How Lazer Lederhendler translated his way to a literary win for The Party Wall
Lazer Lederhendler approaches a prospective translation as one would a prospective friendship. And in the case of Catherine Leroux's The Party Wall, this friendship would lead to great things. The novel won the 2016 Governor General's Literary Award for translation (French to English) and was shortlisted for the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
As part of the CBC Books "How I Wrote It" series, Lederhendler reflects on how he built the "off-the-wall" voice of The Party Wall.
Reading requirements
"When I'm deciding whether to translate a book, I approach it first as a reader, and I have to like it as a reader. The writing has to be good. It has to be interesting. There has to be something identifiable or unique about the voice, and I have to be OK with it as far as my basic values are concerned — it can't be racist or sexist, for example. Another thing I need the book to deliver in order to say "yes" is that the book has to improve upon multiple readings. When one reading is never enough — I love that.
"I knew of Catherine Leroux, but I didn't know her work. When I read Le mur mitoyen, I found it met all of my criteria. I was struck with Catherine's unique imagination — she's one of the most imaginative writers I've come across in a long time. This only deepened when I started working on the book."
Slow burn
"It usually takes me between 50 and 100 pages of translating to stop complaining. Even with writers I've translated before, there's always a difficult period at the beginning for me. The process of getting into the skin of the writing, making it mine, taking it on as my own — it's very difficult. Getting used to the style, the way they structure a sentence and a paragraph, the images, the vocabulary — I wouldn't call it painful, but I grumble a lot. It's just sort of a growing pain of familiarizing myself with this style and this writer's mindset and vision. But once I become comfortable with it, it's all discovery and pleasure and learning. You sense from the beginning that there's an affinity, but you have to develop it. It's like a good friendship."
Wine and word choice
"Usually I only meet the writer once I've finished the whole draft. But in Catherine's case, I sent her about 60 pages of my first draft, and we agreed to meet. I wanted to see if I was on the right track, because I had learned that her English was very good. She was extremely generous as a writer, and was more than willing to answer questions. It was a very fruitful meeting. It was a little strange, in that we met at a noisy bar with a very funky vibe, but it also seemed à propos in that the atmosphere was very much in harmony with the book itself.
"I discovered in that meeting that Catherine had some definite ideas about how things could or should be said in English in her book. She has worked as a journalist, which I think may affect the way she sees language. She pointed out several places where she would prefer a Germanic word over the Latinate alternative. She also let me know of a few instances where I was off the mark, which of course is fantastically useful at that early stage."
Brick by brick
"When I work, I always use an actual copy of the book I'm translating. I don't like to work off a digital version. I can flag things with post-its in the hard copy, or write within it. I also carry the book around with me and read in preparation for the next day's work.
"I translate sentence by sentence, one brick at a time. I reread the whole paragraph first, and sometimes further ahead, but on a need-to-know basis because otherwise it slows me down too much. Over the years, I've learned that if you overthink your choices when working on a translation, you're going to end up ruining it. You'll lose that original spark, those intuitive creative flashes that end up as the book's best moments. At one point, you need to be able to stand back and say, that's enough. I can live with this. I can own this translation."
Lazer Lederhendler's comments have been edited and condensed.