Annabel Crabb Instagram – Sat in on the MOST fascinating @sydwritersfest session yesterday on translation, featuring some true megafauna of the international translating scene: @jenniferlcroft (American who translates from Polish, Ukrainian and Argentine Spanish; she won the International Man Booker in 2018, y’all) Daniel Hahn, UK, who translates from Portuguese, Spanish and French, is currently writing a book about how translators convert Shakespeare into all the different languages, and his book “Catching Fire: A Translation Diary” is something I shall buy immediately, so compelling and hilarious was his description of his translation method, which is that he likes to do a rough translation on his FIRST READ of a book, yielding something “incredibly quick and very, very bad” and then he sets about fixing it. Ie he destroys the book and then rebuilds it. This description clearly freaked out Australia’s own translation superstar @stephanie.smee – whose translations of The Rome Zoo and Hannelore Cayre’s The Godmother are favourites of mine. She visibly tensed at the description, obviously much more of a get-each-bit-perfect-before-you-move-on type operator. So interesting to hear about the different techniques plus all the different ways they came to their translation languages. @jenniferlcroft for instance, growing up in Oklahoma, taught herself Russian because she had “nothing else to do”. Later, in Iowa, she was at university studying translation and the Russian teachers disappeared so she converted to Polish. Daniel Hahn is super comfortable writing in his translation languages but feels awkward speaking them. Stephanie talked a bit about her forthcoming translation of Marie-Helene Lafon’s The Son’s Story and said of the writer “She makes me breathe differently when I read her.” So beautiful. @jemmabirrell did a wonderful job of allowing us all to glimpse this magical world of translation, the tender care these writers take with the words of others, and the fierce advocacy they do for non Anglophone writers, round the clock. SUCH a cool session.