Mariana Windingland – Translator of the Month
Our Translator of the Month for June is Mariana. She was born into a typical middle-class Argentinian family, making her background a wonderful cultural, ethnic and religious mosaic. Her father was Norwegian, and her mother was Basque and Italian. The Spanish spoken in her childhood home was very diverse, with various different accents and many words imported from other languages, particularly Norwegian and Italian. Mariana has dreamed of travelling the world and learning different languages since childhood – she eventually settled on Norwegian, English, French and Swedish in addition to Spanish.
How did you end up translating Norwegian literature?
It took me a very long time to realise that my fascination for different languages and cultures could earn me a living as well as being a passion. The first time I lived abroad was in Sweden as an exchange student from 1993 to 1994. Throughout that year I travelled to Norway on numerous occasions to visit relative and places that had been seared into my memory after seeing them in family albums and photo slides and Super 8 films we had back at home. When I returned home, I continued to immerse myself in art and I started studying translation from English to Spanish. I was awarded a grant to work as a language teacher in the United States, and later on I studied French in Canada. I worked with those three languages for several years but my desire to live in Norway increased over time, and in 2006 I finally moved to Oslo. When I later returned to Argentina, I started working in publishing, where I was responsible for a variety of tasks – everything from translating contracts to developing bibliographical catalogues and managing the online bookshop. And then one day, completely out of the blue, a local publisher suggested that I translate two plays by none other than Arne Lygre! I was hesitant at first, but a brief conversation with the publisher in question prompted me to realise that everything in my life was geared towards me ending up as a literary translator from Norwegian into Spanish: my mother was a passionate librarian all her life, and my father was a multilingual topographer who never stopped regaling us with stories of distant travels to far-off parts of the world.
What might tempt Latin-American readers to choose Norwegian literature in these changing times?
Norwegian authors, dramatists, poets and essayists are gifted with a real sense of candour when it comes to writing on universal themes. They have a particular sensitivity for describing the internal experiences of their characters and reflecting on social issues that affect each and every one of us; I think this distinctive approach to telling stories is very tempting for Latin-American audiences.
Read more
Learn more about Mariana 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.
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