May-Brit Akerholt ‘worries’ about her translations
The Norwegian-English translator May-Brit Akerholt has translated books and plays by this year’s recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Jon Fosse.
Photo: Mads Odgaard Smidstrup
May-Brit Akerholt is a vital piece in the Jon Fosse jigsaw. She is inevitably much more beyond that, too. A Norwegian-born and Australia-based translator, she spins compelling tales from a life lived for and inspired by literature and art. She will tell me the key to being a successful translator is to re-write the text and not translate it.
Behind every Nobel laureate like Jon Fosse is someone – or several people – like Akerholt, with the gift of the literary gab, with worldliness and understanding of language, and the uniqueness of each voice, to present that work, with the utmost respect, to readers. Each of Fosse’s works has its own original voice – something that means she asks questions throughout the process, a mountainous challenge involved. She came to this realisation after working on multiple projects of Fosse’s.
May-Brit Akerholt “worries” about her translations. The works of others in her hands matter, and nurturing words, whether as a writer or translator, is a profound experience.
“Good translation,” she tells me, “is not something that should be done directly, as that fails to acknowledge the authentic soul of an original text, but rather needs re-writing with great care and thought as if it had been originally written in that language.”
The “worrying” is part and parcel of presenting someone else’s work as best as possible, though she accepts that of course no re-worked version of his works can be as the same as Fosse’s originals, but hopefully offer the reader the same experience.
As for how May-Brit Akerholt feels when she reads, translates, lives Jon Fosse’s works, she responds that “it is different every time, in its own special way. It can make you feel as if you’ve had a special experience that has made you look into yourself, and it can make you surprised, sad, or wondrous.”
May-Brit Akerholt first encountered Jon Fosse in 2000. His Swedish agents, Colombine, approached her about translating one of his plays. She became interested, subsequently asked if she could do more translations of such works, and it only grew from there. May-Brit Akerholt and Jon Fosse were then in contact, met up when she went back to Norway, and they also attended a performance of his work, I Am the Wind, at the Old Vic in London together. She tries to meet him when she goes to Oslo these days and enjoys the friendship that has developed.
When she found out about Fosse’s Nobel prize win, she was thrilled, stating it was “not unexpected”. He had been on the shortlist on at least several occasions that she knew of, had won the Nordic Council Literature Prize, and had written in every genre of literature – novels, plays, poetry, essays, works reaching across all languages. “That doesn’t often happen”. And she has written English versions of works in all the genres.
Of course, she mentions his magnum opus, Septology, during our conversation, translated by Damion Searls, but she also talks about Fosse’s play Inside the Black Forest, how he adapted Oedipus, and his novel Trilogy, a work of three novellas. She calls the early play Mother and Child “a little pearl”.
Another name that she mentions throughout our conversation, scattered here and there, is the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. However, her stance on his work contrasts with that of many. She tells me he is not the realist many see him as, mentioning the “astonishingly fertile period of Norwegian art” which he, Grieg, Munch, and others were a part of from the latter part of the 19th century.
“Ibsen is highly ironic, with lots of subtexts,” she says. And this derailed people’s understanding of what he was genuinely commenting on regarding his society. “Many have missed the point completely. You have to be very careful when translating Ibsen’s works. There is good reason why his plays keep being done all over the world, in a vast range of languages.”
I go on to quiz her on why she started working as a translator. “It’s an interesting story,” she says. At university, she wrote her dissertation on Henrik Ibsen, and as a postgraduate she explored Patrick White, a writer whose work she adores – Australia’s sole winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. She ended up writing her PhD on how poor the translations of Ibsen were, and the challenges of translating Jon Fosse. She tells me, “Ibsen is one of my favourite writers,” and those existing translations of his work would never be good enough for her.
Her work path was laid before her, and it does appear she has never looked back, forging ahead on a course that finally delivers some English translations of note to the global reading public.
Akerholt is based in a village in the Blue Mountains, a vast natural heritage area about an hour from Sydney, with the bush right outside her window. It’s a long way from her native Norway, despite there being evident shades of both countries and their cultures adorning her and her surroundings like Christmas tree decorations.
She talks fluidly with passion for and knowledge of her industry spilling from her Australian-tinged Scandinavian tongue. Nobody ever guesses where she is from, bar one man who once had a girlfriend from Norway, and even in Australia she is a member of a small Norwegian book club, her home culture never far from her existence.
She does write, too, stating she has done lectures, articles, and chapters in academic books, but sees no rush to finish anything larger for publication. That specific door to the future remains open, without any additional stress added to the mix.
May-Brit Akerholt has no idea how to introduce herself to people; however, her work speaks for itself. Her love of literature and the theatre are accompanied by further artistic points of interest in painting (she loves going to museums), sees a lot of theatre, dancing of all kinds, and some opera.
Her three choices of people who stand out are the aforementioned Patrick White, brand-new Nobel hero Jon Fosse, and Henrik Ibsen. It’s hard to keep track of her wonderful train of thought, as she drops names of works left, right, and centre for all the people she mentions. She is an encyclopaedia of works of literature and plays. Fosse clearly occupies a special place inside her. And her translations that twist Fosse’s works from their Norwegian jackets – Nynorsk, a dialect spoken by a very small percent of the population – and dress them up in English outfits are extremely important. Soon, a great deal more people will have read Fosse’s novels and plays via her considerate hands.
Moving on to discuss standout works, she mentions Beckett and Sartre, she’s translated plays by both for production, and regarding her native Scandinavia she comments on how the three main countries produce vastly different literature from one another, and certainly from English-speaking literature. The theatre of Europe, especially East-European countries, is far more enamoured with the works of Jon Fosse, and other Norwegian playwrights such as Arne Lygre and Fredrik Brattberg than the theatre of English-speaking countries is.
Cecilie Enger, Vigdis Hjorth, and Ruth Lillegraven are all named when enquiring about her take on the current state of Scandinavian literature at present. Near the end of our 71-minute video call, when I ask what she misses about her homeland, she swiftly responds, “the seasons!” She rapidly fires off additional answers, “free education and healthcare, electric cars, bicycles, the lack of poverty” and how “civilised” Norway is.
Regarding the future, Akerholt says she plans to continue along her current path, enjoying what she calls the “luxury of freelancing”, adding that it would be great to have more translations from Norwegian being produced in English.
“Future plans, on the one hand, is to do what I’m doing,” she says. “I think I’m very lucky to be able to continue to work freelance. But it would be great to have more translations being produced, despite some Scandinavian television dramas being popular, plays are more popular in some European and Asian languages.”