{"id":74220,"date":"2014-07-21T15:59:05","date_gmt":"2014-07-21T19:59:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=74220"},"modified":"2014-07-24T11:51:37","modified_gmt":"2014-07-24T15:51:37","slug":"recalcitrant-language-an-interview-with-ottilie-mulzet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/07\/21\/recalcitrant-language-an-interview-with-ottilie-mulzet\/","title":{"rendered":"Recalcitrant Language: An Interview with Ottilie Mulzet"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"seiobo<\/a>

Art from the first Hungarian edition of Seiobo j\u00e1rt odalent<\/i>, or Seiobo There Below.<\/i><\/p><\/div>\n

Translators of the Hungarian author L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Krasznahorkai are a daring few, but they tend to win awards. This year\u2019s Best Translated Book Award<\/a> went to Ottilie Mulzet for the first English translation of <\/em>Seiobo There Below<\/a>, a dazzling, far-ranging novel even by Krasznahorkai\u2019s standards. At 451 pages, the novel took Mulzet three years to translate; it required familiarity with everything from the terminology of Russian icon painting to the existence of Arcade Fire. The story, told in a series of loosely linked episodes, addresses small matters of death, time, divinity, and the transcendence of art. And that\u2019s not to mention the sentences\u2014intricately constructed puzzles designed to disorient and amaze the reader. They can be up to fourteen pages long.<\/em><\/p>\n

Krasznahorkai is developing a cult following in the English-speaking world\u2014he\u2019s had one for decades in Hungary\u2014and he draws packed crowds at readings. A recent appearance at Columbia University was so crowded that people were turned away. The author read in a dark room with only a pinpoint of light on the manuscript, for dramatic effect.<\/em><\/p>\n

I caught up with the woman working under the name Ottilie Mulzet\u2014a partial pseudonym, somehow not surprising from an artist affiliated with Krasznahorkai\u2014to find out how she does it, and what else she has in store.<\/em><\/p>\n

Tell me about your history with Krasznahorkai. How did you become his translator? How do you work with him?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before I ever met him, I translated one of the stories, \u201cSomething is Burning Outside,\u201d from Seiobo There Below<\/em>. It appeared on the Hungarian literature website www.hlo.hu<\/a>, and in June 2009, it was picked up by the Guardian<\/em> for a series of translated short stories from Eastern Europe twenty years after 1989. I met Krasznahorkai briefly sometime around then. We corresponded, and I mentioned I\u2019d be willing to take on the translation of Seiobo<\/em>. Krasznahorkai was understandably a little hesitant at first, given the extraordinary complexity of the work. But I translated Animalinside<\/em>, which was met with a very positive reception and went into a second printing fairly quickly. The following spring, I sent a sample chapter of Seiobo<\/em> to New Directions.<\/p>\n

Krasznahorkai and I communicate a lot by email. If I have any questions at all, he is absolutely wonderful about answering them. We communicate for the most part in Hungarian. There are times when he issues explicit instructions. For example, he didn\u2019t want any of the foreign words in Seiobo<\/em> italicized, and I could understand why, because they\u2019re even more disorientating when they\u2019re seemingly innocently integrated into the text. For me that was a pretty radical gesture.<\/p>\n

What are the strengths and particularities of Hungarian as a language, and what challenges does it present to translate it into English?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I feel extremely close to Hungarian as a language. I love the sound of it, I love how it works grammatically, I love the vocabulary, the astonishing mishmash of words from so many different languages, I love what writers can do with it. Hungarian is an agglutinative language with vowel harmony\u2014it has seemingly endless suffixes and amazing possibilities for compound words, and it has absolutely flexible word order, depending on what you want to emphasize in the sentence. And I would certainly mention the unbelievable elasticity of Hungarian\u2014it\u2019s like a rubber band. It can expand and expand, until you think, Well, this rubber band is going to break at any moment now, or it can shrink into just a few sparse words, where all the most important parts are left out and you just have to know.<\/p>\n

English, despite how global\u00a0it is, is a lot less flexible. Maybe the kind of English that\u2019s spoken in the Indian subcontinent\u2014where it\u2019s partially subjugated to the tendencies of Hindi\u2014would be a more suitable English for translation from Hungarian, but I have to work with the language I know the best. You have to struggle to make sure the sentences don\u2019t seem too jam-packed with information, and yet, when there\u2019s some pretty serious elision going on, you have to test the boundaries of English, with its rigid subject-verb-object structure and having to have all your indicators in place. Hungarian can look like just a splash of ink on the page. There are sentences\u2014or, in Krasznahorkai\u2019s case, subclauses\u2014of just two or three words. I\u2019m intrigued by all of this elision, and fascinated by the problem of conveying it in a recalcitrant language like English\u2014just trying to get English to do something it\u2019s not really meant to do. English today is the global language of commerce and trade, so while it\u2019s dominant, it\u2019s also in some respects deeply impoverished. It desperately needs these transfusions from other languages. <\/p>\n

What\u2019s being lost reading Krasznahorkai in English translation, in terms of the texture of the language?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hungarian readers\u2014I mean the kind of Hungarian readers who read serious literature\u2014have a much higher tolerance for the extreme grammatical complexity of some of these sentences, not to mention the length. I tried to preserve as much of the complexity as I could\u2014there are parts of the book, even in the original, where the reader can feel like he or she is lost in a maze, and I wanted to keep that.<\/p>\n

There are a few scattered short passages that read like poems in the original, and in some cases, I couldn\u2019t preserve the sound. One example that comes to mind is the phrase \u201cr\u00edzs \u00e9s v\u00edz, r\u00edzs \u00e9s v\u00edz<\/em>\u201d\u2014\u201crice and water, rice and water\u201d\u2014which Master Inoue Kazuyuki describes as the only food in the house when his family was going through a period of great impoverishment. The repeated long i<\/em> in that phrase, combined with the final sibilants, creates an indelible sonic impression that I don\u2019t think can come through in the English, although the repetition re-creates, I hope, the strangely desperate humor so typical of Krasznahorkai.<\/p>\n

\"9780811219679_custom-82874549f4ffcefb6d228ae0ff9fb26611bfc4d9-s6-c30\"<\/a>Are the long sentences more difficult to translate than the short sentences?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It actually depends on what kind of long sentence it is. In some of the long sentences, there\u2019s a pattern of one piece of new information following another. Here, the danger is that the sentence in English can easily sound like a run-on. I would never insert a full stop where there isn\u2019t one in the original, because for me these sentences are like rivers, and if you place a full stop where there isn\u2019t one in the original text, it\u2019s like you\u2019re damming up the river.<\/p>\n

But those kinds of sentences are actually relatively easy, especially compared to those where Krasznahorkai is deliberately exploiting the extraordinary elasticity of Hungarian grammar, so that, for example, a diagram of what subordinate clauses are related to would look something like a spider\u2019s web imposed on top of the typeset page. Then there are other long sentences with a kind of running parallel structure\u2014English can tolerate that fairly well.<\/p>\n

Some translators claim to be more literal, whereas others take more liberties for the sake of readability. Where would you say you fall on that spectrum?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sometimes I feel the \u201cliteralness\u2014readability\u201d\u00a0opposition is a little artificial, because there are many ways to transmit the utter strangeness of what you are translating. I really try to convey what I feel is unique about the original, why it wasn\u2019t written in English and perhaps never could be written in English. I want my translation to be something impossible yet extant, something existing on the border of two utterly incompatible worlds, and yet to be a bridge between those worlds. I want the reader of the English version to feel the same shock I felt when reading the original. I don\u2019t want to make it easy or acceptable, or to over-domesticate the text. There is an incredible poetry in the Hungarian language. Sometimes it\u2019s infinitely gentle, sometimes it\u2019s savage poetry.<\/p>\n

Once, a long time ago, I was attending an intensive Hungarian-language seminar. Some of the more unusual features of Hungarian grammar were met with comments such as, \u201cWho let these people in?\u201d Whereas other participants confined themselves to more rhetorical questions\u2014\u201cWhat does this language want?\u201d And the answer came from the instructor, without missing a beat. \u201cBlood, sweat, and tears.\u201d I don\u2019t want blood, sweat, and tears from Krasznahorkai\u2019s English readers, but the absolute otherness of a language like Hungarian immediately puts us in a position of discomfort. Can the translation preserve this discomfort\u2014troubling, weird, yet in the end perhaps edifying and salutary? And in the case of a writer like Krasznahorkai, we\u2019re talking about a writer whose express intention is to discomfit and disorientate his readers. \u201cThe dizzying nature of the text\u201d\u2014there is certainly a kind of explicit, readerly jouissance in that.<\/p>\n

Do you ever close your laptop for the evening and think, Well, I did a sentence today?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes! Sometimes it\u2019s only \u201cI began a sentence,\u201d or \u201cI ended a sentence,\u201d or even just, \u201cI read through a sentence\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n

Somewhere into that first six-page sentence, most English-speaking readers of Krasznahorkai probably pause to think, as I did, Wow, who on earth translated this? And then you have this beautiful, mysterious name, Ottilie Mulzet.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The name Mulzet is actually connected to my central European roots\u2014I had a Hungarian grandmother named Mulzet, Luiza Mulzet. I took the name Ottilie because I liked it. It just happens to be the name of one of Kafka\u2019s sisters. Ott<\/em> in Hungarian means there<\/em>, so perhaps it also signifies I am the one who is always there, not here \u2026<\/p>\n

I began learning Hungarian because I grew up adopted. I didn\u2019t even know there were any Hungarians in my background until I was an adult. I thought, Well, this is one way to know something about the people who were my ancestors on this earth. I began to learn the language out of a kind of intellectual curiosity, but then it really became a kind of addiction.<\/p>\n

\"mulzet_ottilie\"<\/a>

Ottilie Mulzet. Photo via New Directions<\/p><\/div>\n

Krasznahorkai fans lament that only four of his novels are translated into English. Do you have your life\u2019s work cut out for you? Do the untranslated titles haunt you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Two translations haunt me as we speak. One is Destruction and Sorrow Beneath the Heavens<\/em>, which I\u2019m translating now. It\u2019s literary reportage based on Krasznahorkai\u2019s extensive travels in China, and, if anything, it\u2019s even more relevant today than when it was first published in 2002. The other is The World Goes On<\/em>, an amazing collection of short stories. George Szirtes, who won the Best Translated Book Award in 2013, also for a Krasznahorkai title, is translating From the North by Hill, From the South by Lake, From the West by Roads<\/em>, From the East by River<\/em>, so readers should have at least three more titles to look forward to in the next few years.<\/p>\n

Do you have any news or projects coming up?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be working on Szil\u00e1rd Borb\u00e9ly\u2019s The Dispossessed<\/em>, his memoir of growing up in an impoverished village in northeastern Hungary in the late sixties. Perhaps the most talented poet of his generation, Borb\u00e9ly tragically committed suicide in February of this year. He was a very close friend and an incredible person. His death is just an inconceivable loss, leaving behind a huge vacuum in Hungarian and European letters. If I can bring a new English readership to Borb\u00e9ly\u2019s work, I will feel happy\u2014as happy as anyone can feel under such circumstances.<\/p>\n

Valerie Stivers is a journalist, writer, and editor; she\u2019s blogging about every book she reads in 2014 at AnthologyOfClouds.com<\/a>. She is also a reader for <\/em>The Paris Review.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Translators of the Hungarian author L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Krasznahorkai are a daring few, but they tend to win awards. This year\u2019s Best Translated Book Award went to Ottilie Mulzet for the first English translation of Seiobo There Below, a dazzling, far-ranging novel even by Krasznahorkai\u2019s standards. At 451 pages, the novel took Mulzet three years to translate; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":669,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[907],"tags":[14675,14673,687,9800,14672,14676,530,14674],"class_list":["post-74220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-work","tag-best-translated-book-award","tag-hungarian","tag-language","tag-laszlo-krasznahorkai","tag-ottilie-mulzet","tag-seiobo-there-below","tag-translation","tag-translators"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAn Interview with Ottilie Mulzet<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The translator on working with L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Krasznahorkai, the challenges she faces in translating the Hungarian language, and what she is working on next.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/07\/21\/recalcitrant-language-an-interview-with-ottilie-mulzet\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Recalcitrant Language: An Interview with Ottilie Mulzet by Valerie Stivers\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"July 21, 2014 \u2013 Translators of the Hungarian author L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Krasznahorkai are a daring few, but they tend to win awards. 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