Florian Duijsens: As I believe this was one of the first times you were being translated in English, I was wondering what the experience of being translated was like, did it force you to look at your own work differently?

Philipp Schönthaler: One of the short stories from my collection had been translated in English before. Nonetheless, the experience of being translated is still new and what this means is only just slowly setting in. And indeed, it does provoke a different look at my own writing. The precondition is, of course, that I feel fairly comfortable with reading in English and have a certain idea or grasp of North American culture (which would be my first reference here before the UK, the reason for this probably being that I spent more time there, but it is also Amanda DeMarco’s background, who did the translation). This allows me to read my own writing in the English translation with this strange feeling of a great familiarity and a certain estrangement at the same time, which I really enjoyed and still find very productive. For example, reading the translation, I automatically look for different references or muse about parallels to authors that I certainly did not have in mind when I was writing the text originally.

Another experience was that I felt very tempted to make some alterations to the original after we discussed some issues of the text during the translation process. Since writing is in large parts a fairly lonesome business, I find it very attractive that with the translator there is someone else coming in, participating in and even altering my work. That this also leaves a lot of room for frustration is obvious, but in this regard I guess it has been a very lucky and satisfying start for me.

Read the full interview with Philipp Schönthaler in Asymptote here: http://www.asymptotejournal.com/blog/2014/03/20/sports-and-literature-an-interview-with-philipp-schonthaler/

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