November 13, 2024
Nichola Smalley elected Chair of SELTA
Nichola Smalley replaces Ian Giles following the 2024 AGM.
We are excited to announce that translator Nichola Smalley has been elected as Chair of SELTA after the retirement from office of Ian Giles.
A translator of both Swedish and Norwegian literature, Smalley’s professional background also includes time in the publishing industry as Publicity Director at And Other Stories. She is known for her particularly sensitive approach to the musicality of language (as well as any other music found in the text) and holds a PhD from UCL covering contemporary urban vernaculars in Swedish and UK rap, literature, and translation.
Smalley’s translations are regularly award-nominated, with recent accolades including winning a PEN Translates award in February 2024 to translate Andrzej Tichý’s Purity. Smalley’s admired translation of Tichý’s novel Wretchedness also won the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. She also served on the jury that awarded the 2023 Bernard Shaw Prize.
Outside the act of translation itself, she is also heavily involved in ensuring a bright future of Swedish to English literary translation. Smalley has mentored a number of junior literary translators, most recently on SELTA’s CPD programme, which ran from early this year and concluded at the end of October.
Smalley said: “I’m honoured to be tasked with chairing SELTA and am looking forward to working with the membership to ensure we are all able to further our creative practice and push for better working conditions. I’m extremely grateful to my predecessors, Ian Giles and Ruth Urbom for all the ideas and energy they brought to the role and hope to live up to the precedent they’ve set!”
Retiring Chair Ian Giles said: “Nicky has been a long-term member of SELTA who has added so much to the organisation over the years. I’ve every confidence that we will go from strength to strength under her direction.”
We are excited for the future of SELTA under Nichola’s tenure…
I taught English in Finland for four years in the end, one in Rovaniemi and three in Mikkeli, and although it was the early 1990s, in the days before the internet, my experience was very similar to Harry Watson’s in Sweden 20 years earlier. My mother used to send me cassette tapes of The Archers and I used them for listening comprehension because I couldn’t get English materials otherwise. I also had to write an entertaining weekly column about Finland “Through Foreign Eyes” in the local paper. In the summers (they didn’t pay me for the summers) I came back to my parents’ farm and went to the library to look at careers guides to find out how you became a translator. I found that there was a Swedish translation MA at the University of Surrey and that I couldn’t get funding for it so I carried on teaching English to Finns until I had saved enough money to pay my fees and my living expenses.
Ebba Witt-Brattström’s Love/War, a divorce novel told entirely in dialogue with loads of quotes to look up. Others that stand out are the biography of Albert Bonnier, which involved a lot of history research and a Finnish YA novel about Basque whalers murdered in Iceland in 1615 which involved a lot of history research. I also enjoy the work I’ve done for museums, including an exhibition about sunken ships that included lost letters from Catherine the Great to Voltaire, diagrams of historic Dutch sailing vessels and diving logs, and auction catalogues filled with Swedish art and design. I enjoy getting the right voice for each varied project. Like being an actor but for introverts. And I have realised that although I veered away from my history degree, I still really like historical research.
Originally (see above) I wanted to be a literary translator. In the 1990s I met a friend who worked in publishing and asked how you got to translate books. The answer was a) “Find a rich husband” and b) “Wait for Joan Tate to die”. This sounded a) depressing and b) callous so I kept going on my non-literary translation career. I definitely got the impression in the 1990s that literary translation was a closed shop that I had no hope of getting into. I concentrated on making my translation work as creative as possible, which included non-fiction books on tourism and architecture and marketing and advertising alongside the paper mills and EU and government reports. I like reports on interesting things. Although I have now translated published fiction, I like the mix of translation career I’ve got and the fact that it is never dull. And my publishing friend had a point in that it would have been impossible to survive as the main/single family breadwinner on literary translation alone. I earn a decent living from the mix I’ve got.
When did you join SELTA?
As an avid scholastic linguist, I did a BA in Modern Languages at Manchester University, but seeing as Swedish wasn’t available I focused instead on French, Russian and Spanish. When I came to study a Masters in Translation at UCL, Swedish was offered and I finally got the chance to study the language formally at the age of 25. The experience of solidifying a partially native language after many years of informal practice was satisfying indeed.
I think SELTA has arranged a number of great events for its members in my time on the committee – both in person and virtually. I particularly enjoyed our workshop held in Edinburgh in 2019, which was the first time in many years that SELTA gathered outside of London.
What would you say you specialise in?
When I started out, I had owned a computer for many years, the internet was well-established, I’d been on Facebook for years, and Swedish was already enjoying a golden age in English translation. In some respects, what we’re accustomed to now. On the literary front, I’d say the practical/technical changes are visible in the rise of agents, book streaming and audiobook platforms, shorter deadlines… In terms of what surprises me – I’m pleasantly surprised that Swedish remains a strong source language for English-language publishing. I increasingly hope that this is a trend that here is to stay rather than a flash in the pan. Another change that has somewhat surprised me is the rise of the public profile of The Translator via campaigns such as #namethetranslator and translators on the cover, as well as the emergence of emerging translators. I love the bigger and more diversified pool of people working as translators, although it also calls into question the sustainability of literary translation as a profession. In very general terms, I think publishing (and by extension literary translators) has never been under as much pressure from rising costs and inflation as it is today.
I joined SELTA a few years after its inception. Those were pre-Internet times and it was much harder to get hold of relevant information. Meetings made me feel like a tongue-tied newbie, but I appreciated the updates and visiting speakers, as well as the sense of community. The bi-annual newsletters were full of useful tips and briefings and the occasional embassy invitation to cultural and literary events felt like the icing on the cake. Established members would offer advice and occasionally pass on small jobs they could not fit into their schedules. Taken as a whole, these things helped to keep me ‘in the fold’ and gave me the impetus to go on translating even when getting a proper foot in the professional door continued to seem a distant prospect.
Did your career trajectory change? Is it different now compared with what you expected at the start?
I enjoyed my time as the reviews editor, deputy editor and later main editor of Swedish Book Review. Those were gigs that only very rarely brought in extra translation commissions for me personally, but they offered the chance to be at the hub of a network and be good touch with a range of translator colleagues and other contributors. Learning to be a good listener was at the heart of it. too; when you work with volunteers, keeping them on side is a vital part of the role. I felt rather like a cross between an agony aunt and a spider in the middle of an international web.
The world of translation today is a rather different one from the one when I first joined. A frankly rather niche translator group like SELTA is always going to be a slightly uneasy mix of mutual support and subterranean competitiveness. In those earlier days there was comparatively little work to be had but there is a great deal more work around now, for various reasons including the ubiquity of translation samples, the establishment and fast growth of the agent culture in the Nordic countries, and the explosion of interest in Scandi crime fiction and Nordic Noir.
Hand-in-hand with this there has been a very welcome expansion of options to help and inspire emerging translators, be they informal online forums and social media groups, formal mentorships, or anything in between. Among crucial drivers I would include the Translators’ Association’s widening professional development programme and the birth of the Emerging Translators’ Network. ‘Literary’ translators in many genres have come to enjoy greater visibility in the world of books and publishing and the general mood is noticeably more collegial.
SELTA has always had close links with and support from the Swedish Embassy in London and the first impetus for bringing translators of Swedish together came from cultural attaché Ove Svensson who joined forces with the Swedish Institute and held a conference of translators and publishers at University College London in 1978. In 1981, the next cultural attaché Terry Carlbom arranged a translators’ conference at the University of Hull and in November the same year ran a seminar which led to the setting up of the Swedish-English Literary Translators’ Association the following morning. Original SELTA members who made that initial decision were Patricia Crampton, Tom Geddes, Mary Sandbach, Joan Tate and Laurie Thompson. Thomas Teal was also present but for practical reasons in a pre-internet age it was decided that the aim should be for US translators to form their own association and for the two organisations to work closely together. By the time of the first AGM in April 1982, SELTA had 9 full members and 3 associate members.
In 1981 it was expected that SELTA would hold at least one conference a year. We meet twice a year, once online, but instigated by Ruth Urbom, we also began to run 
Swedish Book Review
By 2015 Swedish Book Review had been thriving in print for 32 years under the inspired and attentive editorship of first Laurie Thompson and later Sarah Death. It continued very successfully to produce independent and impartial reviews and articles in English on recent Swedish books and authors, as well as highlighting older books. It continued to publish the work of established and emerging translators in extracts from an exciting variety of new books and classics. Subscribers continued to represent a very wide-ranging audience, from general readers, publishers and literary agents to academics and students.
After seeking the views of SELTA members, SBR and our publisher Norvik Press submitted a successful application to the Swedish Arts Council in 2019 to fund a new website on which to publish SBR as an online journal. We considered a number of web developers and chose Big Mallet, the company we thought would be the best fit. Big Mallet specialises in charities and not-for-profit organisations and understood the importance of our text-based content and the need for simplicity and clear, attractive typography. They helped us devise a new business model for SBR and ways of raising funds as part of the new digital presence. As the design phase of the project began, so too did the first national lockdown. Our many discussions of the broad design concept and the detail were in the form of emails and video and once the design was agreed, Big Mallet began the work of building the site. In September 2020 members of the SBR team together with two colleagues from Norvik press attended a first Zoom training session on the content management system.
A few words about the life of an EFL teacher in Sweden in the far-off days of Olof Palme and Gunnar Sträng (the long-serving finance minister) might be of interest to SELTA members who have followed a more academic route into literary translation. Adult education organisations proliferated in Sweden, some of them affiliated to a particular political party. The Folk University was an exception in that regard, and prided itself on employing only teacher-trained native speakers as teachers of English. Each year between seventy and eighty teachers were recruited from all over the UK on one-year contracts which could be renewed for a further year (a longer stay incurred problems with the tax authorities!).
But my favours were spread more widely than that, with weekly visits to the neighbouring towns of Finspång (adult evening classes) and Mjölby (admirable gymnasium or high-school pupils staying on for me after the end of the school day). My occasional chauffeur to Finspång (I was and am a non-driver) was an Austrian teacher of German and French who freelanced as a part-time gamekeeper for local aristocrat Grev Douglas (a Swedish count of Scottish descent) and many a trip to Finspång saw us diverting into the local forest so that Norman could check his mink-traps. I took the Malmö train the few miles down to Mjölby and kept up to date with the news from Skåne by browsing discarded copies of Sydsvenska Dagbladet.
More recent translations include a biography of the Nobel family and their contribution to the industrialisation of Russia, in which Bloomsbury have expressed an interest, and a biography of J.G. Andersson, a Swedish explorer and geologist who was recruited by the new Republican government in China in 1914 to prospect for mines. In the event, Andersson developed an interest in archaeology and anthropology and ended up helping the Chinese to rewrite their prehistory. This translation still awaits a publisher.
From an early age I had one foot in each country and my degree in English (specialising in Literature before 1800) and Litteraturvetenskap at Gothenburg University, which included World Literature, turned out a very good choice for my future career. I was broadly educated in Sweden but moved to this country before I was twenty, finishing my degree here.
In Sweden I worked on English classics in my Swedish translations for various theatres: The Shoemaker’s Holiday by Thomas Dekker, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Stephen Lowe and Mad Forest by Carol Churchill.
In 1979, I was approached by Norstedts. Ingrid Bergman was writing her autobiography and needed someone based in London to help with research and translation, both English and Swedish, acting as a bridge between herself and ghost writer Alan Burgess. First of all, she wanted me to do a sample for her to examine. She rang up very early one morning to tell me I was unable to spell. I was shocked, but drew breath when she told me that my one mistake had been to spell Rossellini with only one “l”. Otherwise, she was delighted with my work and wished to meet me. This was the beginning of many months of delightful collaboration, including much editing, as her first husband, Aron Petter Lindström, kept objecting to her descriptions of him and threatened to sue us all unless the passages were totally rewritten. This led to some controversy over my fee, as Norstedts were only prepared to pay as per my contract for text delivered, notwithstanding months of extra work I had been made to put in. It took an intervention by Ingrid before I was paid a reasonable fee for the additional work. It taught me never to take on unscheduled work without first agreeing a fee for it.
In spite of valiant effort by the members of SELTA, working on a voluntary basis writing reviews and doing sample translations for Swedish Books, published regularly and distributed to publishers, there were still very few books being accepted for translation, so I went on working into Swedish as well. In addition to Ruth Rendell, I worked with some leading English authors, including Kazuo Ishiguro, whose crystal-clear language was a pure pleasure to work with.
Looking at the literary market, it has gone through a complete transformation since SELTA was formed, adding one Swedish mega-bestseller to another. Just how much credit goes to the indefatigable efforts by SELTA members over the decades is of course impossible to assess, but for a founding member it is a joy to note that we have come such a long way in these 40 years. Today no self-respecting British publisher would dream of repeating the line we heard ad nauseam: that “Swedish books don’t sell.” Even so, it is fortunate that we have publishers like Norvik and Quercus prepared to take risks and publish books not only based on commercial potential but also on quality.
