“Translating through the voice: an alternative translating approach to Dimoula’s poetry”

In a brief but most honest account of the translating process that led to the production of a selection of poems in English by the Greek poet Kiki Dimoula, one of her translators, Rika Lesser, a poet in her own right, emphasizes her “need to hear and feel and see the word boundaries as well as the sense (semantic) and sensation (auditory and rhythmic) of every separate word” (Dimoula, 2012, p. xlii). Her insistence is perhaps more readily understood given the fact that she did not read Modern Greek when she started working on the translation of the poems. Her approach was more of a ‘somatic’ nature, as she called it; she listened and felt the poems spoken and influenced by her auditory experience she let her instincts as well as the knowledge of the language, which she gradually acquired, dictate her translating choices.

This presentation discusses Rika Lesser’s alternative translating approach to the poetry of a particularly recalcitrant Greek poet in respect with her co-translator’s contribution and a number of issues that arise; are the translators challenging the wide-spread belief among translation scholars and linguists that the translator should read the language from which s/he translates? Are they attempting to tackle the multiple ‘untranslatabilities’ that so often arise in poetry through an innovative approach? How does their choice of translating process influence definitions about what constitutes a translation? The presentation finally concludes with a brief review of the poems in their English form.

Konstantina (Nadia) Georgiou comes from an ancient town in Southern Greece. She was awarded a BA in Foreign Languages and Translation from the Ionian University in 2010. In 2012 she completed an MA in Comparative Literary Studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She has been offered a post to study as an MPhil/PhD student at the Languages and Translation programme in Surrey University, starting September 2014.

She has worked as Modern Languages teacher, freelance translator and medical interpreter. She translated Jules Verne’s Meridiana: The adventures of three Englishmen and three Russians in South Africa (4pi Editions, 2011) into Greek and from English a book by a new author, Dora Milatou-Smith, entitled Head over heels in Paris (Greek title: Gia Ola ftaiei to Parisi) (Sygxronoi Orizontes Editions, 2012).

In October 2012 she presented a paper entitled “Representations of WWI in 20^th century literature and 21^st century cinema: The Past Experienced, The Past Remembered” at the BCLA Autumn Graduate Reception based in her MA dissertation. In December 2013 she presented a paper entitled “The creative space: a collaborative translation of Kiki Dimoula’s poems in English” at the 19^th Meeting of the European Network ‘Translation as a means of intercultural communication’, at the Université de Haute Alsace. Her research interests include the reception of and response to literary translation, the translation of humour, ideology and translation and the translation of minority languages. She is currently living in London and working as assistant librarian and freelance translator.