The Dutch Lewis Carroll Society just published the book “Fotografie, romantiek en zoete wraak“, a bundle of four translations of short stories by Lewis Carroll. I am one of the co-authors of this anniversary publication!
This year, the Dutch Lewis Carroll Society celebrates its 50th or 10th anniversary (depending on how you count – it’s complicated 😉). They decided to create a special publication for the occasion. Not only to celebrate their anniversary, but also to help raise awareness and appreciation in the Netherlands of Lewis Carroll as a versatile author. I was asked to contribute to it, by translating one of the short stories, and to help create the book.
The book contains Dutch translations of “Photography Extraordinary”, “A Photographer’s Day Out”, “Novelty and Romancement. A Broken Spell”, and “Bruno’s Revenge”. I translated “Novelty and Romancement” (to “Verleiding en voorspoed. Een verbroken betovering”).
It was quite a tough job, as the story is rather hard to read in itself: it contains long, compound sentences and the first-person narrator keeps digressing and jumping from one topic to another while telling his main story. The main joke is almost impossible to properly translate, as it is so interwoven with the entire story and needs to work visually (in an illustration) as well. Also, I found out that the story parodies the romantic period and romantic poetry. As it refers to and even literally quotes works from that era, I had to brush up my knowledge of Dutch romantic works to be able to find Dutch equivalents!
It was a great project, as all translators helped each other improve their translations by proofreading them and providing feedback, which really helped the book reach a higher level! I also got to do the final editing and helped with formatting the interior pages of the book.
The book was officially presented during yesterday’s yearly symposium of the Society. I got to do a short presentation about the process and my struggles as a translator.
If you’re interested in obtaining a copy, you can buy one from the Society’s webshop.
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