The Translation of 'Obabakoak' - Interview with Bernardo Atxaga
Abstract
From a very specific date, Joseba Irazu-Bernardo Atxaga, the initial division of the same person, has under gone a multiple division which has led him to being, at a the same time, a person, writer, lecturer, the subject of interviews, a traveller, 19 representative, etc. After a trip through Cuba and the United State she has found time to talk with Juan Garzia on the cause of such a division: his book Obabakoak or more specifically, on its translation. Nevertheless, the talk does not stop there, and he, reviews the fact of translation in general, and of the translation to Euskara and from Euskara, as well as the role and the conditions which Basque translators should and do comply with.
With regard to the translation of Obabakoak, besides the original Spanish version, it has also been translated into Catalan, and others are being prepared into English, French, Italian and German, although not from the original Basque but from the version, more than translation —as he himself admits— in Spanish.
The project to translate this book into Spanish arose before the awarding of the National Literary Prize, and it was Atxaga himself who was going to do the work. Nevertheless, on presenting his work to the organization he realized the need to collaborate with other persons and personally supervise the complete process, and so he had to lock himself into his room at a hotel in Barcelona. Atxaga then realized; clearly the impossibility of doing a normal translation and the need to rewrite the work. As he himself confesses, it is easier to write than to translate, as the translator is not allowed so much liberty as the writer.
Later, he went on to reflect upon the problems posed by translating into Euskara the overwhelming cultural level of other languages and in this sense he defended the need for translators and writers to reach an agreement, a kind of entente cordiale or agreement to unify tendencies which currently are so divergent.
For Atxaga, translation is an important pillar in the world of Euskara, and for this he regrets the little importance which is given to training translators in this country. In his opinion, a translators school should be even harder and more demanding than an engineers' school, and here we do not have single school of sufficient standard. In this regard, he mentions the enormous expense that the translation of official texts that no one reads represents, but which are used for "haring a clear conscience" . The translator, for Bernardo Atxaga, should be treated with great reverence, should go through a long period of training, receive scholarships in order to perfect his shills and acquire a wide-ranging culture, which in his opinion is the main basis of a good translator, even more important than his technical capacity. The interview concludes by returning to the difficulties of translating some of the texts which form a part of Obabakoak, due to the special environment in which they develop and the language model they use.
