Karin Filipsson is a PhD student in the Department of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Washington, where she also teaches Swedish. She translates from Swedish to English and English to Swedish, and also speaks German, French, and Spanish.
When did your interest in translation begin? Do you have a particular focus?
I did a master’s in English Literature as well as a master’s in Creative Writing and that is when I started translating my own work between languages. I also discovered the poet and author Joseph Fasano and asked to be his Swedish translator, which he agreed to. Last year I participated in a graduate seminar on translation in my department with Marianne Stecher-Hansen as well as an interdisciplinary graduate translation seminar with Michael Biggins, Heekyoung Cho and Richard Watts. As part of these seminars, I started translating the Swedish Holocaust memoir Children of the Holocaust by Margit Silberstein. I also joined a couple of translation networks and started putting my name out there, and soon I had connections and started getting translation work. I do literary translation and academic translation, so far.
Can you tell us about something you found particularly challenging to translate?
I find poetry to be particularly challenging. In my opinion, it’s difficult to translate poetry because there are particular demands on both meaning, tone, sound, sometimes rhyme, and space. Also, the length or style of the poetry, which can be challenging to find an equivalent translation for that both makes sense with regard to the meaning and to the musicality of the poem. Metaphors often do not make sense to translate directly, so you need to be as much of a writer/poet yourself as a translator. Discussions with the poet/author is the best way to do this, as a form of collaboration.
What project(s) are you working on currently?
I am working on Joseph Fasano’s fiction and poetry from English to Swedish, the non-fiction book White Melancholy from Swedish to English and another academic book.
Who are some authors or translators whose work you recommend?
I recommend Joseph Fasano who is currently writing a “living poem” for his newborn son on Twitter under the name @stars_poem. I also recommend Bianca Kronlöf’s Letters to Men (which I translated) and the Holocaust memoir A Brief Stop on the Road from Auschwitz by Göran Rosenberg translated by Sarah Death. Also, French author and translator Sébastien Doubinsky.