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David Colmer (photo by Ronald Hoeben)David Colmer has been awarded the biennial
New South Wales Premier’s Translation Prize & PEN Medallion for the body of translations from the Dutch he has produced so far. The jury report makes mention of the large number of recently translated Dutch books: ‘The Dutch are well known for their long history of publishing translations from many other languages, but the publication of large numbers of Dutch authors in English translation is a phenomenon of recent times.’
This report also pinpoints some of the qualities that earned Colmer 30,000 Australian dollars: a combination of penmanship and flair for language, the purity of his style and a keen feeling for sonority. Which accounts for, as Peter Gordon calls it in the
Asian Review of Books (about
Repatriated , Colmer’s translation of Adriaan van Dis’
Familieziek), his use of ‘words with a rhythm which swings from staccato to syncopation to, occasionally, tropical languor’.
Since 2001 Colmer, who is also a writer himself, has translated seven Dutch novels for major British and American publishers. About
The Twin (originally
Boven is het stil, by Gerbrand Bakker) Paul Binding remarked in
The Independent: ‘David Colmer's translation is distinguished by an exceptional (and crucial) ear for dialogue.’ Colmer's skills are not limited to prose though, as he also won the David Reid Poetry Translation Prize twice. In 2007 the jury report stressed how his rhymes are unforced and that by including small interpretations of his own Colmer makes for greater naturalness, without conflicting with the spirit of the original: ‘He has fulfilled what must be the central criterion of a good translation, to convey the spirit and poetry of the original.’
Colmer, who was born in 1960 in Adelaide, started out as a medical student. But soon he gave that up to start travelling. He ended up in Amsterdam in the early nineties, learnt Dutch and became a literary translator. His translations of
Mevrouw Verona daalt de heuvel af (‘Madame Verona Comes Down from the Hill’) by
Dimitri Verhulst, and
Specht en Zoon (‘Specht and Son’) by
Willem Jan Otten are scheduled to appear later this year. Just like the previous novels which Colmer took under his wings, these translations were realised thanks to the mediation and/or financial support of the
Foundation for the Production and Translation of Dutch Literature.
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