Uljana Wolf on Translating Ilse Aichinger

At Cagibi: a literary space, Uljana Wolf discusses her decade-long translation work, with Christian Hawkey, of the Austrian poet Ilse Aichinger. Published in 2018 as Bad Words by Seagull Books, this “restaging of Aichinger’s work in English is as urgent and necessary today as it was in postwar Europe.” From their conversation:

Harvey: I read in the introduction to Bad Words that your major intention was to resist the impulse to “fill in the gaps” and resist making “references clearer.” How did you do that? Did you have a particular way of encouraging each other to dial back or push the translation even further?

Wolf: I think we each had roles. I did the first draft from German to English, and Christian worked on that draft, then I would respond to his draft and so on. There was a hinge between us, which was the translation, but we were each drawn a bit more toward our own language, mine obviously, the German and Christian’s being English. In the beginning, he was the one inviting the text—not pulling but inviting the text into English and I was trying to pull it back to German. So, it was a kind of dance back and forth as if we were re-staging my language. Do you know Aichinger’s story, My Language and I? It was like that; as if we were wandering on a coastline. We did that over and over again.

Find out more at Cagibi.