Translator in the spotlight: Kata Veress
The translator in the spotlight this month is Kata Veress. We asked Kata to answer a few questions about herself:
Who are you?
I am a literary translator, working mainly from Nordic languages into Hungarian, English, and German. I also co-run the small independent press Ø Kiadó, specialising in Nordic literature.
What have you translated?
I mostly translate contemporary fiction, including Faroese authors such as Oddfríður Marni Rasmussen, Sólrún Michelsen, Kim Simonsen, Vónbjørt Vang, Katrin Ottarsdóttir, Helena Kannuberg, Tóroddur Poulsen, and Sissal Kampmann.
Why do you love Faroese literature?
I admire how Faroese literature is both old and new, rooted in ancient tradition, yet clad in a relatively young written language. And when you read Faroese authors, you can hear the melody of breaking waves in the North Atlantic and smell the salt in the air.
Provide a short translated excerpt of your choosing.
Oddfríður Marni Rasmussen’s Ikki fyrr enn tá (’Not until then’) is a beautiful novel I think everyone should read. It is available in Hungarian translation, but English-speaking readers would still need some action from publishing houses, so publishers, this one is for you! 😊
“It was quiet and dark outside, as if the city lay in the stomach of a sleeping animal.
Elsa’s dreams were locked in. I couldn’t enter them. No one could. I lay awake all night, looking at her. Observed the lines and wrinkles in her face as she tossed and turned, groaning. Her eyes darted left and right under the eyelids. Up and down. She sounded like the scraps of a lost child’s cry for help, or an angry man fighting a fight he’s unused to. Her dream echoed here where the dream was not, but the images remained locked inside her head, only escaping as desperate sounds. The incontrollable night dreams were nothing compared to what she had to endure in her waking hours. But at times she would lie still, as if she had taken death at his word. She would lie there like a nothing.
A great big nothing.”