In her debut novel, Hunting in America, Jewish Book Council Award–winning fiction writer and poet Tehila Hakimi writes of a woman uprooted from Israel to America who immerses herself in deer hunting and an affair with a colleague, only to find her sense of identity unraveling as the lines between survival, desire, and self blur.
Originally written in Hebrew, translator Joanna Chen, who has translated numerous books from Hebrew to English and teaches literary translation at the Helicon School of Poetry in Tel Aviv, was tasked with bringing the book to English-speaking readers.
We asked the writer and translator about writing Hunting in America, the writer-translator relationship, and how they approached their collaboration.
Can both of you walk readers through what the translation process, and your relationship as author-translator was like for Hunting in America?
TH: When I first met Joanna back in 2019, we were working on an earlier translation project. After a few minutes of getting to know each other, she asked me to read her short parts out loud. She wanted to hear my voice and she listened really carefully, I knew she did, because when I read the translation, it felt so smooth. With Hunting in America, Joanna was already familiar with my work, and it was such an amazing experience to read it once she finished. Working with Joanna has been such a privilege, as she is not only a genius translator but also a poet and a writer, and someone who understands rhythm and pulse. She really got the text, the core of it. This novel has a pace that could have been lost in translation, but it didn’t. I adore Joanna in person too, I think she is hilarious, smart and sharp. And in her hands I feel the translation was an opportunity for the book to have a second life, not only to be introduced to a new audience, but also for me, to have a new conversation, a deep one, like the one I have with my editor, my publisher, and now with someone with fresh eyes, who is dedicated to this specific story as much as I am.
JC: I first ask the author to indulge me by reading out loud a favorite passage from the book. I take this voice with me into the translation. It does not leave me. I then complete a first draft of the book, researching topics that appear along the way. I like to do this alone, just me and the text. Sometimes it takes me a few chapters until I can really hear the voice and I often revisit these chapters.
After that begins the essential collaboration with the author. Tehila has been an inspiration to me ever since we started working together, firstly because I admire her writing and aesthetics but also because she is a generous person. At my request, she read to me in a café in the middle of Tel Aviv, sent me YouTube links on hunting, explained to me how to clean a gun (I had no idea) and she answered my questions, even late at night, with the patience of a saint.
Tehila, the book features your unnamed protagonist attempting to assimilate into American life. What does America represent to her, and what did you want it to represent to readers?
TH: I think for some Israelis, like this protagonist, America is a dream they wish to fulfill, an ambition to accomplish. To non-Americans, America is, on one hand, so familiar, because of TV, literature, the movies, and also fashion, sports, language. It’s supposedly our culture too, but at the same time, so far and out of reach; we are aliens in it, always misunderstood. I think America holds so many images for people looking at it from the outside. I am thinking about writers like Kafka, or Jean Baudrillard, and how America appeared in their work. But even though the book is set in the US, I think it’s primarily about Israel, and about leaving your homeland, and the question of what is possible to leave behind, and what isn’t. I find the intersection, and this brotherhood of arms between Israel and America, fascinating, and my attempt was to put these two cultures in the same room, these two people coming from different sides of things, sharing not only one but several close relationships: the hunting, the workplace, work itself, and their affair.
I’ve spoken to other writers who have had their novels translated and they have discussed how sometimes things do in fact get lost in translation. Did either of you come to realize certain passages, feelings, themes weren’t translatable in this book?
TH: I think Joanna did such a great job because we didn’t have to exclude anything crucial from the novel. In some places we did have to discuss more, to make the translation more precise and smooth. Sometimes phrases in Hebrew needed minor changes in order to translate well. Some words in Hebrew can hold multiple meanings at a time; for example, the title of the novel in Hebrew is “Yariti Be-America,” which means both “shooting in America” and “shooting at America.” In English, it holds only one meaning and loses the ambiguity it has in Hebrew. But I am very pleased with the title in English; I think it has a similar effect, and maybe even greater. In general, Hebrew is much less elaborate than English, so the book in English is 30% longer than the original version in Hebrew. Joanna did an amazing job translating the very specific tone and atmosphere, keeping the rhythm and feel. Although the languages are so different, I couldn’t be luckier and more grateful to be working with her.
JC: Tehila and I spent a lot of time discussing the tone and flow of the book. I wanted to get to know the protagonist better and I could only do this through Tehila’s generosity and openness. There is so much going on under the surface, so much understatement. It was a challenge to preserve this throughout, to be so close to the text I could almost hear it breathing. It’s less about what is lost in translation and more about the book in English having a life and a breath of its own.
Tehila, how did your background as a poet lend itself to how this story was told?
TH: Thanks to poetry, I tend to think about form and structure very early, maybe before even thinking about character, and definitely before knowing the narrative. The rhythm was important for me right from the beginning, and once I had the first sentence written it was very organic for me to repeat it again and again, “the first time I went shooting in America…, the second time I went shooting in America…” and so on. I think the line between Poetry and Prose is not as rigid as one might think, and that even though the length and form may differ, the essence can be on the same line of thought. I see my prose and poetry as two parts of the same body, sometimes a text in prose might turn into a poem, and sometimes it’s the other way around.
Joanna, similarly, with a book filled with precise and beautiful language, what were the
challenges when it came to this specific book and translating the tone without flattening the Prose?
JC: My first love is poetry and I believe that within good prose there is always poetry. Tehila’s writing is pared-down, economical, impeccably precise. The challenge was not to compromise, to keep to the text, to immerse in the book’s sense of detachment and use it to power the translation.
Tehlia, you’ve published before and won prizes; your poetry has been translated before, but this is your American debut with a full-length novel. Was this experience any different from all of your previously publishing experiences?
TH: It’s a dream coming true, to have my novel translated into English and published with such an amazing publisher like Penguin Books. Working with my editor at Penguin, Camille LeBlanc, was such a thought-provoking experience. However, I think it is different; firstly because of the scale—Hebrew readership is small, while the American market is huge, so in that aspect, it is completely different. The publishing industry in Israel has strong contemporary writers, great publishers, and editors, but it has been in a struggling industry for the last decade, more or less. This is the first time I have had my work introduced widely to an audience abroad, and it is so exciting! I am currently in anxiety mode! I really look forward to seeing what kind of response this novel can receive outside Israel, and specifically in the US.
Joanna, you teach translation at the Helicon School of Poetry in Tel Aviv. How is translation taught? How do you approach working with your students?
JC: I don’t believe that literary translation can be taught. There is no definitive set of rules and no one handbook that I can offer to my students. What I do offer is love for the profession and practical experience translating texts that interest us. Translation is as natural to me as reading and writing – in fact, the three go hand in hand, each one enriching the others. Translation enables the writer to hold each word up to the light, to turn it around slowly, to consider it from different perspectives. I think you can only appreciate this through direct experience and this is what we practice in my workshops.
Cynthia Ozick wisely said that “translation can serve as a lens into the underground life of another culture,” and this guides me in choosing texts that open the translator and reader to other worlds and other opinions. Although I do suggest a wide variety of texts (Jane Hirshfield, W.S. Merwin, Emily Dickinson, Joy Harjo, among others) students are free to explore what they love. This year a student in my workshop translated Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You” and it was a joy to listen to his translation.