Life in Translation - Peter Bush (Catalan‪)‬ Harshaneeyam

The guest for this Episode is Peter Bush. Born in Lincolnshire, UK, He has translated works from Catalan, French, Spanish and Portuguese to English. He spoke about his Translations in Catalan, Prominent authors in Catalan, Translation as an academic Discipline, and his Experience at the British Center for Literary Translation (BCLT).
Bush has been active not only as a translator but also in developing literary translation as an academic discipline by working in the academic world, serving in key literary translation organisations, serving on the editorial boards of literary translation publications, and organising international events and projects.
He was Director of the British Centre for Literary Translation (BCLT) at the University of East Anglia and Professor of Literary Translation at the School of English and American Studies. Bush has held key positions in important literary translation organisations: Literary Translation Committee, International Translators Federation  American Literary Translators Association and Committee for Literary Translation in Higher Education.
Harshaneeyam: Your first book-length translation was in 1986. So tell us about what prompted you to get into translation. 
Peter Bush: I was working in a school in London called Holland Park School, which was a very multilingual school, and I had an advanced class of Spanish, and we'd been reading a book called Campos de Níjar by Juan Goytisolo, and my class comprised students whose grandparents came from Spain or North Africa, and I thought it would interest them because it was written in 1959, and about the poverty their grandparents had been trying to escape from, as well as the Franco dictatorship. They weren't interested! They didn't really respond to the text. So I thought it would be a good idea to do a critical edition with an introduction. And I contacted Juan Goytisolo and he agreed that I could do it. I did it. He liked it. When his autobiography was published in Spain I read it and liked it and thought translating might be a new challenge for me. The suggestion actually came from a fellow teacher, John Lyons, who translates, also from Spanish, but mainly poetry. He's the translator of Ernesto Cardenal.
I started to extend the idea to publishers. Goytisolo told his agent that he wanted me to translate it. And eventually I got a phone call from a publisher, Stephen Pickles at Quartet Books, asking me whether I wanted to translate it. And I said yes. And he asked me to do a 50-page sample because I hadn't published any literary translations. So I did the 50-page sample. And I waited and waited, but didn't get any kind of reply, I thought he must have put it in the rubbish bin. I phoned him one day and said, what about it? He said, oh no, the translation’s fine, we'll be sending you a contract. So that's how it started. Although I signed the contract with Quartet Books, the volume was initially contracted by North Point Press in San Francisco. They did the editing, so my first experience of literary translation was being edited by North American editors. That gave it another interesting twist. This was the initial prompt to get into translation. But if I go back to my childhood, there are various experiences that might have set me up to become a translator. I was born into a rural working-class family, my mother and father spoke non-standard English, which is what I spoke. My first mother tongue, if you like, was non-standard English. And when I went to primary school, I was surprised when my teacher...