Marina Heide - Translator of the Month for April
Our translator of the month for April is the French translator Marina Heide. After growing up in a French-Norwegian family in the Paris area Marina now lives in Stockholm. She works mainly with fiction as well as children’s and young adult literature, and will soon be in the spotlight with a new translation of The Birds by Tarjei Vesaas. Marina is also the French voice for Maja Lunde and Merethe Lindstrøm, among others.
As Marina sometimes collaborates with another translator, we asked her how the collaboration is done and whether it is very different from translating on one’s own?
«I often work with my mother, Françoise Heide. She has worked as a professional translator for 20 years and has lots of experience, and I learn very much from her. We both have strengths and weaknesses, and working together is really helpful. What we usually do is that we split the text and each translates her part, before we read through and correct what the other has done, to even out the tone, style, etc. It requires patience and humility, but at the same time it is nicer and more fun than to work alone. Sometimes we end up in very weird conversations!
In general, I consider translation to be a teamwork. Even when I work on my own, I collaborate with the publisher and the various proofreaders before the text is published. Transferring a book into another language is a long process that does not only involve the translator.»
Read the interview in French under “Download” below!
A big thank you to the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Paris for the translation of the interview.
Learn more about Marina on Books from Norway and also on her homepage.
Those of you who understand Norwegian can read her Translator of the Month interview in full here.
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See other translators interviewed in our Translator of the Month series.
