By Paula Arellano Geoffroy, 17 June 2025
Long-standing SENSE member and Dutch-to-English literary translator David McKay won the Vondel Translation Prize in 2017 for ‘War and Turpentine’, his English translation of ‘Oorlog en terpentijn’ by Stefan Hertmans. His most recent works include ‘Revolusi’ by David Van Reybrouck, ‘Off-White’ by Astrid Roemer, and ‘The Remembered Soldier’ by Anjet Daanje.
In the following interview, David shares with us excerpts from his life and current work, and explains how his path led him to be a renowned literary translator.
I understand that you are American but have lived in the Netherlands for many years now. Why did you decide to settle in the Netherlands?
I met my Dutch partner in the Boston area in 1994. We were in the linguistics Ph.D. programme at MIT together, but both became disenchanted with linguistic research and academia and decided to leave the programme after earning our masters’ degrees. My partner was able to stay and work in the United States for a year or so, but in 1997 she had to return to Europe. We had talked about living in Europe in the long run anyway; I had lived in Italy for a year as a child while my father was teaching at a study-abroad programme in Florence, and maybe that made the prospect of moving to a different continent seem less daunting for me. At that point I had already spent a summer learning Dutch in Leiden, so I’d already been introduced to the language and culture.
You hold degrees in philosophy, linguistics and international relations. How did your path to literary translations unfold?
Learning the language was my top priority when I first arrived here. I was enrolled in the Dutch Studies programme in Leiden for a year, mostly taking their upper-level language courses, and my partner and I started speaking Dutch to each other as much as possible. I also started reading lots of Dutch books right away and even translated one of Marten Toonder’s Tom Poes books as an enjoyable exercise for improving my language skills.
I had always had an interest in language and literature and had written plays and poems earlier in my life, so I soon began wondering whether translation would be an attractive career for me. I began taking on little editing and translation jobs and soon found myself working for Van Dale, Kluwer Law, the English Text Company and Media Monitor for short periods before finding a great full-time job at AVT, the Dutch government translation department based in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. That was where I truly learnt to translate, thanks to my experienced co-workers and the intensive feedback on my translation work that I received from them.
Meanwhile, I remained interested in literary translation. In 1999, the same year that I started working at the Ministry, I applied for approval as a literary translator by the Dutch Foundation for Literature, the Letterenfonds. I was rejected – rightly so, since I was still very inexperienced and just learning the ropes – but I received positive feedback from both the reviewer and the Letterenfonds staff and was encouraged to apply again after gaining more translation experience. In 2000, I was invited to participate in the 2000 Summer School in Literary Translation in Utrecht and Antwerp, sponsored by Dutch and Flemish literary translation organizations. I was very fortunate to learn from three great translators and teachers there: Ina Rilke, Stacey Knecht and Susan Massotty. My admiration for their work has remained undiminished over the years.
But I couldn’t combine book translation with my full-time work at the Ministry, and in the years that followed, I had only very occasional small literary jobs. By 2006, I felt I had learnt all I could from my job at AVT and was ready for a new challenge. I left the Ministry and became a freelancer, working mainly for museums and academic researchers – still two important categories of client for me today. I believe it was also around then that I reapplied for approval by the Letterenfonds as a literary translator and was accepted for both poetry and prose. Over the next few years, I had a lot of small literary translation jobs – short stories, poems and samples from books – alongside my other work, which included many book translations for museums and academics.
It was not until 2014, when I had the opportunity to translate ‘War and Turpentine’ by Stefan Hertmans, that my literary translation career really began to take off. In retrospect, I’m glad it was slow to develop; that gave me time to become an experienced, confident translator before taking on challenging book-length literary jobs. It also taught me the value of collaboration and receiving feedback on your work.
I imagine that sometimes it might be difficult to work with renowned authors. Have you experienced any of that? How do you manage those moments?
I’ve been very fortunate to work with appreciative authors who are generous with their time, and I’ve learnt a lot from their feedback on my work. I think their sensitivity to language often helps them to understand their own limitations in English and the importance of a translator’s work. But the diplomatic skills I learnt as a government translator certainly come in handy sometimes, and I must admit that it helps when you already have a successful book or two under your belt!
Early in my literary translation career, I more often encountered authors who were understandably concerned about working with a young translator who had no real track record. In one case, an author even decided to work with someone else instead – a British translator whose style was a better match for his aristocratic background. It’s easy to get worked up about incidents like that, but the lesson I learnt is that you can’t expect to be the perfect translator for every author. Instead, I look for relationships of mutual appreciation: I admire the author’s work, and the author values my work. That lays a firm foundation of trust and respect on which we can build.
No matter what kind of translation I’m doing, I’ve learnt that I can avoid a lot of awkwardness through clear communication with clients and authors. I take the time to learn what’s important to them about the project, their priorities and concerns, and it reassures them to know that I’m genuinely interested in what they do and seek to understand the larger context for my work. And when I ask an author detailed questions about the book I’m translating and then take the time to reply to their own questions and comments in detail, they understand that I respect their work and value their contribution to my translation process. But that doesn’t mean I accept their suggestions uncritically – I expect the same respect for my expertise as a translator. I’m sure this collaborative approach is one reason for the success of some of the books I’ve translated.
Do you have favourite current or past projects? What made them special?
In recent years, I’ve taken the initiative to pitch a number of books to publishers. This is a demanding process and often doesn’t lead anywhere, even when you’re an established literary translator like me, so I’m not sure I would recommend it to anyone. At the same time, it’s wonderful to know that a few books I love have entered the English-speaking world through my efforts. Some only reach a small group, like J. Slauerhoff’s Dutch adventure classic ‘Adrift in the Middle Kingdom’, which failed to attract much critical attention despite being the runner-up for the Vondel Prize. Others find their way mainly to specialists, like ‘We Slaves of Suriname’ by Anton de Kom (another Vondel runner-up), which inspired thoughtful, enthusiastic articles in academic journals. In contrast, Anjet Daanje’s ‘The Remembered Soldier’, which has just come out in the United States, has received rave reviews in The Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly and elsewhere, and seems set to reach a large number of readers. But whatever happens to my passion projects out there in the world, I love them all equally.
Translating for the theatre is also a special thrill because of the collaborative nature of the work and the chance that you might see your words spoken by actors on stage. Working with playwrights, actors and directors has taught me a lot about staying playful, creative and open-minded.
Finally, I love mentoring emerging translators and always learn a great deal from it myself. It creates a personal bond, and I continue to follow the careers of my mentees with excitement and interest. Some have also become good friends.
We are in a particular moment in history in which AI is present in almost every aspect of life. What is your take on AI and translations? Do you use it? Are you worried in some way?
I don’t think AI will replace literary translators any time soon because, like neural machine translation, it’s based on the AutoComplete principle: it searches for the most likely word in a given context. That sometimes works well enough if you want bland, generic prose, or prose in some kind of well-defined pre-existing style, but it can’t capture a literary author’s original, idiosyncratic, creative stylistic choices simply because of their newness: nothing like them was in its training data. And at least for now, Machine Translation Post-Editing (MTPE) and other AI-assisted forms of translation are a dead end in the literary world. It often takes as much time to revise an AI literary translation properly as it would to translate the book yourself, and the result is inferior because seeing the AI version can dampen your own creativity and get in the way of reading the original properly. Psychologists call that a priming or anchoring effect.
On the other hand, publishers may find that AI can play a role in the translation of predictable genre fiction, which probably sells better than literary fiction anyway! And of course, literary translation, like so many other creative endeavours, never paid very well anyway, so most literary translators combine it with other types of work in order to make a decent living. In the translation that I do for museums and academics, I see no real alternative to investigating whether AI-based tools can help me to do my work more efficiently while offering at least the same high level of quality. I share the ethical objections to these systems (such as violations of copyright and privacy, unsustainable consumption of energy and the political role of tech companies in the United States), but I don’t think the solution is for translators to shoot themselves in the foot by refusing to adopt the technology that the rest of the world is using. I do believe in supporting professional organizations, like the Authors Guild in the United States and Society of Authors in the UK, that are joining the effort to hold AI companies responsible for their massive theft of copyright-protected works for AI training purposes.
I believe the translators into English who survive and thrive in the years ahead will set themselves apart by specializing, communicating clearly, working closely with direct clients and listening carefully to them, networking both online and in the real world, making intelligent, discerning use of the best possible translation tools, and putting quality first. (And that’s not just me patting myself on the back – I’m an introvert and really have to push myself to do real-world networking, for instance!)
If you could offer some tips to students or language professionals willing to take on literary translations, what would you say?
1. Don’t do it for the money! Think carefully about your financial needs and build up your literary translation activities slowly, making sure at every step that they’re not endangering your ability to provide for yourself adequately. Reach out to experienced translators to find out about typical rates and other professional practice issues, so that you find the sweet spot between underselling yourself and making unrealistic demands based on your experience with more lucrative varieties of translation.
2. Connect with other literary translators through organizations like the Dutch Foundation for Literature, Flanders Literature, the American Literary Translators Organization, and the Translators Association at the Society of Authors. Join mailing lists and other online groups for literary translators such as ELT, ELTNA, and World Kid Lit.
3. Take the time to read widely in both Dutch and English, and check out book reviews and literary magazines as well. This will give you a better sense of the two literary cultures and where you may fit into them.
4. Take your time before applying to become an approved translator. I was lucky enough to be allowed a second try, but some translators aren’t permitted a second chance. Make sure the sample you send to the Letterenfonds or Flanders Literature really is representative of your best work, pick a book that showcases your skills but isn’t unduly challenging, and accompany your translation with a brief message for the reviewer explaining the trickiest choices you made.
5. When you do literary translation, take your time. If you like to dash through the first draft, that’s fine, but that means you’ll need to spend even more time checking and polishing your work afterwards. Most literary translators do many rounds of revision. You need to do at least three: one to check whether you’ve caught all the nuances of the original, one to see whether the translation stands up as a piece of English writing in its own right, and one or more final checks (probably machine-assisted) for spelling, stylistic consistency and mechanics. But that’s a bare minimum! And if you’re translating a book for publication, you can expect it to come back to you several more times with comments from the author, one or two editors, the proofreader, and who knows who else… (See point 1: Don’t do it for the money!)
6. Ask questions when you don’t understand things. If you’re afraid of looking silly, don’t go straight to the author – first, ask a friend, family member or acquaintance, preferably one who’s an insightful reader and would appreciate the piece of writing that you’re translating. If they can’t figure out the answer either, then it’s probably not a silly question. But when you do get in touch with the author, please be friendly and diplomatic and make sure your questions don’t sound like veiled criticism of the writing. Meanwhile, you may want to take the opportunity to get to know the author better. That’ll give you better insight into the writing, and it’s great networking.
Do you read for pleasure as well? What are you currently reading?
I don’t think you can succeed as a literary translator without being an avid reader. I read a great deal purely for pleasure (right now, I’m alternating the Cadfael mysteries by Ellis Peters with a variety of other books) and often mix business and pleasure, in what is no doubt an unhealthy way, by reading a lot of books that feed into whatever literary translation I’m working on. For example, while working on ‘The Song of Stork and Dromedary’ by Anjet Daanje, I read many of the books that were on her own reading list as she wrote the novel (you can find that list on her website). That includes many books by and about the Brontë sisters, but also Margaret Atwood’s ‘Alias Grace’ and Carlo Rovelli’s ‘The Order of Time’. I also occasionally mix work and leisure in a different way by flipping through art books in the evening – staring at Van Goghs or Monets can be very restful after a long day of word processing.
|
Blog post by: Paula Arellano Geoffroy |
