Translator Helena Topa

VSurrounded by books, sitting in front of the laptop, with a cup of tea and in the company of her cats, Helena Topa works around eight hours a day at home in Porto and during this time creates world literature by translating around five pages of German novels into Portuguese . “The German language is in me,” says the dark-haired woman wearing glasses with the pixie cut, explaining her fascination with the vividness and transparency of German, which you don’t find in other languages. “The word pajamas means a lot more to me than pijamas.” After graduating from the German School in Porto, she studied German and literature in Porto, taught at the University of Lisbon and did a doctorate on Elias Canettis Aphorisms, for which she also studied in Munich. She also completed her studies in psychology in 2009.

So far, the 57-year-old has aphorisms, novels, poems and plays by around 40 authors, among them Günter Grass, Elfriede Jelinek, Herta Müller and Franz Kafka, translated. Her career as a translator only began in 2006 with Günter Grass’s work “Beim Hauten der Onion”. The autobiographical record, the narration in the first person, was probably the first and greatest challenge in reading, interpreting and thus translating this text. The opportunity to talk to Günter Grass personally was a great help.