"Global universalisation of one sole language is a Babel which will never exist"

29/06/2015

Francesc Parcerisas is an important member of the literary generation of the 1970s and has received several awards for his poetry. As translator, his works on the trilogy of J.R.R.Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" (2002) and on Odyssey (2010) stand out. He worked as director of the Institute for Catalan Letters from 1998 to 2004 and was the coordinator for the Government of Catalonia of the 2005 Book and Reading Year.

After almost 30 years of lecturing, the professor of the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting, with a brand new National Prize for Culture under his arm, begins to gather his personal belonging from the office as the start of his retirement, now that he's reached his 70th birthday. From his office window there hangs an Estelada, or Catalan separatist flag, and this gives way to the first question:

-Why did you hang the flag from your window?
-There are many places in Catalonia where you can see the Estalada hanging, and this shouldn't be different on our campus… Although I must honestly say that I do not understand the reason why universities, which aim to play such a decisive role within society - and that is precisely how it should be - have not defined their position on such an important matter. Although I am sure that within the universities themselves there are a variety of opinions.

-With regard to students and future translators, do you think translation is a recommendable profession?
-I believe it is a very important task, but that doesn't necessarily imply that precisely is recommendable. Recommendable is a concept linked to the labour market and working conditions, and that is something very complicated in this day and age. Professionals in this field first of all must have an excellent control of languages.

Translators, in this sense, are useful in any computer services, telephone, import-export company, etc. They play a highly important role in today's globalised world, in which English is the lingua franca and helps you in certain encounters, but in which knowing Danish or Russian offers you more favourable conditions. And we know this to be true because when someone comes here and speaks Catalan, we react better to them. Transactions and exchanges are easier if we go to Portugal and speak Portuguese or we go to Denmark and speak Danish.

-What does one need to be a good translator?
-You need three things: an excellent knowledge of the language, knowledge of the culture of the foreign language you are working in, and third and most important, you need to accept to differences between the two. If there are no differences, there is no translation. Translation is only possible if there are two elements which are distinct. One of the essential points of translation is the recognition of differences. It acts as a bridge, and for there to be a bridge we need a river with two banks which needs to be crossed. This acceptance yields very good results.
Sometimes I tell my students that the act of translating can be compared to a couple: some say good couples are made out of two half-oranges, but that is just not true. Couples need to be made up of two individuals, who are different, but who are capable of accepting each other.

-Of the many things you have translated, which are you especially proud of or have a a nice memory of?
-I especially remember the first work I translated, from French into Spanish. It was a book one of my professors from the University of Barcelona, Antoni Vilanova, asked me to work on and the title was “The Story of My Wife”. I must have been 20 years old, and although the translation was not of the original text, something we do not recommend doing, I do remember it dearly since it was my professor who asked me to work on it and after translating that book, I started wanting to translate others. I am also greatly satisfied with the translation of “The Hawthorn Lantern” by Seamus Heaney, a book of poems I translated from English to Catalan.

The trilogy “The Lord of the Rings” is also something of which I am very satisfied: I worked on that in the 1980s, from English into Catalan, and I enjoyed working on it very much, without knowing that it would later bring me so many "fans". I even remain in contact with the Tolkien Society, and from time to time they ask me to give conferences. The book is very well written, from a literary viewpoint. Tolkien's descriptions are very detailed, very elegant, with a very important ability to convince his readers and the storyline is very well structured. The books are very long and the action is intermittent, but the reader never gets lost: you have to be very talented to do that. I wanted to translate the book in the 1970s and I proposed it to the publishing houses, but all of them rejected the idea because it was so long and it was a fantasy novel, which was not popular at the time. What was popular was politics.

-What book were you not able to translate, but you would have liked to?
-Many. There are so many wonderful books. I like reading a bit of everything and there are authentic gems out there. I read whatever I can get my hands on, and in the languages I can, which are Catalan, Spanish, English, French and Italian. One day, if I have time, I would love to focus on Dickens, since I have never translated any of his works, and specifically on "Our Mutual Friend", which I believe has not been translated into Catalan. IT is a very well-written novel, as are all those from the 19th century. It is a very long and experimental book, with speaking objects, etc. The great novel is the one written in the 19th century, in English or Russian, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, etc. They were the monsters of literary construction and narration.
 
-Does the Catalan language have a future in such a global world?
-Yes, as long as there are speakers left. To think of the global universalisation of just one language is a chimera. It is a Babel which will never exist, among other things because there is a difference between a language which serves as a communication tool (and which could change and become Chinese; and before it was French), but would never serve as a cultural transmission. All the things we are capable of telling our children in Catalan or in Danish would be difficult to translate. Languages served as a cohesion tool. Languages are lost every day, but the demography and importance of Catalan is high up on that list, together with Danish, Serbian, Croatian, Hebrew, etc. Yes, it has problems, but so do French or Spanish, and some of them are due to influences from other languages, and others are merely political.

-Would Catalonia as a free state help the language, or does one have nothing to do with the other?
-It would help because it is an element of cohesion and of identity. But the language in itself has no political influence. Languages are apolitical and it all depends on the use they are given. People from other countries realise that when they get here. If you go to the Netherlands and speak Dutch, people open up to you more, and this happens when foreigners come here and speak Catalan. A person speaking Catalan can find work more easily, and that means that if you want to improve your conditions, you must speak Catalan.

-As an important poet, when speaking to young people what are addicted to mobile phones and tablets, what would you tell them about the importance of poetry?
-All artistic creations are useless. Music for example is fantastic, but it has no purpose... It makes us feel good and it gives us pleasure. With that I mean that no one can feed off of listening to Bach or contemplating a Cezanne painting, but at some point they can comfort us. Poetry is one of those things, and is even more important, because it is connected to the language. Thanks to poetry, we learn what is hidden behind a language, it helps us think and also feel emotions.

-What do you think about the new technologies?
-I think they are wonderful. It is as big a revolution as the printing press was at its time. It is unstoppable. Maybe the only problem lies in the over-dependency on this technology, which in the wrong hands can become dangerous.
When I was young I could go on reading for hours and hours. My children however do not read, but they do watch films and TV series on the internet, and know things I haven't a clue about. They may have knowledge about images, videos, links, etc. that I don't have, but I have other hobbies. And we can't be against it in name of what existed before. I've been putting away papers and books, but I know this is my world, while my kids ask me what I am planning to do with all those books. I recognise it's something I like, but that they like other different things, and that is equally important. The world now is different! And the speed of change is growing and growing. The changes are very spectacular! Maybe have the open mind of a translator has helped me process all these changes.