TRANSlATOR OF THE mONTH

Published on March 6, 2014

ca­fé­ba­bel : Can you de­scribe your­self in three words ?

Anaïs de Vita : Cre­ative, cu­rious et conscien­cious.

ca­fé­ba­bel : What do you do for a liv­ing ?

Anaïs : At the mo­ment I am a French lan­guage as­sis­tant in a high school for hear­ing-im­paired chil­dren in Eng­land, while searching for another po­si­tion that bet­ter suits both trans­la­tion and my so­cial life. 

ca­fé­ba­bel : What is your favourite dish ? 

Anaïs : Crumbed veal schnitzel. And be sure not to for­get my lemon slice !

ca­fé­ba­bel : What is your favourite Eu­ro­pean na­tion­al­ity ? Why ?

Anaïs : I love the Span­ish who, in spite of their strug­gles, never feel sorry for them­selves and con­tinue to see the world in a pos­i­tive light. Though I also like the Eng­lish because of their good man­ners and their se­ri­ous­ness. The French seem to fall some­where inbe­tween the two some­times...   

ca­fé­ba­bel : When was the first time you wrote or trans­lated for Ca­fé­ba­bel ?

Anaïs : I think it was in April 2013 for an ar­ticle on the cy­cling-rev­o­lu­tion in Rome from Ital­ian into French. An event in which I hope to par­tic­i­pate soon in Paris.

ca­fé­ba­bel : What is the cra­zi­est dream you have had ?

Anaïs : To main­tain my work­ing lan­guages at a good level and at any cost, while trav­el­ling.  Not being sin­gle, I think that would be quite an acheive­ment! One day I would like to try liv­ing in Cal­i­for­nia to re­ally be at the heart of a bilin­gual Span­ish/Eng­lish en­vi­ron­ment, or to live be­tween Italy and Sicily, my coun­tries of ori­gin, but that's not for right now!

ca­fé­ba­bel : In one word, what is ca­fé­ba­bel for you ? 

Anaïs : An open door.

ca­fé­ba­bel : If you had to choose a col­umn, an ar­ti­cle or an au­thor from Cafeba­bel..

Anaïs : I re­ally like the col­umn « LifeStyle » be­cause that's the first thing I ques­tion my­self about when I find my­self over­seas. I like see­ing that I'm not the only one who takes myself by suprise, thanks to these ar­ti­cles that in­spire me to write about what con­cerns me... Oth­er­wise, the ar­ti­cle about the man who learnt 32 lan­guages be­cause of his love for Eu­rope re­ally touched me, and I re­ally like Mat­thieu Amaré's style.

ca­fé­ba­bel : The most stu­pid thing that you've done in your life ?

Anaïs : Ask for a loan for my trans­la­tion school.

ca­fé­ba­bel : The best place that you have been to in Eu­rope? And why is it the best ?

Anaïs : One place where I re­ally felt good was in Barcelona, be­cause of the ge­o­graphic sit­u­a­tion be­tween the moun­tains and the sea, the food, its urban lay­out and its re­ally di­verse neigh­bour­hoods, plus the strong iden­tity of its in­hab­i­tants. The cli­mate and the sum­mer fruit also had a lot to do with it. I lived there for 3 months dur­ing a trans­la­tion place­ment, close to Pas­seig de Gra­cia, I ex­pe­ri­enced some re­ally in­tense mo­ments of dis­cov­ery. I also re­ally liked Prague for its ar­chitech­ture, its tran­quil­ity and its richly coloured land­scapes.   

ca­fé­ba­bel : A city in Eu­rope that you would like to visit.... and why there ? 

Anaïs : I would like to visit Bergen in Nor­way for its his­tory and the beau­ti­ful façades of its build­ings. I be­came fas­ci­nated with Scan­di­na­vian coun­tries thanks to In­ter­cul­tur­al­ity and Civil­i­sa­tion classes on Swe­den, Den­mark and Nor­way that I at­tended at Uni­ver­sity. I would love to un­der­stand where their cul­tural rich­ness comes from and broaden my knowedge of their lan­guages.

ca­fé­ba­bel : What does Eu­rope mean to you ? Qu’est-ce que l’Eu­rope veut dire pour toi ? 

Anaïs : Eu­rope enables a for­mi­da­ble open­ing of the mind. It pro­poses a lin­guis­tic ideal - which doesn't yet over­take the supremity of Eng­lish, Ger­man and French and slightly hinders me from find­ing a translator's job in France, but which forces every­one to turn to­wards some­thing other than their mother toungue - and the fact of being able to go as and when I like into coun­tries other than my own is for me a great lux­ury. I only re­alised this after I met peo­ple com­ing across from Mex­ico to work in Eng­land and who have many more problems with em­i­grating to an­other coun­try, in order to start a dif­fer­ent life. Eu­rope pushed me into leav­ing my com­fort zone, but with my arms wide-open.    

CHeck out : Anaïs de Vita's Ba­belien Pro­file and her contri­bu­tions

Translated from La traductrice du mois