Writing in Two Languages
New York (left) and Bucharest (right)“To translate is to look into a mirror and see someone other than oneself.” Jhumpa Lahiri, Translating Myself and Others
Born in Romania, I grew up bilingual with Romanian and Russian spoken in our home. School was in Romanian, so Romanian became my dominant language. When I was thirteen, I started learning English and by the time I graduated high school, I spoke English at a rudimentary level. Before immigrating to the US, I lived a year in Israel where I spoke English at work. My English improved and when I came to the US, I was rather proficient.
It took me twenty more years to start writing creatively in English. Simply put, I didn’t dare. I wrote novels and short stories in Romanian, and then I asked other people to translate them into English — paid translators and my wife, who, like me, is from Romania, but has an advanced degree in French and English Literature.
And then it happened. I started writing fiction in English, first haltingly, checking my every word, my grammar, obsessed that I was translating from Romanian and employing the wrong syntax. I read aloud to myself. I asked my wife to be my editor. I pestered friends, especially those born and educated here. My heroes were Joseph Conrad and Vladimir Nabokov. I admired and envied Romanian writers, contemporaries of mine, who wrote in English: Andrei Codrescu, Petru Popescu, Norman Manea. They gave me hope. I admired Jhumpa Lahiri who learned to write in Italian.
Writing in two languages is both rewarding and tricky. They say that an immigrant doesn’t know any language perfectly. Nowadays I am more proficient in English, but I “feel” the Romanian language on a more visceral level. I understand the slang. Vulgarities hurt me deeper. Poetry and humor reach me faster.
Now that I write mostly in English, I can see an advantage to having two languages at my disposal. When I write, I struggle. I scrutinize every word, rereading until it becomes too familiar to improve. By translating it, I can see my mistakes clearly in a fresh context.
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