Women in Translation: An Interview with Zoë Perry
“As we know, women authors are historically underrepresented in translated literature, and I feel a certain duty to try and correct that.”
Did you know August is Women in Translation month? It is an initiative dedicated to encouraging readers to read more diversely and globally by picking up books in translation written by women. This year, we interviewed Canadian-American translator Zoë A. Perry and asked her about translation, challenges women translators face, and how being Canadian-American has influenced her career.
The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction (CSPF): Can you tell us about your journey to becoming a translator?
Zoë Perry: I was always a bookworm as a child and am grateful to have grown up surrounded by books and by librarians, teachers and family members who encouraged me to read widely. I studied French and Spanish in college and read a lot in both those languages. I came to Portuguese a bit later—I did part of my master’s degree in Lisbon, and in 2007 I moved to Brazil, where I lived for about five years. I left in 2012, but I have strong ties there and I use Portuguese daily. My first job after graduation was at a small translation company, where I gained a lot of experience translating non-literary texts, and then in 2012, I attended a literary translation summer school in London led by Margaret Jull Costa. The work I did there resulted in my first book-length translation contract, for All Dogs Are Blue by Rodrigo de Souza Leão.
CSPF: Lately, you have translated and published a lot of works by women writers, is that intentional? If so, why?
Zoë: Yes, absolutely! As we know, women authors are historically underrepresented in translated literature, and I feel a certain duty to try and correct that. It’s intentional in the sense that these writers are who I would tend to seek out anyway. Looking back at what I read overall, I read a lot more women writers than men, both in translation and not.
CSPF: What are some of the challenges women translators face?
Zoë: It’s interesting because while there are a lot more women working as translators than men, more men seem to achieve “celebrity” status as translators, and the greater recognition that comes with it. I think there’s a whole other conversation to be had about why that is, and how that overlaps with the persistence of things typically associated with women in the workplace, like lower pay and poorer conditions.
CSPF: How do you know you are the right translator for a book?
Zoë: I’m so glad you asked this question—it’s one I think about a lot! I think it’s essential for translators to recognize that we can’t and shouldn’t translate everything that comes across our desks. We need to be mindful of where our individual strengths lie, as we risk doing a huge disservice to a book or an author. I think one of the best ways to figure that out is by getting to know other translators who work with your same languages and their tastes, knowing who they’re already working with. But we also need to educate editors, who often seem to choose the path of least resistance and go with whatever translator they’ve worked with before (even if the last project was a boyhood coming of age story and now, they’ve got an experimental feminist poetry collection). Of Cattle and Man might actually be an interesting example here, because it’s a book by a woman but almost all the characters are men. I first read that book almost ten years before I was asked to translate it and sensed an immediate affinity for it. I felt very at home with the voices of those characters, rural people I recognized in the men I grew up around in southern Appalachia, and also men I know in Brazil—my mother-in-law grew up on a tiny farm in the interior of São Paulo that belonged to a local dairy cooperative. Every year, I usually spend a couple of weeks on that farm, which now raises calves for larger beef cattle farms. So, in a lot of ways, I felt like I already “knew” those characters.
CSPF: You won the 2023 Cercador Prize for your translation of Ana Paula Maia’s Of Cattle and Men. The Cercador Prize is an award given by a committee of indie booksellers to a book in English translation. What did it mean to you to get this recognition?
Zoë: I was so happy to win that prize. Booksellers are some of my favorite people and their role in getting these books into the hands of readers is so important.
CSPF: You are Canadian American, can you share a little bit more about your relationship with both countries and how that might have influenced your work?
Zoë: Yes, I have dual citizenship with Canada and the U.S.. My mother is Canadian, and my dad is American. I grew up in the same place my dad did, in rural southeastern Kentucky, in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. But I spent a lot of time in Canada growing up (mostly around Vancouver, where a lot of my family lives), and I also lived in Montreal briefly, which is where my mother grew up and where my brother has lived for over 25 years. Identity is a funny, fluid thing, and at different phases of my life I’ve felt either more Canadian or more American, but I’m quite happy to slip between the two. From a young age I was very aware that the way my grandma from Kentucky spoke was not the same way my grandma from Beaverton, Ontario, spoke, and neither of them sounded much like the people I heard on TV, and I think that kind of code-switching had a lot to do with me becoming a translator.
CSPF: For Women in Translation month, can you recommend three titles you love?
Zoë: Yes! From Another World by Sicilian author Evelina Santangelo, translated by Ruth Clarke and published by Granta in 2021. Migratory Birds by Mexican author Mariana Oliver, translated by Julia Sanches and published by Transit in 2021 as part of their Undelivered Lectures series. Body Kintsugi by Bosnian writer Senka Marić, translated by Celia Hawkesworth and published by Peirene Press in 2022.
This interview was featured in our Newsletter, be in the know, click here to subscribe! All available titles mentioned are listed in our affiliate page on Bookshop.org, if you are in the U.S., click here to shop the August Newsletter. The Carol Shields Prize Foundation gets a small amount of every purchase completed through this link.
About Zoë:
