An interview with Will Firth
In this interview, we’re thrilled to introduce Will Firth, a dedicated translator and polyglot whose love for Slavic languages and literature is as captivating as the stories themselves.
Will Firth graduated in German and Russian, with Serbo-Croatian as a minor, from the Australian National University in Canberra in 1986 (BA). Today, he is an accredited translator for Croatian, German, Macedonian, and Russian, whose work is mostly focused on translation of BCMS literature.
Join us as we delve into Will Firth’s journey of building a connection between South Slavic masterpieces and English readers. Discover the most captivating yet demanding bricks of this literary bridge, explore his latest projects, and indulge in his recommendations for TV shows and movies inspired by South Slavic literary treasures!
What intrigued you to center your work around South Slavic literature? And when and how did you learn Macedonian as well? 😊
It’s the sense of intrigue that keeps me there; arriving there in the first place was more of a coincidence. I wasn’t predestined to go into languages. In fact, when I started university, I enrolled mainly in social sciences. My turn toward languages was something political: it began with a stint in the Australian Communist Party in the early 80s. The Party was fairly liberal or “euro-Communist,” but there was still a kind of reverence for the Soviet Union. I found this fascinating and decided to study Russian, so I dropped the social-science subjects at university. Although I left the Party just two years later, I stuck with Russian. (Also, I started learning and using Esperanto around this time—another broadly political decision.)
I used Russian as a springboard for learning BCMS and Macedonian in the mid-80s, which made sense given the similarity of the languages. I imagined becoming a health-service interpreter, given the large number of aging Yugoslav immigrants in Australia at the time, but then I won a scholarship to ex-Yugoslavia and spent the 1988-89 academic year in Zagreb. I went to Moscow in 1989-90 to improve my Russian. After that I moved to Berlin, where I’ve been ever since. Despite doing a lot of work with Bosnian refugees in the 90s, Russian remained my first Slavic language until around 2005. That year was a sea change for me: I was invited to a seminar in Munich for young literary translators from BCMS, and I also started getting a lot of Macedonian-to-English translation work from the UN Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague.
When that work petered out in 2008, I needed a major new source of translation work, so I took the plunge and went into literary translation in a big way. I’ve long been fond of literature as a reader, especially poetry and short stories, but I’m rather a latecomer to literary translation. I see myself more as a philologist: I’m fascinated by comparative grammar, phonetics, and lexicography, as well as the geography and history of the countries whose languages I translate. For me, literature is embedded in that context. I’m happy to admit this because I think broad interests and a good general knowledge provide a firm foundation for the multifaceted challenge of translating complex modern fiction. In any case: it’s quite a few twists, turns, and coincidences that have got me into translating South Slavic literature for a living.
Do you think there is a common thread for South Slavic writers when compared to other regions/languages? If yes, do you use this argument when negotiating with publishers? How does that look like? What are the arguments that best “sell” someone’s work?
I don’t perceive a clear common thread with South Slavic writers compared to other regions and languages. Anglophone publishers tend to perceive Balkan writers as difficult and “foreign” (talk about bad image!) so it’s more a case of having to argue that an individual author or book is very special. I chuckled when you said “negotiating” because there’s hardly ever much leeway for negotiating. It’s generally only small indie publishers who are open to South Slavic authors, and the window of opportunity tends to be limited—maybe because an author has just won a prize. Small publishers almost always depend on grants to realize a project, even when it’s “hot stuff.” I have little choice but to go with the flow and help implement the projects that are possible when they’re possible. It’s a difficult business.
In one of your interviews, you said: “All in all, I feel it’s quite magical how I’ve come to focus on Montenegrin literature even more than Croatian (as I would have expected). It’s a niche I feel very comfortable in”. Do you find any specific differences in writings (in regard to topics, styles, tones, etc.) based on what ex-Yu country the writer lives in?
Not really. I think the traits and strengths of individual authors overarch any commonality based on their country of origin or where they live. I enjoy the diversity, and there is so much exciting, fresh writing that deserves to be translated and published.
On second thought, there is a common feature that strikes me: several of the Montenegrin male writers whose novels I’ve been translating or reading in recent years reveal a fondness for stream of consciousness: Andrej Nikolaidis’s Mađarska rečenica, parts of Aleksandar Bečanović’s Vlatka, Ognjen Spahić’s daunting Calypso, and Ilija Đurović’s Sampas. I understand the appeal of this narrative mode, but it’s often hard to digest, and it’s always a pain in the neck to translate because of the major syntactical differences between BCMS and English. I hope this trend doesn’t catch on more than it already has.
Have you ever stumbled upon a word or phrase in Slavic languages that you found especially charming or difficult to translate into English? Can you share some aspects or cultural details you’ve come across while translating Slavic literature that you think most people might not know, but you find fascinating?
Some words always make me groan when I have to translate them because there are multiple correspondences in English, or sometimes none at all. In terms of BCMS, the verbs dočekati, kukati, and javiti se are tricky in this way; as is the adjective tuđi; and the nouns gimnazija, vlast(i), and osmrtnica, to name just a few, can also be a headache.
But there are lots of charming words and phrases that more than compensate for the grind with the difficult ones. I’m not sure I’ve had to translate it yet, but I love the phrase vuk je sit, a ovce na broju. I also like vivid metaphors like kad na vrbi rodi grožđe and s konja na magarca. Also, I find it cute the way BCMS can use an adjective and make a humorous noun out of it that looks like a surname, e.g. nespretnjaković (a clumsy person, bungler, butterfingers) оr dosadnjaković (bore, old fart)—words like this can be a fun challenge to translate. I enjoy having to deal with catchy wordplay like: Svi te maze i paze, od blata do zlata, etc. Twangy sayings like this can be hard to translate convincingly—almost as hard as humor!
There are heaps of cultural details that I found exotic when I first encountered them: Easter and Christmas traditions that diverged from what I knew in Australia, family feasts and name days (especially in Orthodox regions), etc. The importance of godparents, best men, bridesmaids and other kumovi, was new to me, though these traditions may be on the wane. At a lexical level, I find it stunning there are three words for “aunt” (tetka, strina, and ujna) and three for “uncle” (stric, ujak, and tetak)—not to mention the corresponding Bosniak terms (amidža, daidža, etc.) and various regionalisms, e.g. the Dalmatian dundo.
Who are some of your favorite Slavic authors to translate? Can you discuss a project that you found particularly rewarding or challenging?
It’s unfair for me to single out “favorite” authors because there are so many I like, but here are three: I love translating Spomenka Štimec from Croatia, who writes playful but reflective prose in Esperanto; I’m also fond of the Russian writer Konstantin Paustovsky (1892-1968), particularly because of his polished style and the nature themes in his stories. I doubt I’ll get to translate either of them again because it depends largely on funding, and neither of the two are in a league that appeals to Anglophone publishers. Thirdly, I should mention Rumena Bužarovska, whose playfulness and imagery I love.
Texts I’ve found particularly challenging are Ilija Đurović’s Sampas, which I’ve translated the first half of; Miloš Crnjanski’s lengthy Roman o Londonu (A Novel of London), which involved dealing with his copious use of commas, his idiosyncratic use of the pluperfect, and sustaining a readable narrative over so many pages. Probably the biggest challenge I’ve faced was translating Aleksandar Prokopiev’s short story “Приказна на буквата Љ” (The Story of the Letter Q), which involved transposing Macedonian terms and wordplay with the relatively rare letter Љ into forms in English containing the letter Q—it was kind of fun, but a real struggle, and a good example of where translation becomes a complete rewrite.
The most rewarding? Ivan Dodovski’s charming, quirky character studies in his short-story collection Големиот куфер (The Giant Suitcase); Miroslav Krleža’s Izlet u Rusiju (Journey to Russia), which really brought together my Balkan and Russian interests; and some of the stories in the Balkan Bombshells collection that are just so witty and clever, e.g. Marijana Čanak’s feminist revenge story “Probuđena” (Awakened) and Lena Ruth Stefanović’s entertaining meta-story “Ženja” (Zhenya).
Are there any authors whose works you have translated, and that you haven’t met them, but you wish you could (regardless of the fact if they are contemporary authors, or if you would need some time traveling machine in order to meet them)? What would you ask them?
I sometimes fantasize about this. I’d need a time machine to speak with Petre M. Andreevski (1934-2006), arguably Macedonia’s greatest 20th-century novelist. I co-translated his seminal novel Пиреј (Pirey) in 2009, and now I’m working on a long sample from his lesser-known novel Небеска Тимјановна (working title: Nebeska’s Odyssey), a saga about the tempestuous life of a woman from northern Greece—a member of the oppressed Slavic-Macedonian minority—who takes part in the Greek Civil War (1946–49) on the side of the Communists. After their defeat, she seeks refuge in Albania, where she is arrested as ideologically suspicious and deported to the USSR for interrogation.
This is the beginning of an odyssey through prisons and labor camps. During Khrushchev’s thaw, Nebeska is allowed to leave and travels to Yugoslavia, where she searches for her ten-year-old son, whom she had to leave in an orphanage in Macedonia in her years as a guerrilla. The novel ends with the bittersweet perspective of mother and son building a future together in Yugoslavia. The book is based on biographical interviews that the author conducted with a veteran of the Greek Civil War who spent the second half of her life in Skopje. She was quite a warhorse, apparently—no wonder, having endured what she did—but she also seems to have possessed a profound emotional side. I would love to have been a fly on the wall during those interviews.
There are also living authors I’ve translated who I’m keen to meet and talk with: Jelena Lengold’s story “Da li me se sećaš?” (Do you remember me?) in the Balkan Bombshells collection portray one woman’s unique strategy for hooking men—I’d love to ask her how she came up with the idea—and the excerpt from Andrea Popov Miletić’s novel Mladi pioniri, mi smo morska trava (Young Pioneers, we are seaweed) in the same collection contains so much fantastic imagery that I’d like to ask how it evolved, with an aim to understanding it better in case I ever get to translate the lovely novel.
Are there any Slavic literary works that you think would make great movies or TV series, even for audiences unfamiliar with the original text?
Oh yes! Nebeska’s Odyssey could be made into a thrilling movie or series, and there was a stage back in the zeros when a Macedonian filmmaker was considering the project, but then she dropped it. I suppose getting the novel translated would be a precondition for approaching a Western film studio.
Bekim Sejranović’s Nigdje niotkuda (From Nowhere to Nowhere) could be turned into an interesting filmscript that would be assured a certain popularity, given the author’s cult status among young West Balkan readers prior to his untimely death in 2020.
My third and hottest recommendation: the dramatic novella “Fragment F” by Vesna Perić in the collection Take Six: Six Balkan Women Writers, with its blend of suspense and mystery, could be made into a movie relatively easily, I imagine. It has a manageable number of characters, no crowd scenes or complex props, and a handful of locations on one Greek island.
That compilation of short stories by women writers from six countries that were part of Yugoslavia was one of the latest projects you worked on. You both edited and translated this collection. Can you share with us what this collection brings to the audience? In one of your interviews, you mentioned a lot of administrative work and poor budget for this book. What drove you to finish it anyway?
That comment applied to the three collections I worked on in 2021 and 2022: not only Take Six, but also Balkan Bombshells: Contemporary Women’s Writing from Serbia and Montenegro and Sea, Sun, Salt: Short Stories from Montenegro. As a matter of fact, Take Six was decently remunerated—at the Translators Association’s recommended minimum rate. But Balkan Bombshells was done on a shoestring budget and involved me not just translating and editing, but also liaising with SEVENTEEN authors.
Sea, Sun, Salt was similarly intensive and was a purely voluntary project, with no remuneration, but I had already translated nineteen of the twenty-one texts. I often find that the magnitude of the work on a book only becomes fully apparent when I’m far into it. Discontinuing is then hardly an option for me because it would jeopardize what income is tied up with the book, and it would be a shame not to be publishing the authors’ great stories.
The Take Six collection presents a colorful selection of pieces from the six Slavophone countries that were once part of Yugoslavia. It doesn’t aim to be representative, just enjoyable and perhaps eye-opening. The initial idea came from Eric Lane of Dedalus Books, who had previously published a Portuguese and a Spanish collection. The Balkan Take Six brings together short stories from Magdalena Blažević’s acclaimed 2020 collection Svetkovina (Celebration) that portray the lives of women in rural Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1980s. They focus on women’s experience in rigid patriarchal communities and deal in particular with sexuality, illegal abortion, and infanticide. The combination of poetic terseness and stark imagery is stunning. Then there are five pieces of travel prose by Tatjana Gromača.
Their rambling, associative style touches on the many influences that have shaped the author’s own life and create a collage of today’s Croatia in its Mediterranean and central European contexts. “Fragment F” by Vesna Perić is by far the most eclectic piece in the book. It’s a polyphonic story about time and space, combining mythological and philosophical questions with the tale of six Serbian citizens who are chosen to be subsidized settlers on an almost depopulated Greek island.
Natali Spasova’s seven stories, which are stand-alone chapters from her 2014 Macedonian novel Запалка (The Lighter), deal with unrelated protagonists whose lives are loosely connected by an old cigarette lighter. The cleverly constructed, partly humorous short stories by Ana Svetel from Slovenia are a real plus in this book, providing a counterpoint to some of the more serious texts. Finally, “Metohija: Tapestry Without a Frame” by Sonja Živaljević from Montenegro portrays multicultural life in Kosovo before the breakup of Yugoslavia. It centers around the author’s early struggle with tuberculosis and is written in a calm, melancholic style with startling imagery and lots of historical references—a veritable kaleidoscope of the Balkans. So, as you see, the collection combines a real diversity of styles and themes.
I should point out that I have a reading knowledge of Slovenian but don’t know the language well enough to translate. That was done most ably by my colleague Olivia Hellewell from Nottingham.
Since you are a polyglot and an Esperantist, and using both Cyrillic and Latin, can you share with us your secret formula for language acquisition? 😊 How do you stay in touch with all those languages, and does it happen that you sometimes mix them? Is there any other language that you would like to conquer if you find the time in this life?
I wish there were a secret formula for language acquisition! In my view it’s mostly about listening and being open-minded enough to get your head around things, plus old-fashioned diligence. As a young student, when most of my peers were out partying, I’d be in my room learning vocabulary, 15 minutes per language, almost every day. A real dosadnjaković.
The relatedness of Russian, BCMS, and Macedonian was an asset when first learning them. Keeping them apart when reading and writing is not an issue, but speaking can be a problem. Since I learned them virtually in parallel, they’re probably all sitting in the same part of my brain, and if I spend a month somewhere in the Balkans, say, immersing myself in BCMS or Macedonian, and someone rings up and wants to speak Russian, they get very corrupted Russian out of me. And vice versa if I’ve spent time in Russia. It’s as if my active gray cells only have space for one Slavic language at a time.
I’d like to learn Arabic and/or Turkish. Or, closer to home, Hungarian. I aspire to get beyond beginner’s level with Czech. But time flies and the languages I already use are like little kids clamoring for attention, so whether I’ll get anywhere with my plans is questionable. Unless someone invents the 30-hour day.
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