An Interview With Special Folio Editor Rachel Hildebrandt
In conjunction with editor Rachel Hildebrandt’s special folio for Drunken Boat, we present an interview with her here conducted by Jeanne Bonner.
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Rachel Hildebrandt has published both fiction and nonfiction works in translation, including Staying Human by Katharina Stegelmann (Skyhorse) and Herr Faustini Takes a Trip by Wolfgang Hermann (KBR Media). Her upcoming translations include Fade to Black by Zoë Beck (Weyward Sisters, Winter 2017) and Havarie by Merle Kroeger (Unnamed Press, Spring 2017). She recently launched a new literary venture, Weyward Sisters, which publishes translated crime and noir fiction by contemporary female authors from Germany, Switzerland and Austria. With degrees in art history and historic preservation, Rachel spent a year in Dresden, Germany, as a Fulbright scholar before working as a freelance historical consultant and eventually transitioning to literary translation.
Jeanne Bonner: What are you translating now?
Rachel Hildebrandt: I am currently working on Zoë Beck’s 2015 novel, Fade to Black (Schwarzblende).
JB: What linguistic challenges does this text pose?
RH: Zoë’s German prose is very crisp and clean, which means the transition to English is a fairly smooth one. However, all of her novels are set in Great Britain, which presents a challenge for me as an American translator to capture the distinct resonance of UK English. Since Fade to Black is set in contemporary London, I find myself questioning my selection of idioms and general terms on a regular basis. Oh, right, we call them trash cans, but they call them rubbish bins. That kind of thing. This book will be published in the U.S. by Weyward Sisters Publishing, so I am also working with the awareness that many of the readers will Americans. Fortunately for me, Zoë spent many years in Great Britain, so she has a very good grasp of the balance the English needs to have. My goal is to make the text feel enough British, due to its setting, while also localizing it a little for U.S. readers.
Since voice and style are so important when it comes to fiction, I always want to know early on if the text “sounds” right to the author. Can they hear their own voices echoing through my English sentences?
JB: How does it differ from what you might have been translating earlier this year or a year ago?
RH: Last year, I was mainly working on a variety of literary fiction and literary crime samples that I was sending out to publishers. Then in the fall, I completed a quirky, philosophical novella, Wolfgang Hermann’s Herr Faustini Takes a Trip, which was published in December 2015. This dense, rich work was quite different in style from some of the things I had been translating, with most of the text dedicated to the protagonist’s mental spaces and thought processes. By the spring, I was working with co-translator Alex Roesch on the translation of Havarie by Merle Kroeger, which is due out next spring from Unnamed Press. An intriguing examination of the pan-European response to the refugee crises structured within the framework of a crime novel, this book won the 2016 German Crime Prize, 2nd Place. Fade to Black won the 2016 German Crime Prize, 3rd Place, which makes me feel like I have landed firmly in the literary crime and thriller genre. I am definitely not protesting, since there are some fantastic German female authors working within this context.
JB: Do you curate a body of work that involves a particular period or genre? Or is there an author you’ve translated more than once?
RH: I am a lifelong lover of mysteries and crime fiction, so perhaps it is somewhat natural that I find myself focusing more and more on this genre as time passes. I have worked with several books from the same authors, though these are in the forms of samples that are still searching for good publishing homes (though I would LOVE to be these authors’ repeat translator!). As the publisher for Weyward Sisters, which is dedicated to publishing translations of works by contemporary German-speaking female authors in the crime/noir/thriller end of the spectrum, this will be the focus of my work and output for the time being. I am not opposed to working with authors in other genres though, and will continue to actively advocate for some of the literary fiction authors I love the most.
I want to know early on if where I am going with a text resonates true with the author. Everything else is negotiable space. Once I feel I have captured that unique voice to the best of my ability, I feel free to continue with the rest of the book.
JB: What’s your approach to translating when you begin working on a new project?
RH: Since I mainly translate contemporary fiction, I especially love the contact I am able to have with many of the authors whose works I have translated. I feel especially lucky in the fact that most German speakers have very good English skills, especially authors as a group, which enables them to be actively involved in the translation process. For example, I have worked very closely with both Romy Foelck and Zoë Beck on their recent short story collections, which have been published by Weyward Sisters. Since voice and style are so important when it comes to fiction, I always want to know early on if the text “sounds” right to the author. Can they hear their own voices echoing through my English sentences? At that stage, I care less about the nuanced meaning of words than about the rhythm and cadence of the prose itself. Language is a fluid entity, and I always know in the back of my mind that I can trade out words here and there, alter sentence structures, and scoot clauses around at will. There is an infinite number of ways I can structure a story or a chapter, but not all of these will feel true and personal to the author. That is why I want to know early on if where I am going with a text resonates true with the author. Everything else is negotiable space. Once I feel I have captured that unique voice to the best of my ability, I feel free to continue with the rest of the book.
JB: Are there lines from the works you’ve translated that have remained impressed? What are they and why?
RH: From Zoe Beck’s “Still Waters,” (published in A CONTENTED MAN AND OTHER STORIES):
“We gradually forgot about Silvana and her mother and Herr Schneider. And after a few years, Silvana’s mother was nothing more than an anecdote, just like the ones our grandparents told us about how after the war everyone had thrown their copies of Mein Kampf into the Judenteich. Or about how the Judenteich had gotten its name from the fact that Jewish women had washed their clothes there many years ago. Nothing remained except the memories we didn’t wish to have.”
These lines resonate with me as someone with a background in the history and cultural resources field. History is not an objective entity. It is malleable, fluid, and vulnerable to our unreliable memories. This evocative passage reminds us that we cannot control either what we remember or what we forget, but it is these very memories that shape our characters as adults.
