Interview of the month – Yannis Kalifatidis
Interview of the month – Yannis Kalifatidis
(Translator – musician)
What sparked your interest in translation and music? What is your main occupation today?
My relationship with music started in my teenage years. Perhaps out of curiosity, perhaps as a reaction, or maybe as a need to express myself. No matter how it started, the truth is that I spent many years adjusting my everyday life and my whole existence to the genre that is known as alternative rock, although today I would rather qualify it as rock’n’roll. For many years, my only concern was to record albums and to appear in live shows – which took its toll on my resources, on my career in the field of my studies etc. Music has always been necessary for me to be able to maintain some kind of internal order. When I stopped playing music for a while, I needed something else to compensate the chaos that generally characterizes me, so I found a way out through translation. Just before I graduated from EKEMEL, I got my first literary translation job and after that, things worked out on their own. Besides passion and emotion, translation and music are based on a mathematical logic, in a sort of an algorithm. Words or notes that must be put in the right order to create a harmonic whole.
During the last decade, literary and theatrical translation is my only livelihood. I only play music as a hobby, but that does not mean I see it less seriously than before.
In a recent article, we read that translation can be seen as the cover version of a track. Do you agree with this view?
Yes, I think I do. Actually, you create a new version of a work of art, be it a text or a music track. Your task is to rewrite it into a different language and to handle it with passion and respect. Besides the translator’s talent and technical training, or even his/her love for reading, I believe that these are two of the essential criteria that define a translation’s success. You have to get under the original author’s skin, to feel the musical rhythm behind words and phrases, to be mentally dragged along between dives and institutions, like in the case of the Swiss author Friedrich Glauser, who was struggling to get off morphine throughout his life. The same thing happens with a musical piece. There are many covers, but few are the bands that reapproach the piece creatively, as if they had written it themselves. Otherwise you are nothing more than a mere cover band or a cover translator.
In your opinion, what are the common elements between music and literature, and on a second level, literary translation?
From a technical point of view, both music and literature work with phrases, either musical or textual. As far as creativity is concerned, they are both high forms of art, as they offer the artist the opportunity to express and share his inner self. Both evoke intense emotions in the listener or reader. Indeed, I would say that music is even stronger in this respect, as it can lift you to the sky or throw you in the abyss in the space of 3-4 minutes. On the other hand, you need much more time to feel touched and deeply shaken by a book. In this sense, music acts more directly. However, since generally we read much less books than we listen to music, a good book will stay with you forever, just like a song you really love.
Among the books you have translated, which one has stayed with you the most and why?
A book that I often go back to is The rings of Saturn by German author W. G. Sebald, published by Agra Publications. Although I had the luck to translate four of his books, I think that this specific book borders on the impossible, not only in terms of its power of expression, but also in terms of the themes it discusses. It is a deeply melancholic book, filled with a rare sensitivity. The course of modern civilization which ends up in Nazism is likened to the waste that accumulates in the form of dust on the rings of planet Saturn, causing the planet itself to shrink. Our civilization is nothing more than a gigantic tree; as it grows and spreads out its branches, its trunk becomes weaker and weaker, unable to feed its own children. That is why it ultimately destroys them – in order to survive. Besides a planet, in Greek mythology Saturn is also a Titan, who devours its children out of envy, gluttony, ignorance and fear.
While translating the book, at times I found it impossible to go on. I often stared at the phrases, afraid to put them on paper, dampened by fear, sadness or even anger. If I was asked to name a musical genre that corresponds to this book, I would say that reading Sebald is like listening to the Canadian band Godspeed! You Black Emperor, who actually kept me company throughout the translation process. In this sense, the Rings of Saturn is a book where absolute silence and deafening noise both alternate and coexist at times.