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The Vondel Prize is awarded every three years for an outstanding literary translation from Dutch to English. The prize was awarded by the Society of Authors and the Dutch Foundation for Literature at the British Library in London on 12 February 2025. The jury consisted of David Doherty, Claire Lowdon and Susan Massotty.

From the jury report:

 ‘Running the gamut from broad comedy to brittle vulnerability, Gehrman instantly establishes a gutsy, assured voice that effortlessly matches the pace and punch of Lakmaker’s bold, highly idiosyncratic narrative of self-discovery. The humour is often ebullient but never strained: Gehrman delivers laugh-out-loud lines with crisp comic timing, yet hits the mark just as effectively when handling the novel’s darker undercurrents and raw, intimate moments, which she does with disarming directness and haunting clarity. In short, an extraordinary feat of balance, finesse and emotional range – one that Gehrman pulls off in style.’

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As a practicing translator, I learned a lot about the theoretical and historical implications of translating literature. A week later, here are a few things that have stuck with me:

History in a bubble? It’s called „micro-history“

Studying writers‘ lives, living room literary circles, secret editor-translator love affairs, tight-knit political protest groups…there’s a word for it: „micro-history“. As far as I could tell, „micro-history methodologies“ are all the rage. As one scholar explained, examining small cultural communities through a micro-historical lens is the only way to truly place the translator at the center of the study. Granted, sometimes it can be hard to find traces of the translator in the translated work, but by investigating his/her micro-history, one can focus on the personal ticks, political feuds, cultural trends, social limitations, moral censorship – the entire climate in which he, or oftentimes she, worked.

Where are all the women?

Well, they’re probably all at their desks making the men sound good. Women, both past and present, have often carried out the bulk of literary translation work. Sometimes under pseudonyms, sometimes as wives of famous writers, sometimes without ever being mentioned at all, they are responsible for bringing us great works of literature in our own language. Take Tolstoy’s English translator, Constance Garnett, for example, a nineteenth-century Russian scholar who was once accused of translating Tolstoy’s work from the „easier“ language of French and called “demure” by her critics. Women translators remain largely absent from both archives and research. In the endnote discussion, an audience member (yes, I have to out him as male) asked with a hint of exasperation: „Why do we as translators feel the need to justify our profession?“ In my opinion, for the same reasons that care workers, teachers and mothers are constantly having to justify theirs: it’s a highly skilled profession dominated by women – women quietly kept hidden in service to men.

It can’t not be political

In the endnote discussion, someone mentioned that translation scholars have a tendency to slip into „anecdote“; they get so caught up in their micro-histories that they miss the big picture. Why does historical translation research even matter? Why study it at all? As one researcher pointed out in his presentation on interpreting for the deaf in nineteenth-century Irish criminal courts (which, I might add, was entirely presented in sign language!), translation is a way of giving a voice to the voiceless, and in the case of his research, critical to guaranteeing a fair trial. Another scholar focused on Ada Prospero Gobetti’s translations of foreign literature in Fascist Italy, suggesting that of all her political activities, these translations may have been the most radical and revolutionary of all. The political nature of literary translation was also discussed at a London Book Fair panel on translating writers at risk (read my post about it here). Oftentimes, writers of tremendous cultural and political importance are hardly known until they’re translated, which, in my opinion, makes their translators as culturally and politically important as they are.

Jacks (and Janes!) of all trades

Far from simply converting language A to language B, translators are expected to be editors, cultural navigators, expert ego managers, and nearly clairvoyant interpreters of intent (with a super-human power to read between the lines). Apparently, this is nothing new. I learned that the dragomans to the Western colonialists served as translators, interpreters, servants, travel agents and everything in between, for very little pay. Scholars of Arabic, Turkish, Persian, French, German and English, they were often expected to interpret at embassy meetings and then clean chamber pots. They were both sought after for their education and mistrusted for their intelligence. One historian got her hands on a turn-of-the-century scrapbook of a “highly reputable” dragoman, which offers a fascinating glimpse into the personal life of a brilliant man with an invisible profession.

Afraid to eat our humble pie?

Translators tend to downplay what they do. This was one researcher’s conclusion following her investigation of the „Who Am I“ profiles on the Emerging Translator’s Network. I found her observations interesting. I’ve also noticed that when translator’s present their work online, they either go for the „the humble brag“, i.e. presenting their accomplishments modestly and sometimes in a self-deprecating way, or “the shameless plug”, promoting their work with the “shameless” disclaimer attached (as if there is something to be ashamed of). Is this so-called modesty a common personality trait among translators or is it the fault of a quietly competitive field where staying out of the limelight is practically in the job description?

Water! We need water!

Of course, translating a giant tome is mentally taxing, but one presenter pointed out that it is physically exhausting too. Working through hundreds of thousands of words requires stamina and concentration, which demand a healthy lifestyle, good breathing practices and a capacity to work slowly. She even uses kinesthetic exercises with her translation students. The great Russian-German translator Svetlana Geier, who devoted her life to translating “the five elephants” (check out this amazing documentary about her life) believed that you have to sit with a text and let the words come. Translation is not merely a conversion process, it takes time and energy to understand, absorb, internalize, and re-write a text into a new piece of literature

Does this mean we’re rich?

There’s financial capital and there’s literary capital. Most translators can attest to the fact that the two don’t necessarily go hand in hand. Having literary capital starts with studying at a university, learning how to drop a literary term here and there, and having read (or at least know how to appear to have read) fat books by dead writers. But it goes beyond that. Translators whose work has stood the test of time tend to have high literary capital in the sense that they run in literary circles, have relationships with publishers and editors and have built up a solid reputation through good breeding and connections. So who are these literary translators who achieve “celebrity” status? Well most of them are people with high literary capital. Of course, this raises the question of diversity – and like most intellectual fields, minorities remain underrepresented.

In short, it was a wonderful one-day event at the British Library and fantastic opportunity to interact with the more academic side of translation. Of course it’s easy for me to say coming from Amsterdam, but if you are considering travelling to London for an event at the British Library, just do it! You will be glad you did!

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“Taal is mijn manier om vat te krijgen op dingen, om controle te bewaren in bepaalde situaties. Een lichaam wordt gebombardeerd met tig zintuigelijke indrukken, door deze te benoemen maak je ze opnieuw eendimensionaal, beheersbaar.”

Sitting on stage between her and French translator Maud Gonne, I understood what she meant. All our ticks, fears, and nerves need words to latch onto. However fascinating foreign languages may be, however much we people with so-called “talenknobbels” like them, we still need the single dimension of our own language to really wrestle with ourselves.

A branch of the Crossing Border Festival of literature and music, The Chronicles paired up young writers from around the world with emerging literary translators to create a multi-lingual narrative of the event. The writers submitted a series of five blogs: a prologue, three about the festival itself, and an epilogue. And we translators converted them into various languages, coached by more experienced mentors along the way. I worked with Michele Hutchinson, writer and English translator of well-known Dutch authors like Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer and Esther Gerritsen. Together we decoded unfamiliar Flemish words like lavabo (wastafel) and valling (verkoudheid) – Het Vlaams Woordenboek came in really handy here! We also worked through more complicated translator conundrums like how to untangle an untraceable Virginia Woolf quote, which had been taken from a Swedish book in Dutch translation, and translate it back to English (see Blog 1) or how to go about translating French and German words that appear in a Dutch text (see Blog 3). In some cases, I wanted days to mull over a single line, but we had just a few hours before our translations went live on the site.

Other than translating, the best part about the festival for me was spending time with the authors and other translators. Meeting young writers who have been so successful, talking about their process, all of the risks they take, discovering that they too have a “little dictator” marching around in their head (see Blog 4) – it made the whole literary world feel within reach. We translators also got to involve them in what we do, discussing the challenges we face in not just translating, but actually re-writing their texts.

When you’re starting out in literary translation, you worry constantly about fidelity to the original text, about preserving the author’s words at all costs. But then you meet the author who says, “No, just make me sound good in English,” and you’re liberated. You’re free to find creative solutions. You can look at a sentence and ask yourself, “Okay, if this author were writing in American English, how would she have said this?” You can look at yourself and say, “You’re a writer too you know.” And then, all of a sudden, you start becoming a much better translator.

On Saturday night of the festival, Lize Spit read from the first chapter Het Smelt and my English translation appeared on the screen behind her. The following week, during my residency at The Amsterdam Translator’s House, I had the opportunity to work on this translation intensively with another mentor – but that’s for another post. Stay tuned!

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