Review by Liz Dexter
When we talk about women’s safety, it’s health and safety; when we talk about activist translation, we’re really talking about good translation.
Jen Calleja is a poet, writer, essayist and translator whose work has been published widely in all forms, and has previously been longlisted for the Ivan Juritz Prize for Experimentation in Text in 2020, and shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2019, amongst other prizes. Having read a couple of reviews mentioning its unconventional form, plus the aforementioned longlisting for a prize for Experimental Text, I have to say I was a little worried about the allegedly experimental nature of the text. However, it was absolutely fine, and in fact a tour de force which is funny, angry and accessible to translators (I would imagine) and non-translators (I know) alike.
Calleja sets out the details of her life path, including her status as having dual Maltese-British heritage and her path through translation work as an exhibition or fair (think trade fair with booths rather than fairground fair, although there are fairground aspects). In mainly shortish chapters we are invited to view and consider, among other aspects, taking on other creative activities, how you show you’re working, working with living authors, spaces to work in, misogyny in publishing and translation, terms and conditions and payment, activism in translation (see quotation above: this actually means making sure stereotypes and discriminatory language are not found in a translation where it’s not justified by being in the mouth or thoughts of a character with discriminatory reviews or written sarcastically); this last chimes with my work as an editor. There is a lot about the nuts and bolts of translation, not just the philosophy: we are shown translations in progress and the sets of decision that have to be made, including drafts, mistakes and comparisons, which is, of course, absolutely fascinating. AI comes into it, as of course it will, and I loved her take on it:
I’ve started to be asked by publishers to edit ‘translations’ created by ‘artificial intelligence’. You can’t edit these things that only have the appearance of a text; they’re an obstacle to a relationship translation built from the ground up, blocking the view.
The book is deeply concerned with issues of access to literature and its associated careers: how traditional does your education have to be? Does it matter if you didn’t go to Oxbridge? as well as the aspects that bleed across from her other DIY activity, playing and singing in punk bands. There is more to that connection than you might think, especially when it comes to running a small press, which she also starts to do with a friend, and it’s clear later in the book that both activities happen at the same time. So it’s the format that’s experimental, and we see pieces written out differently, including a section which pairs draft and finished translations across a seam down the middle of the page. At the end is a choose-your-own-adventure page, where the exit you take from the fair leads you to different career paths, which is a lovely touch!
Don’t be put off by the ‘experimental’ label but read this book to take a deep, but very readable, dive into the work and mind-set of a translator.
Liz Dexter works with translators and has some translator friends, so being translator-adjacent is fascinated by this world and knows a bit about it. She blogs about reading, running and working from home at https://www.librofulltime.wordpress.com.
Jen Calleja, Fair: The Life-Art of Translation (Prototype, 2025). 978-1913513733, 211pp., paperback.
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