Lim Woan Wen is in the middle of an apprenticeship with Shelly Bryant through the Singapore Apprenticeship in Literary Translation (SALT), organised by Tender Leaves Translation and the Singapore Book Council. This is the fifth of her reflections on her work during the apprenticeship.
You can find Woan Wen’s earlier reflections here, here, here, and here.
Musings of an Old New Bird #05
Unchained Melody
Prior to my first attempt at translating a novella, I had never worked on any piece more than a few thousand words long. It took me a long time to complete a first draft, by which point I was left with a very tight window for editing, so imagine my horror when I reviewed my work in its entirety and found it a terrible, terrible read. It felt so awful that I was convinced I needed to start from scratch, but there was no time for that.
After I’d finished editing and patching whatever I could manage, I proceeded to read it again from the top. This time I decided to drop the source text completely and that was when something “magical” happened. Standing on its own, the English story suddenly became a very enjoyable read; it had somehow “improved” tremendously.
Besides the fact that the draft had been cleaned up significantly, it struck me that when I’d finally let go of the original words, I stopped judging and worrying as much about accuracy and was able to pay better attention to the translation’s flow as an independent piece of writing. The unchaining clearly made a difference to how I perceived my own renderings.
Before applying for SALT, literary translation had been the furthest thing from my mind, not to mention working from Chinese to English. While I still feel more confident in my command of Chinese than English, I’ve come to realise that I may have been unwittingly limiting myself with the “belief” that my English cannot be good enough since it’s weaker than my Chinese.
Being an apprentice has opened up my mind in more ways than one, beyond the nuts and bolts of literary translation. I hadn’t expect it, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the sense of freedom I’ve found in becoming a newbie in a brand new field as a mid-career professional as well as a mid-lifer. It has been a wonderful time and opportunity to reinvent default modes, reconsider habitual ways of thinking, and challenge fears I’d developed as an “old bird.”
When Shelly invited me to publish my reflections here on A Polite Lie, my instinctive response was, “Really? Would anyone want to read my ‘basic’ — and maybe even naive — contemplations on literary translation?” And she'd assured me that it could be helpful for other people who were also getting started on the same journey.
Five posts later, I do not know if anybody reading my words have found them useful in any way, but it has certainly been invaluable for me to pen them. On top of being a fruitful way to consolidate and clarify my thoughts, this has also been a chance to practice embracing imperfection and letting go of worrying about what I put out in the public sphere for others to read and judge.
I’m feeling almost reluctant to end this apprenticeship, but I believe it is yet another thing I have to free my mind from before it becomes a safety net or comfort zone, and I look forward to continuing this voyage beyond being a new newbie — preferably without losing the sense of freedom that came with it.