News from NORLA

Karolina Drozdowska – Translator of the Month for August

005
Karolina Drozdowska. Photo: Katarzyna Dawidziuk.

August’s Translator of the Month is Karolina Drozdowska from Poland. She works mainly with fiction and her translation of Nina Lykke’s novel Natural Causes (original title “Full spredning”) has just been published in Poland by the publisher Pauza. In addition to being a translator, Karolina is an assistant professor at the Institute of Scandinavian and Finnish Studies at the University of Gdansk and she is also secretary of the board at the Polish Literary Translators’ Association (Stowarzyszenie Tłumaczy Literatury).
In 2013, Karolina won NORLA’s causerie (kåseri) competition with her text about series of commercial fiction, Jens Bjørneboe and leading a double life. She has translated more than 90 books.

In our interview we gave her a challenge: What question should we have asked you?
«Ask about my position in the Polish Literary Translators’ Association! Since September 2020, I have been the board secretary of this great organization that brings together over 400 translators who translate both into and from Polish. The association does a great job for the industry. In Poland, fiction translators operate in a difficult market, we have neither a standard contract nor fixed rates and are often “forgotten” in reviews and mentions of books that we have spent a lot of time and effort on. But luckily there have been changes in recent years, also thanks to the association’s activities.

Med helga flatland
Karolina with author Helga Flatland. Photo: Big Book Festival 2019.
The visibility of translators has increased, and due to this fact the rest of the actors on the market have begun to take us more seriously. One of our slogans is “Tłumacz też autor”, “A translator is also a writer”, which is something I myself believe strongly. Authors are, of course, in the forefront, but it is we who convey their books and give them a voice in our language. Therefore, we deserve respect, visibility and good practical solutions, such as better contract terms or higher rates. And last but not least, I have met many wonderful colleagues through the association – as a fiction translator you can easy feel lonely and so this community means a whole lot to me.»
Read more about the association (in English) here.

Those of you who understand Norwegian can read Karolina’s Translator of the Month interview in full here.

Read more

Learn more about Karolina on Books from Norway.

See her academic research (in Norwegian, Polish and English) here.

Other translators interviewed in our Translator of the Month series.

Books from Norway provides you with English-language information about all genres of Norwegian literature. The information is provided by the rightsholders and NORLA.

booksfromnorway.com

Norway as Guest of Honour at Frankfurter Buchmesse

Norway was Guest of Honour at the Frankfurter Buchmesse 2019. Please visit our website Norway2019.com for information about the project.

Frankfurt 2019