World Literature Today – July 01, 2019

Q&A JESSICA COHEN & EVAN FALLENBERG

Janice Weizman is the
author of The Wayward
Moon, an award-
winning historical
novel set in the
ninth-century Middle
East. Her writing and
translations have
appeared or are
forthcoming in World
Literature Today, Lilith,
Consequence, the
Jerusalem Report, and
the Tel Aviv Review of
Books. Originally from
Toronto, Weizman has
lived in Israel for over
thirty years.

always seen Jessica to be an exception, and then one day

it dawned on me, Jessica is simply a writer who chooses

to use her writerly talents to translate other texts.

Cohen: (laughs) Going back to what I was saying,

translation is a solitary profession, but I now realize how

fruitful it is to come out of that mind-set sometimes, to

be forced to do things slightly differently, to challenge

your set thinking patterns. When you take on some-

thing like this it shakes things up a bit.

Fallenberg: We insisted on being able to meet in order

to work together on each play. I’m based here, and Jes-

sica lives in the US, and even though it would have made

sense technically for us to divide up the work and then

compare what we did, or decide that one of us would

translate and the other would edit, we felt that the trans-

lation would be most successful if we worked on every

word together. We decided that we would both first read

the play on our own and then meet in order to do the

work. When we get together to work on a play, we’re

both looking at the original text, but one of us will speak

out the translation while the other types it up. It’s almost

like taking dictation, except that the person who’s typing

will interrupt if there’s something they want to do differ-

ently, in which case we discuss our options.

Cohen: After we finish that first draft we switch—the

person who typed reads the new English text aloud and

the other follows along with the Hebrew.

Fallenberg: At a later stage we consider all the other

elements—italics, bolding, stage directions. And then

we watch the play, to see what we’re missing. We try to

get versions that were directed by Levin himself, so as to

get as close as possible to what he intended in the text.

Once or twice we’ve consulted other people who worked

with Levin to get clarifications. And then, a month or

two later, we read it again and make final changes.

Cohen: I do that with prose as well. In the very last

stages I read everything out loud, because when you

hear something spoken you catch things you don’t see

on a page. With a play, that’s even more important.

That’s all there is—how it sounds. For example, you can

be reading and see that you’ve used the word “mourn-

ing,” but when you read it you’re hearing “morning.”

Fallenberg: Sometimes you have exactly the right word,

but you can’t use it—it’s fine on the page, but on the

stage it will be confusing.

Weizman: What is most difficult about co-translating?

What are the advantages? Would you say it ultimately

produces a stronger translation of a work?

Fallenberg: I wouldn’t say that that’s true for every co-

translation. But in this case, we’re two seasoned transla-

tors, so it’s safe to say that because of the way we work,

the way we hold each other to a standard, and the way

that our process managed to break down our personal

language patterns, for all those reasons, it’s a better text.

Cohen: As far as I know, most co-translations are of

poetry, and very often one person is fluent in the source

language but not in the target language, which is really

not the case with us. This is something very different.

Fallenberg: There’s something very satisfying and

enriching about working this way. It isn’t the most pro-

ductive method, but for this project, we made a point of

carving out chunks of time to give to this. The Institute

of Israeli Drama made it possible for us to work this way,

and for me, it was a lovely break. Like a rare opportunity

to climb into somebody else’s brain.

Weizman: Do you know of any productions that are

forthcoming, now that English speakers will have access

to Levin’s work?

Fallenberg: An anthology of twelve of Levin’s plays

in two volumes is coming out later in the year from

London’s Oberon Books, containing our translations as

well as several others translated by Naaman Tammuz.

The plays will be represented by Judy Daish Associates.

Hopefully, new directors and producers will have a

chance to enjoy his work and take them on.

Also, in July, at the international cultural institute

Mishkenot Sha’ananim in Jerusalem, we’re holding a

special translation residency on the work of Levin, at

which we’ll be hosting translators from all over the

world—some of his finest translators and also people

who have not yet translated him.

Most of the plays have already been vetted, and peo-

ple are very pleased with them. That was great to hear—

that people who are involved in Levin’s work have given

their approval. We have a strong feeling that something

worked well here, in this collaborative process, so it’s

wonderful to hear from others in the know about his

work and about theater that we’ve gotten it right.

January 2019

46 W LT SUMMER 2019