Translating Dutch Literature to Romanian

In 1914 Ioan G. Marinescu (1869-1954) published a translation entitled De vorbă cu copii[i] (Talking to children) by Jan Ligthart. Most probably, he used a French translation as source text. Marinescu, the school teacher and former director of the Normal School “Carol I” (which in 1887 had been moved by King Carol I from Bucharest to Câmpulung-Muscel, a small historic town some 150km from the capital) also translated works by Alfred Binet, Jules-Jean van Biervliet, Édouard Claparède, Adolphe Ferrière, and also by the famous American pedagogue John Dewey. Jan Ligthart’s ideas were inspired by Tolstoy and Rousseau and implied a more open idea to pedagogy, advocating for children to be their teachers equals. These ideas were circulating in Romania at a period when democratizing efforts were being made in order to educate the general public. Moving the concept of this school to the smaller town and investing in education in a decentralised manner must have meant a great opportunity for a dedicated teacher such as Ioan G. Marinescu. Jan Ligthart’s work and life were a great inspiration for Marinescu, as shown by another translation from 1928. This time, Marinescu translated Jan Ligthart’s biography written by J.W.L. Gunning. The title Un învățător. Viața și opera lui Jean Ligthart (A teacher. The Life and Works of Jean Ligthart) and the use of Jean instead of Jan gives another clue that the source language must have been French. The liberal and open attitude of a pedagogue like Jan Ligthart found a like-minded scholar in the first years of twentieth century Romania.

Two stories from the famous Max Havelaar “Saidia și Adinda. Două legende” (“Saidia and Adinda. Two legends”) appeared in 1936, translated by N.N. Botez, known as a translator from German. The complete Max Havelaar would be translated in 1948 via a German intertext by Silvia Mărgărit. The book is ideologically used as an instrument of class awakening. As the cover says: “After Harriet Beecher Stove’s Uncle Toms Cabin, Multatuli’s novel is the second accusation against the system of colonial exploitation.” Multatuli is called a modern Don Quixote in the ardently written preface, where the editors of Editura de Stat (State Publisher) emphasize the struggle that Multatuli had to undergo in order to get his story through to the public. Even though the book is now mostly forgotten, Editura de Stat states, Multatuli had been proven right by two things: by the present-day awakening protests in the colonies and by the rise of the new democracies (amongst which Romania should be counted) that have succeeded in their battle against the capitalist world. The preface goes even further stating the implication of religion in the imperialist oppression of the native population, warning against its influence. In short, Multatuli’s train of thought is made to fit all too well into the communist ideology and its foes: religion, the opium of the people and the capitalist, imperialist world. 

It was not until 1967 that H.D. Radian translated the book directly from Dutch. Interestingly, the preface to this edition, written by Alexandru Sever, a leading Romanian prosaist and playwright of Jewish origin, starts with recounting the fact that Eduard Douwes Dekker first wanted to be a preacher and emphasizing that he managed to do so though the writing of Max Havelaar: “To preach, that was his destiny!” Yet, this longer preface uses a more neutral tone, challenging the idea that Multatuli changed the whole imperialist system. The writer is considered great, but as a great literary reformer and as the best writer of the nineteenth century in the Netherlands. Sever continues summarizing the novel and even analyzing the colonial or post/anticolonial quality of the book. Even though he concludes that the colonial system was rotten altogether, his reading of the novel is quite careful and balanced, as the following quotation shows: “One gets the impression that what Havelaar actually denounces is the abuse of the native Regent, rather than the complicity of the Dutch authorities; one gets the impression that what is unhuman is rather this system of autochthonous serfdom, rather than colonialism itself.” Sever also reflects on the former preface from 1948, stating that there is nothing Don Quixote-like in Max Havelaar, maybe just the fact that he too cannot act efficiently against reality. Sever rejects the unicity of Multatuli’s endeavor, remembering that the abolition of slavery is a common topic of the nineteenth century, rather comparing Max Havelaar to The Legend of Thyl Ulenspiegel and Lamme Goedzak by the Belgian writer Charles de Coster and their protagonists.

Perhaps Gheorghe Nicolaescu would have translated much more if most of his time had not been filled with his duties at the University of Bucharest and the managing of the Dutch Department, where he taught, developed the curriculum and organized translation workshops with passion until 2018. Most of the translators from recent years were his students: Andrei Anastasescu (who now mainly (and excellently) translates from German), Anda Dragomir (with the beautiful translation of Nesuferitele zile de luni, Blue Mondays, Arnon Grunberg’s debut novel), Valentina Țirlea (Geert Kimpen and Abdelkader Benali), Alexa Stoicescu (now head of the Dutch Department, who has up to now translated around 15 titles, including works by K. Schippers, Adriaan van Dis, A. Alberts, Eddy de Wind, and Orașul ocupat (Occupied City) by the Flemish avant-gardist Paul van Ostaijen, non-fiction, child and youth literature), Irina Anton (translator of Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer in 2019, Tonke Dragt in 2020 and Annet Schaap in 2021), Cătălina Oșlobanu (who translated Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, together with Alexa Stoicescu in 2021), Ovidiu Achim (mostly a translator of non-fiction, his latest translation being the bestseller by journalist Rutger Bregman, a text that he worked on together with Elena-Simona Iurea) and many others, including aspiring newcomers.

There are other important and notable translators from Dutch. Maria Valer translated Arthur van Schendel and Couperus in the seventies. Monica Săvulescu-Voudouris, a writer who lived in the Netherlands and translated Leon de Winter, Jeroen Brouwers, Hella Haasse (Străin pentru totdeauna, the translation of Oeroeg) and Marga Minco. Jan H. Mysjkin (a Belgian translator from Romanian and French into Dutch) works with the Romanian poet Doina Ioanid and together they have already published about ten books, mainly contemporary poetry, but also classics like the grotesque stories of Paul van Ostaijen and Cașcaval (Cheese) by Willem Elsschot. Luminița Bobu has supplemented the long list of Nooteboom translations with Philip și ceillalți (Philip and the Others, 2013) and Ziua morților (All Soul’s day, 2015), Anamaria Androne-Bouman (A Woman Goes to the Doctor by Kluun, 2012) and Oana Marin (The Last Love of My Mother by Dimitri Verhulst, 2021 and War Diary by Hanny Michaelis, 2022).

During communism, most of the translations appeared at the publishing house Univers (with the help of the very skilled editor Mircea Bucurescu, who worked on ‘Nordic languages’ and later on even translated Hubert Lampo). Univers remained true to its Nordic cause till late in the 2010s. Diana Crupenschi, editor in chief, has always been fascinated by Dutch Literature and has put in a lot of work to get many books translated after 1989. In 2007 she came in contact with the work of K. Schippers (1936-2021) at the Frankfurter Messe and loved the English sample from his novel Waar was je nou (Where were you). The book had not been translated to any other language and was known to be untranslatable. But she really wanted to be able to read it in Romanian. Through the mediation of Gheorghe Nicolaescu, she came in contact with Alexa Stoicescu, still a MA-student who hadn’t translated anything yet. Alexa loved the idea as well and started a mentorship program with Jan Willem Bos, which was financed by the Dutch Foundation for Literature. When she met K. Schippers in 2008, frustrated about a fragment she could not fully understand, the writer said: “Oh, yes, it sounds great, right?”. “It does,” Alexa replied, “but what does it mean?”, to which he said: “Meaning? Who knows about meaning? Just do whatever feels right.”

Happy coincidences like that.