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Alumni’s skills translate into top nominations

Grads Rhonda Mullins and Lazer Lederhendler are on short list for 2016 Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation
October 17, 2016
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By Maeve Haldane

Source: Advancement and Alumni Relations

Update: Lazer Lederhendler, MA 93, won a 2016 Governor General’s Literary Award for his translation of Catherine Leroux’s The Party Wall (Le mur mitoyen, Biblioasis). The announcement was made October 25. The awards will be presented by Governor General David Johnston, LLD 16, in a ceremony at Rideau Hall in Ottawa on November 30.

When this year’s Governor General’s Literary Awards are announced on October 25, there’s a decent chance that a Concordia graduate will grab the honours for Translation (French to English). That’s because two of the three nominees are university alumni.

Lazer Lederhendler Lazer Lederhendler took home the Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation in 2008 for Nicolas Dickner’s Nikolski.

The Governor General’s Award nomination for Lazer Lederhendler, MA 93, is for his translation of Catherine Leroux’s The Party Wall (Le mur mitoyen, Biblioasis), a novel also shortlisted for this year’s Scotiabank Giller Prize.

A multi-time nominee and previous winner, for Nicolas Dickner’s Nikolski in 2008, Lederhendler — who speaks Yiddish, English and French — fell into translating by helping political and social groups, and found he had a knack for it.

Lederhendler worked as a translator for the New Brunswick and federal governments while studying part-time toward a BA in English literature at the University of Ottawa. Realizing he wasn’t cut out to be a civil servant, he decided to pursue a Master’s degree in creative writing at Concordia.

During that time, he was asked to translate some short stories. The writer was Claire Dé, and Lederhendler continued to work with her, which led to his first Governor General’s nomination in 1999, for The Sparrow Has Cut the Day in Half.

Lederhendler feels lucky to have been able to carve a profession out of translating, supplemented by teaching over the years. “There are a lot of good translators, and not enough books being translated,” he says.

The Party Wall The Party Wall by Catherine Leroux, translated by Lazer Lederhendler

“Translation is intrinsically a very social act,” Lederhendler says, explaining that it’s a gesture of sharing that helps readers gain access to work they otherwise wouldn’t be able to. He also enjoys its social life, meeting other translators, writers and others in the literary community.

“My first loves were music and poetry,” Lederhendler says. “I was always fascinated by the musicality of language. Translation allows you to delve into and play with it.”

Though he admits to doing a good job, he says, “I’m my hardest critic. When I come away, I see the flaws. There’s always something I could have done better.

Every new translation feels like you’ve never translated before, and with every style there are different new problems to solve.”

Lederhendler calls The Party Wall “a brilliant book, rich and complex.” He adds, “Translation is a privilege. You’re the only one, other than the writer and an editor, to get to examine the work word by word.”

Rhonda Mullins Rhonda Mullins won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation last year for Twenty-One Cardinals, the English version of Jocelyne Saucier’s Les héritiers de la mine.

Even though Rhonda Mullins, MA 96, has been nominated five times for a Governor-General’s Literary Award in French-to-English Translation, she says it never gets old.

When she checked her Facebook feed the morning of the 2016 announcements and saw congratulations for being on the shortlist for Louis Carmain’s Guano (Coach House Books), she was totally surprised. “I spent three minutes staring at the computer saying, No way!”

She also knows and likes the two other nominees, Lazer Lederhendler and Neil Smith, and is thrilled to be with them.

Mullins calls her first nomination in 2007 for Hervé Fischer’s The Decline of the Hollywood Empire “a complete shock.” Yet the second one, she adds, was “reassuring — it wasn’t a fluke, the jury wasn’t drunk!” With her fourth nomination last year, for Jocelyne Saucier’s Twenty-one Cardinals, she took home the prize.

Guano Guano by Louis Carmain, translated by Rhonda Mullins

Although the win hasn’t yet made a huge impact on her life, she says that afterwards, when she first sat down to translate and was seized by all the usual feelings of inadequacies in the face of fine French prose, a second inner voice was able to counter with, “You did win a G-G, so you can’t be that bad.”

Mullins earned two BAs from the University of Ottawa, and completed an MA in media studies at Concordia. She believes her Concordia degree positioned her well for being a hired gun at writing for a living.

After a few jobs in marketing in high tech, she went freelance and, as often happens for those willing to take on new tasks, was offered work translating.

“I was predisposed not to like translation; I thought it would be boring,” Mullins says. Instead she found herself loving it. “There’s a crossword-puzzle quality to it,” she says.

In Guano, “There’s tons of wordplay and lots of humour, rhyme and rhythm, which makes it a joy to read — but a pain to translate,” she admits.

“I was really proud of the book when I finished. It was a nice challenge and really satisfying.”

#CUalumni

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