Giovanna Paterniti – Translator of the Month
Our Translator of the Month for October is Giovanna Paterniti from Italy. She holds a Master’s degree in Scandinavian Language and Literature from Università Statale di Milano, where she later worked for ten years as a lecturer in the subjects Translation Theory and Practice from the Scandinavian Languages and Scandinavian Linguistics.
For more than twenty years, Giovanna has dedicated herself to translating and promoting contemporary Norwegian literature. Among the authors she has translated are Lars Saabye Christensen, Axel Hellstenius, Jostein Gaarder, Erlend Loe, Åsne Seierstad, Kjell Ola Dahl, Maja Lunde, and Aslak Nore.
Next April, Norway will be Guest of Honour your home country, at the world’s largest international children’s book fair in Bologna. Is there anything in particular you are looking forward to as Norwegian children’s and young adult literature will be taking centre stage? And does the Guest of Honour initiative have any impact on the work you are doing now?
This will undoubtedly be a fantastic opportunity to promote Norwegian children’s literature and culture in Italy, and I am both proud and delighted to contribute—not only as a translator (of a humorous middle grade novel and two graphic novels for children that I was recently commissioned to translate), but also as an organiser of some of the events. The initiative towards the Italian publishing industry is already taking shape in many exciting translation projects, and it will be wonderful to see the impact this has on young readers in Italy. They will have the chance to engage more deeply with a literature that is so different—so bold, daring, and inventive, and so refreshingly unconventional as books by Norwegian authors are.
You have translated books in various genres: novels and crime fiction, three non-fiction titles so far, and you have also translated for the theatre. Is there a particular genre you would especially like to work with in the future?
Theatre, definitely. Nothing makes a deeper impression than experiencing the words you have translated come to life in flesh and blood, in human voices, right before your eyes during the fleeting span of a performance. Plays are alive and ever-changing: in each new production they reveal something unexpected. They re-emerge in new forms with every staging, even as the core of what they convey remains unchanged. If I were to express a wish, there is no doubt—it would be a play by Arne Lygre, preferably Our Place (original title: I vårt sted).
Read more
You may read the full interview in Italian, in the file below.
Learn more about Giovanna on Books from Norway.
Those of you who understand Norwegian can read her interview in full here.
See also other translators interviewed in the Translator of the Month series.
