An exciting opportunity presented itself a couple of months ago: Interviewing Philip Boehm, literary translator and winner of the Ungar award for translating Arthur Koestler’s book “Darkness at Noon” from German into English.
Literary translation has always been a mystery to me and I was keen to find out how literary translators go about their job of translating books.
Eager to make a good impression, I researched on the book before contacting Philip. The history of the book was even more fascinating. This gave me enough material to prepare for the interview.
Philip was prompt in responding and I had the interview ready for publishing in a couple of weeks. His answers were insightful and I could get a first-hand perspective on literary translation. The translation process was vastly different from how I approach technical translation. He even gave some practical and sound advice for aspiring literary translators!
Here’s the link to the interview published on the ATA-GLD website:
Ungar German Translation Award: https://www.ata-divisions.org/GLD/interview-with-award-winning-literary-translator-philip-boehm/
It was indeed a great learning experience for me.
Pavitra Baxi 