, but it feels scratchy and heavy and uncomfortable. But when you translate someone whose work and style really meshes with your own sensibilities, it’s this all-enveloping blanket that you just want to wrap yourself up in. And that’s how I feel about translating Kristín.
STH: Did Kristín contribute to the translation process?
LK: Absolutely! Kristín and I worked very closely on this translation. I strongly believe that translation is a collaboration, whether it be, as my fellow translator Jeremy Tiang has articulated it, between the translator and text or the translator and the author. My experience working with Kristín was foundational in helping me think more deeply about how this process can and should look, in understanding how to balance my own deeply held convictions about a book and my translation of it with the author’s natural feelings of ownership about how their work manifests in a different language—particularly one that they speak fluently.
Kristín and I discovered very early on that we worked well with one another and could have productive conversations about how we wanted the English translation to take shape. Tone was very important to her; a point she made early on was that the book felt funnier to her in Icelandic and Danish than it did in English, where to her, the main character felt more melodramatic. We worked a lot, therefore, on tweaking Elín’s vocabulary and phrasings, allowing her to be sarcastic and occasionally crass, simplifying the syntax and taking out adjectives or qualifiers that somehow felt too intense for her wry, somber personality. (The word “extremely” is an example of this—Kristín said it simply wasn’t a word in Elín’s vocabulary.)
The book had been out in Iceland for two years when English foreign rights were sold. As such, Kristín had had time to step away from the text and was viewing it from much more of a distance than I was, having only just read it prior to beginning my translation. I was very attached to this novel from the get-go and felt that I was working with a modern classic, maybe even a masterpiece of sorts. Kristín, however, was eager to have the opportunity to make changes to her original text, changes that, to me, felt rather substantial and not always for the better.
As such, I often found myself asking her to reconsider this or that excision, explaining ways in which phrasings or passages that she found irrelevant or ill-conceived were actually integral to the book in some meaningful way. Our working process was generally as follows: I’d complete a section of the novel—fifty pages, five or six chapters—and then send it to her with questions and comments in tracked changes. Kristín would then review the draft and send back answers, as well as a list of changes that she wanted to see made. I’d then implement the changes I agreed with and send back another document with detailed explanations of either why I didn’t think the others she suggested would work, or why I didn’t think they were good choices for the novel. At this point, we’d figure out a time to sit down on Facebook messenger and hash things out.
This was an interesting dynamic for both of us, I think, and a delicate balance to strike. And, of course, the bottom line is that if she had really wanted to assert total control over the text, she could have. She could have demanded that all her changes be accepted, made a direct appeal to the publisher. But she didn’t. We came to the understanding that we both have a deep instinct for our mother tongues, instincts for tone and register and nuance that really complimented one another. This formed the basis of a deep trust and so she allowed me to make my case in instances where I did not want to accept a change she had suggested. Sometimes, she’d “win,” and sometimes, I would.
STH: A Fist or a Heart is set in the theatre world; Elín works as a prop-maker for theatre and film, and your translation of this particular milieu is so beautifully rendered. As I was reading it, following the characters as they scrambled behind the scenes to pull together a stage production, I was reminded of how similar this is to the work of the translator. A translated novel is often the result of months, if not years, of the translator working behind the scenes to produce a flawless translation of the original text, work that is frequently underappreciated by the reader in the same way that a prop-maker or set designer’s role is regularly overlooked by the theatre audience. Can you relate to this?
LK: I’ve never thought of translation like this before, but I like the metaphor, not least because props and stage design are actually some of the most tangible aspects of a stage production—they’re literally visible to the audience in a way that stage direction is not, but if they’re working well, you often don’t really think about them. Translator visibility is a funny thing—on the one hand, you (I) don’t want to make a translation “about you”; arguably, the whole point is to be a vehicle for someone else, for their writing and work. At the same time translation is a deeply creative, active process to me, so it feels weird to regularly be asked things like: “Don’t you want to do your own writing?”, and to still be having regular conversations with people about “loss” in translation, about why it is that translators are necessary at all when so many people in the world—in my case, Icelanders—are fluent in English.
What we do as translators does often seem to fade into the scenery because people often don’t realize what an enormous part translation plays in the everyday world. I’m thankful for the fundamental visibility I’ve been given by the people (authors, publishers, other translators) I’ve worked with; just being named is a big deal. I was over the moon when I found out that A Fist or a Heart would have my name (prominently) on the cover—it’s definitely not a given.
STH: The title of your translation is quite a significant departure from the Icelandic original, which I understand was something like “Elín, Miscellaneous.” Titles are such an important part of the translation process, can you give some insight into your decision to title the translation A Fist or a Heart?
LK: Credit for the (excellent) English title must go to Kristín. I love the original title, which, yes, can be translated as “Elín, miscellaneous.” That’s taken from a label scribbled on a cardboard box of the main character’s forgotten old belongings, and I think it really captures the feeling of accumulation in the novel—all of these memories and experiences gathered together in a sort of associative, nonchronological way that maybe don’t make a lot of sense when looked at separately, but all together, comprise a life. The title in English was originally supposed to simply be Misc., which I liked, but Kristín, in particular, wasn’t all that enthusiastic about it, and there was a valid concern that it wasn’t quite as impactful as it could be. It’s a very cerebral, internal novel, yes, but it also has a lot of heft and physicality that wasn’t coming across. So Kristín and I spent a fair amount of time batting around various (mostly terrible) ideas for new titles. Then one night, out of the blue, she came up with A Fist or a Heart, which is taken from a moment in the book when the younger protagonist, Ellen, starts finding her voice as a writer:
The change wasn’t immediate, not before page twenty, and then all of a sudden, she noticed something in her surroundings, an unusually sharp stillness, or the northern lights over the bay. The attentiveness was new, cut through her apathy, and she kept writing, wrote until there was space. About the size of a fist or a heart, and she breathed differently.
I loved this title immediately. To me, it’s arresting and tactile and gets at some of the competing tensions within the characters—a defensiveness born of bitter experience that’s at odds with a genuine desire to be loved and understood, to connect with other people.
STH: Are there any elements of the Icelandic language that you like to see reflected in your English-language translations?
LK: I’ll admit that I do have a weakness for periodically sneaking untranslated Icelandic words into my translations, which I do for a handful of reasons. For one, I love the look of them, and I think there’s some (mild) value in exposing American readers to unfamiliar words and making them grapple with the tiniest bit of discomfort in the name of basic cultural awareness. (Here I’m thinking of the American tendency to not even try to pronounce names or foreign words that you’re unsure about.) There are also a lot of readers for whom having just the faintest dash of the original language in the text feels like a pleasant bit of armchair traveling. Another reason I’ll sometimes leave Icelandic in the English translation is that there are some words that feel so uniquely Icelandic—so séríslensk, if I allow myself to be a bit twee here—that it’s hard to let go of them and use a more cobbled together phrase in their place. Filler expressions tend to fall under this category, or words for things that feel somehow culturally rooted. Kjammi, half a boiled sheep’s head that is famously served up at the drive-through window of the BSÍ bus station in Reykjavík, is an example of a word I kept untranslated in a text, and I’ve also been known to use family words like mamma (mom), pabbi (dad), amma (grandma), and afi (grandpa), particularly in kids’ books, as these are easily understandable, emotionally resonant, and kids are also pretty flexible when it comes to encountering the unfamiliar in writing.
To the extent that it’s possible, I also sometimes try to retain Icelandic syntactical structures or phrasings, usually as a way of retaining a particular rhythm or aspect of an author’s writing style. (A fellow translator recently commented on my use of adverbs in A Fist or a Heart, which I realized was less a conscious style choice on my part and more a feature of the way that things are just naturally worded in Icelandic.) In such cases, the ‘Icelandic-ness’ is maybe less readily visible to the reader, but still hopefully comes across in a subtler way.
STH: In 2019 you started Jill! which is a bi-monthly translation reading series for women/non-binary translators. Can you tell me more about this?
LK: The idea for Jill! grew out of an interest, both on my part and that of fellow translators, to extend the reach of Women in Translation (WiT) month, which takes place annually in August. WiT was started by blogger Meytal Radzinski in 2014 to highlight gender bias in the publishing of translations. The background, in short, is that far fewer books by women get translated than books by men. Furthermore, books by women in translation also get far less review coverage, awards nominations, and bookstore promotion. As a result, these books have a harder time making it into readers’ hands.
Upon returning to New York and joining the PEN America translation committee, I met Czech translator Alex Zucker who has been co-organizing WiT readings in August every year. Last year, we realized that there were more than enough willing translators to justify a second WiT reading, so I decided to organize one myself. It was, I’m happy to say, a huge success, and got me thinking: Why restrict ourselves to only highlighting WiT in August? And indeed, whenever I mentioned the idea of a dedicated WiT reading series to another translator, their response was immediately enthusiastic. (One such supporter of the idea was Spanish translator Suzanne Jill Levine, whose work I truly admire and whose zest I find delightful and infectious—hence the series’s exclamation-pointed name: Jill!)
In the course of organizing that first reading, I compiled a list of translators’ recommended WiT reads. It was a huge undertaking—one hundred and forty-seven recommendations come from thirty-three languages and (roughly) sixty places around the world. Many of them include personalized recommendations. And just by virtue of this breadth, I wasn’t able to keep track of whether all of the books had been authored by women, versus having “just” been translated by a woman. And I realized in the course of putting it together that I didn’t really care, which in turn, really informed the way I’ve gone about designing Jill! as a reading series.
If this sounds flippant, I don’t mean it that way. I absolutely want to celebrate the voices of women (authors) in translation, yes. But I also want to celebrate the passion and commitment and talent of women translators. Part of what makes our namesake, Jill Levine, such an inspiration, for instance, is that she has championed the work of authors that she’s passionate about. That means works by authors like Cristina Rivera Garza and Guadalupe Nettel, but also Manuel Puig and Borges and Julio Cortázar, and I think the English-language literary landscape is richer for it.
And more than just this, I don’t want the important idea of translating more women being employed as a sort of gatekeeping tool: a method of keeping other marginalized voices out. Swedish translator Kira Josefsson has written beautifully about this: “Giving space to representations of different kinds of specificity, varying kinds of language and registers, means broadening the field of imagination for what a culture can comprehend as a valid life. Ultimately, in other words, it’s about freedom—the freedom that comes from being seen as who you truly are. Looking especially for non-male writers is a guiding principle that makes a lot of sense to me, but translators, translators perhaps especially, should be careful to avoid essentialism, and seek to read and work with difference.”
So yes, women authors in translation, but also women translators who are passionate about works written by men. And also: nonbinary translators and authors. Translators who are well-established and have amazing published work to share with an audience. And also: translators who are early in their careers and might not typically have a space to read work in progress. And also: translators and authors of color. And also: translations from languages that only have a handful of speakers, which is why Jill! is billed as a “Women+ in Translation” series.
STH: Do you have any plans for the further development of the Jill! reading series?
LK: First and foremost, I want to continue broadening the scope of what is being read at Jill! I’d like to have a graphic and/or children’s lit-focused reading in the near future, for instance, and perhaps have readings dedicated to genres other than fiction and poetry. Excerpts from translated plays, for instance, could be a lot of fun to highlight.
I also want to make sure that the “+” in our title isn’t just an empty designation. So, this year, I’m going to really work to ensure that work by nonbinary authors and/or translators is celebrated at Jill!
Larissa Kyzer is a writer and translator. She lived in Reykjavík for five years, during which time she earned an MA in Translation Studies at the University of Iceland. Larissa’s translations have recently appeared in Words without Borders, LitHub, SRPR, and Exchanges. She is currently co-chair of PEN America’s Translation Committee and lives in Brooklyn.
Sarah Timmer Harvey is a writer and translator currently based in New York. She holds an MFA in writing and translation from Columbia University and, most recently, her work has appeared in Asymptote, Modern Poetry in Translation, Gulf Coast Journal, and Cagibi Literary Journal.
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