Kill the Radio

"She’s one of the most prominent Indonesian female poets. I like the way Harry Aveling, the translator of this book, worked with Dorothea’s original poems. There was a debate about this. Some say Aveling took it too far, but some say what Aveling did was a “trans-literation”. Instead of merely translating, Harry was giving another breath into Dorothea’s poems. And I enjoy the result. I guess with Supernova , with its form as a novel, there are clearly more binding rules in its translation, while poetry in general can have more flexibility. Working with Harry in Supernova , I feel he managed to stay true to the original words and meaning. The author’s voice, however, is something that is not easily bridged in translation process. I don’t know the exact theory, because I’m not a translator myself. But I think it’s the trickiest part of any translated work: to go beyond the words and manage to capture the voice of the author. I guess it depends. I can see that Dorothea often uses rather nonconventional voices for women: they are stronger, more aggressive, and outspoken. For those who are mostly used to perceiving women from a more patriarchal point of view, it may be shocking. I don’t follow all her work. But some recurrent themes I’ve found are spirituality—often relating to her Christian background—and humanity. I do hope so. I think by being the ‘country focus’ at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2015 and the ‘market focus’ at the London Book Fair in 2019, Indonesia has slowly and gradually built a path towards an international stage. I hope there will be more translated works, good ones, that will help to showcase Indonesian literature to the world."