Interview with Charlotte Mandell

Emprise Review has a nice interview with French translator Charlotte Mandell, who has translated a number of classic authors (Balzac, Proust, Flaubert) along with more contemporary works (Genet, BHL, Littell). She recently completed an excerpt of Mathias Enard’s Zone (which I have in my hands right now), which is becoming one of the most hyped French books since The Kindly Ones.

What attracts you to the craft of translation?

I love reading, and I think translating is the truest form
of reading. People are always asking me if I write my ‘own’
work. I find it hard to convey to them that I feel no need
to write—I would much rather ‘be’ a lot of different authors by translating them. I never read ahead when translating,
so translating for me feels like more of a creative process:
I have no preconceived notions of how the book will end,
and can put myself in the author’s place by trying to
imagine what will come next.