A window on the world: Stephanie Smee’s career journey
Stephanie Smee is a Sydney-based French translator who worked as a lawyer before pivoting to literary translation. She has recently translated books including Hannelore Cayre’s Dagger Award–winning crime novel The Godmother (Black Inc.) and the French bestseller On the Line: Notes From a Factory (Joseph Ponthus, Black Inc., March 2021). Here she shares her career journey.
A very famous translator once said something about literary translation being the perfect job for somebody who is good with languages and likes playing with words but who has no talent for original work. I had a laugh when I first read this, and thought—how true! Of course, it’s not really true, because translating itself is very much original work, but you certainly don’t have to worry about plot!
My path to literary translation probably started with my upbringing. Both my parents are talented linguists; my mother is Swedish and speaks about five different languages. My father, too, is an extraordinary linguist, but Latin and classical Greek are his thing. When they met, in Geneva, French was their common language. So languages—and, helpfully, grammar—formed part of my childhood domestic landscape; the house was full of foreign language books: everything from Pippi Longstocking to Emile Zola and much in between!
I studied French and German both at school and at university. Sadly, I had to choose when my law degree required more time, so I continued with French. One of my first jobs during university, when not waitressing, was as a proofreader for Halsbury’s Laws of Australia. Both this job, and my work as an associate to Justice Michael Kirby, trained me well for my translating work. Proofreading judgments and other legal texts really did prepare me for the painstaking—some would say pedantic!—work of translating.
I started professional life in a large law firm, but ultimately found it hard to shake the languages bug and after a number of years I qualified as a French to English translator. I worked first as a legal translator, which felt like a natural progression, although I would be lying to say it was as much fun as working with literature! Still, I received superb training from my legal translating colleagues.
At some point, I decided to focus on making a start in the field of literary translation. I poured all my efforts into finding new projects and pitching ideas to publishers. A lot of (joyful!) work goes on behind the scenes, as in so many fields in the arts, but if you have the time and ability to focus on that, it’s a huge privilege to be able to devote yourself to the task. I was fortunate with the publication of my translations of the Countess de Ségur’s enduringly popular children’s stories (The Fleurville Trilogy, S&S) which really set me on my path. After that came a collaboration with Sophie Masson, herself a French speaker, who edited and published my translation of Jules Verne’s little-known historical adventure novel, Mikhail Strogoff (Eagle Books). Any French person is likely to tell you that Strogoff is their favourite Verne novel, yet very few English readers know it. This tale, set in pre-revolutionary Russia, is an absolutely cracking adventure tale.
One of the happiest times I’ve had translating was working with my mother, Ann-Margrete, on Gösta Knutsson’s popular Swedish children’s stories about Pelle No-Tail (Black Inc.), the cat who had its tail bitten off by a rat. We worked side by side and laughed a lot! These stories are beloved in Sweden and it was a delight to bring them to a new audience of English-reading children. Next came my translation of Françoise Frenkel’s No Place to Lay One’s Head (Vintage). This rediscovered WWII memoir is the moving story of one woman’s attempt to escape persecution in Vichy France. I really felt this was an important book; Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano wrote the preface and it has since been awarded the JQ-Wingate Prize in the UK.
And what fun I’ve since had with Hannelore Cayre’s spiky crime novels, The Godmother and most recently The Inheritors. I’ve loved working with the fabulous team at Black Inc. on these fast-paced, irreverent novels and I couldn’t have been more delighted when The Godmother recently won the CWA Dagger Award for Crime Fiction in Translation. Cayre’s narrative voice is inimitable and it’s a treat to crawl inside her head and play with her words. She has an ability to shock just as she has you snorting with laughter. It was definitely a career highlight to see The Godmother on the New York Times’ 2019 list of 100 Notable Books.
I’ve been so fortunate to collaborate with Black Inc. on recent projects and I’m hugely excited about our forthcoming books. Watch out for Joseph Ponthus’ On the Line. It’s not a work you’ll forget in a hurry. It’s a powerful meditation on the confronting and dehumanising reality of the food processing industry and it will leave you changed. I’m hugely proud of this translation and so grateful to my publisher, Sophy Williams, and editor, Jo Rosenberg, for bringing it to fruition.
Translation is a solitary task, but I remain convinced of its significance. Without access to foreign language books, our world is—we are—diminished, as is our capacity to empathise with those whose stories we couldn’t read without a translator. Now, more than ever, we should be reminding ourselves constantly of the world beyond our borders.
Category: Features
