Presenting at ATA65 in Portland

Written by: Frans Kooymans
Published: 8 January 2025

A unique opportunity presented itself last year for me to visit the Pacific Northwest. I was invited by the American Translators Association (ATA) to address its Dutch Language Division (DLD) at its annual conference, held from 30 October to 2 November 2024 in Portland, Oregon, in the US. My translation into Dutch of ‘All God’s Dangers’ by Theodore Rosengarten, the oral history of an illiterate Black sharecropper from Alabama, was the instigation for this invitation. I had spent the better of two years on the translation, which was published in October 2022 as ‘De kleur van katoen’ (ISBN number 978-90-832122-7-2 published by ISVW Uitgevers, part of Internationale School voor Wijsbegeerte). The crown on my translation career, I might say, which allowed me to survive the Covid pandemic unscathed. Tony Parr and Marcel Lemmens, who were distinguished speakers at an earlier ATA conference (as well as Joy Burrough-Boenisch), alerted me to get in touch with the DLD, and an opportunity became a happy reality for me.

ATA65 – yes, the sixty-fifth annual conference of this association of translators, interpreters, and other language specialists – was a big event. It attracted some 1,200 participants from all over the US and abroad, and many languages could be heard at the Oregon Conference Center, ranging from Spanish to Arabic and from French to Chinese and Japanese, as well as English in various accents. During four days close to 200 sessions were held, small as well as plenary, thus plenty to choose from for the often colourful participants. As the conference coincided with Halloween, various witches and ghosts could be discerned during the event, including SENSE member Nina Woodson and her husband, who featured as Alice and the Mad Hatter, straight from Wonderland.

I got the invitation for the conference nearly five months in advance, which meant lots of time to prepare. Too much almost, as it stays on your mind the whole time and leads to a lot of writing and rewriting and then partly deleting to keep the presentations within manageable proportions. I presented two one-hour sessions. The first one titled ‘From All God’s Dangers to De kleur van katoen’ covered the whole process of how I converted the original American English text from 1974, all in the local dialect of a Black cotton farmer from the Deep South, into understandable Dutch, and of the close collaboration with the author, the sometimes frustrating search for a publisher, and the promotion of the Dutch translation of this big book.

My second session covered ‘The State of Literary Translation in the Netherlands’. To prepare for this, I got a wealth of information about the promotional efforts by Expertisecentrum Literair Vertalen (Centre of Expertise for Literary Translation) and Nederlands Letterenfonds (Dutch Foundation for Literature). So my presentation focused, on the one hand, on the efforts to support and train literary translators (a university-level programme, courses, mentorships, etc.) and the grants available to qualifying translators, and on the other hand, on the low level of compensation for literary translation and the difficulties of attracting enough young people to choose a translation career.

The conference started with a Buddies Welcome Newbies event, where long-standing participants (for some this was their tenth or more ATA conference) met newbies such as I. Aside from all the information to be garnished at the numerous sessions, these four days constituted a tremendous networking opportunity. Name badges, which also identified language and nationality, had to be worn to gain attendance to the Oregon Convention Center, but these also stimulated contact between strangers. So I was approached, for example, by the Belgian translator of one of Geert Mak’s books into French.

Four days in a part of the US that I had never visited before was reason for my wife and I to extend our stay to a full three weeks. So we got to see a good bit of the city and its surroundings. The Columbia River Gorge with its many waterfalls, the Mount Hood volcano, the Japanese Garden in the wooded western part of Portland, the rugged Oregon coast – all quite impressive. I have, meanwhile, recovered from the jetlag caused by the nine-hour time difference with home and can look back on a rewarding time in Portland.

Part 1. ‘From All God’s Dangers to De kleur van katoen’

In the autumn of 1974 the literary world saw the publication of ‘All God’s Dangers’ by Theodore Rosengarten, a young historian from up North. This volume of oral history, which won the prestigious National Book Award, tells the life of Nate Shaw, an illiterate Black sharecropper from the Deep South. Rosengarten recorded Shaw’s compelling stories exactly as he had heard Shaw tell them.

Fifty years later Shaw’s history remains relevant, including in the Netherlands, where black lives matter as much as in the US, all in light of its own history of slavery and colonialism (think of Suriname and Indonesia) that is getting much attention these days. So, I set out to translate this big book into Dutch, and two years ago it was published as ‘De kleur van katoen’. The title is a tribute to the storyteller, who took great pride in the lily-white cotton that he produced his entire life, fighting the lifelong odds against him.

‘All God’s Dangers / De kleur van katoen’ continues to captivate the reader. The civil rights movement has meant much for the Black population in the US, but the racism and social discrimination have largely remained. The book shows the hard reality of life in the South and the resilience that is needed to fight on.

Part 2. ‘The State of Literary Translation in the Netherlands’

The archetypical book translator in the Netherlands is a woman aged around sixty. She translates a quarter of a million words of fiction from English to Dutch, earns around €20,000 per year, and often has another language-related job (editor, teacher or subtitler) to make ends meet.

These are findings of a detailed study of some years ago into the job market position of book translators, commissioned by a leading literary foundation that is heavily involved in the training of literary translators, in an effort to attract younger people to the profession.

No one will doubt the importance of literature, but what about the translation of literature? Without a dedicated translator, the Diary of Anne Frank would have had a dreadfully small number of readers, and without the translators duo Bindervoet and Henkes, the Dutch reading public would still be struggling through James Joyce’s Ulysses. So, what keeps students from pursuing a translation career? Is the profession still interesting enough to attract talented candidates? And how are these issues addressed in the Netherlands?

There are enough threats that inhibit a healthy Dutch translation culture. One example is the decline of interest in languages other than English. Another, the limited number of programmes to train translators. And above all, their poor compensation, making it difficult to attract enough young candidates.

But we see solid initiatives in the Netherlands to counter these trends. Training facilities are provided by the Expertisecentrum Literair Vertalen (ELV), including personal coaching, mentorships, and a translators’ house. The Nederlands Letterenfonds provides subsidies to translators: essential since few Dutch books get published in English without a grant. And a Master’s programme in literary translation has been developed by the universities of Utrecht and Louvain.

My recent work

More recently, I have translated from Dutch into English 'Van Alabama naar Margraten' by Mieke Kirkels. The book is about the life of a Black soldier who was involved, towards the end of World War II, in digging the graves at the military cemetery in Margraten at a time when the US Army was still entirely segregated. The title of the translation is, not surprisingly, 'From Alabama to Margraten'. The book will be published this coming spring by Amsterdam University Press, in time for the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Limburg.