The Iceberg of Translation

Roughly 10% of an iceberg sits above the waterline, meaning the other 90% goes unseen (at least to us surface-dwellers). Literary translation is not unlike an iceberg: only a small part of the labour involved is visible in the finished copy. The rest is not so apparent – a submerged and hidden base, upon which sits the beautiful blue craggy structure bobbing along up top.

I feel this analogy to be acutely applicable to my experience translating Olenka – a novel by the Indonesian writer Budi Darma, originally published in 1983. My English translation has just come out with Penguin Classics. It is physically small: a mere 12.7 by 19.5 by 1.5 centimetres, weighing 228 grams (only 12 grams more than the apple I place afterwards on my kitchen scale for comparison).