Bolaño translator and surrogate publicity figure Natasha Wimmer was asked the same questions again, this time by Powells.com.
Jeremy: Do you initially query a publisher about translating a specific author, or an author’s work, or do publishing houses employ staff translators?
Wimmer: The way it happened for me was that I was working editorial at FSG [Farrar, Straus and Giroux], and FSG does a lot of books in translation. Because my background was in Spanish literature, I did a lot of work looking at sample translations and working with translated manuscripts.
At a certain point, a book came in, Dirty Havana Trilogy by Pedro Juan Gutierrez, and we were having a hard time finding someone to translate it. I thought, Maybe I’ll give it a try. That’s how I got started. I got in through the back door, and I was grateful to FSG for giving me the chance.
