I’m Being Translated

Essay by Helle Helle on being translated

By : Helle Helle

I’ve published five books now and they seem to be doing just fine. When I give a talk at a school or a library, people ask questions that indicate my books are being read. Somebody wants to know how book two relates to book one. Somebody else about the unreliable narrator in my almost four-year old novel. Students send written questions on a short story from 1996.

I feel like my books are still alive and well – even the ones that have a few years on them. And this feeling has grown over the past couple of years. My books have been given a life in other countries. I’m being translated. One short story collection has come out in the Czech Republic. Another in Norway. My first novel in Estonia, and in Norway and Germany. My debut as an author in Sweden.

The number of languages into which my books have been translated isn’t huge. My experience in this field is limited. But the advantages of being translated are more than evident: When a book is translated, the market expands. The author has a chance to earn more money, so she can afford to write more books. So, there’s the money. It can also happen that the author gets to travel a bit, when the translated book is promoted. These two things speak for themselves.

But there is a third benefit as well and it is more diffuse. It has something to do with the fact that a translated book is a book reborn. It was still there, alive and well, in Denmark, but it wasn’t new. It had a history, had been received and reviewed and sold. You gave readings from it, an audience had asked questions. And, suddenly, it pops up in a completely new form in another country. It is published again. It’s like something beginning all over, even though it was already there before.

It’s a very, very good feeling. It’s like getting a really big present from good friends. Something you hadn’t counted on getting. I had this feeling for the first time, when my debut novel House and Home was coming out in Norway. The publishing house, Oktober, invited me to Oslo for the occasion.

I went to a reception at Oktober on a Monday evening and my book was everywhere in its new Norwegian edition. I drank white wine and ate tapas. I met fellow writers from Norway, among them the translator, Trude Marstein. I had had no contact whatsoever with her, while she was translating. There hadn’t been any inquiries. She just translated, fluently and accurately. It was strange to speak with her, because she knew the book so well. She made reference to things I had almost forgotten myself.

The book came out the next day. It was completely unproblematic. I wasn’t even nervous, when I got up that morning. I went down and ate breakfast – Norwegian marinated herring and salt cod. I read the reviews in the day’s papers and thought: They were just fine. Then, I was escorted to the Hotel Bristol, where various interviews took place. They went just fine, too. I still wasn’t nervous. I knew what I wanted to say and I said it.

When I put out a book in Denmark, I use the time up to publication to figure out what sort of a book it is I’ve written – if anyone should ask. It sounds silly, because I should, if anyone does, know what sort of a book it is. But I don’t. At least, I haven’t formulated it for myself. I always write from a series of images and scenes I have in my head. I see it there. It is very concrete. I don’t analyze it as I go. I just write.

On publication, if a journalist asks me what the book is about, I can, of course, give a little summary: “my book is about a young woman who returns to the small town, where she grew up ….” But then comes the follow-up question: Why does your protagonist do such and such? What is the underlying theme of the novel? Can it be read as a reverse Bildungsroman?

I’m usually quite nervous at the prospect of having to answer questions like this. As a rule, I try to prepare some answers ahead of time. So, I don’t just sit there, saying nothing too often. But the more I talk about the book, the more I know about it. The more there is to say.

This detour is to explain why, there at the Hotel Bristol in Oslo on a suite of leather furniture with potted palms about the floor and a dessert cart available, I did quite well during the various interviews. I could find a new angle for every journalist (there were six). House and Home was two years old, and I was used to talking about it, when I gave lectures here at home.

It felt like a much saner way to publish. The book and I were both blank slates up there in Norway. They didn’t know anything about how I was seen here at home. If I was seen at all. If I was not, they didn’t know that, either. It didn’t matter that I had gone to the Danish Writers School twelve years ago. They’d pretty much never heard of it. They knew nothing about a critic who had called the book “a reading exercise for the mentally defective.” Or that he might have regretted that later.

My experiences in Norway are similar to those I have in Germany, where the same novel was also published. The language barrier makes it harder for me to connect with the audience. I can read aloud in fluent German, because my sister practices with me before I go. She worked for four years as a waitress in Liechtenstein. But when the audience wants to ask questions, I need an interpreter. I can’t assemble the words. I make a fool of myself. At a gathering in Leipzig, I wanted to introduce myself by saying, “Ich heise Helle Helle.” Instead, I said, “Ich heise heise Helle.” It was hard to do the reading after that. Still, it went alright.

When you live in a small language area, like Denmark, it can be difficult to make a living writing books – even when they are relatively successful. It’s a bit disheartening. On the other hand, it is quite encouraging, when a book suddenly gets new life in a foreign country. I’m not saying that I’m thinking along those lines, when I’m writing. I don’t adapt my books for a foreign market. I operate with sangskjulere and forsamlingshuse and other untranslatables. I write about people who live in Rødby and Valby. I write what I write. That must be how it is for all authors.

But the moment the book is finished, I immediately think that it might be written all over again. By a translator somewhere. My new novel was accepted by Oktober and translated into Norwegian, before it had even come out in Denmark. That’s how it should be every time.


1. Containers, usually decorative, to conceal song sheets written for special occasions, such as birthdays, confirmations, etc.
2. Similar to meeting houses, grange halls, etc.

This essay was published in English in the Canadian literary magazine The Review in September 2004.

Translated by Russell Dees