She’s one of the most renowned translators in Greece, a Professor of the French Language and Literature Department of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and the Director of the Postgraduate Programme “Hellenic-French studies in Literature, Culture and Translation” by the same department, producing significant scientific work.

At the same time, Dr. Maria Papadima, who is responsible for the translation of Fernando Pessoa’s work, as well as for a large number of translations of important works from French, Spanish and Portuguese among others into Greek, and who has a dynamic presence in the fields she is active and does research in, has a rich life, deep knowledge, opinions and experiences, some of which she shared with us.

As a professional translator and a lover of literature, countless books have passed through your hands. What would you define as book reading, and how has its significance evolved in time?

Very often, people who visit me at home wonder if I have read all those books that cover the walls. Most of them, yes. I’ve flipped through all their pages, and even those I haven’t read, I’ve leafed through. Books are my natural habitat. Reading a book requires time, concentration without distractions, something that people today lack. The rules of reading, or rather the habit of reading, for our older generation, was shaped in our adolescence – those summers we didn’t have a camp to go to or any organised time or activities, when boredom drove us to any library we could get access to, where we voraciously read everything without order, control or criteria. I remember, in a week’s time, to have read War and Peace, together with some of the Pollyanna books series and some of my little brother’s Tiramolla (Stretch-Spring) comics.

I think that that feverish, disordered reading that plunged you into a mellow slumber no longer exists. Today we buy age-appropriate children’s books, we read the bestsellers, we track all sorts of rankings, awards, summer books, best-of-the-year books and so on. Reading, too, has become a part of our organised life and time.

Robert Frost said, “Poetry is what gets ‘lost’ in translation”. What’s your opinion on this quote, or can translation be poetry as well?

This is an ingenious definition of poetry and at the same time an indirect condemnation of translation. Of course, there is some truth in that radical quote. Yet, how many poets would have remained unknown to us if they had not been translated, albeit less ‘poetically’? Nikos Fokas, the award-winning, Greek poet, essay writer and translator, conducted a very interesting experiment, the “double forgery” as he called it, by giving the Greek reader of Baudelaire two translated versions side by side: one “accurate and thorough” and one “free or poetic”, thus illuminating the path followed by the translator of poetry.

If you knew all the languages in the world, which author would you choose to read in the source language and perhaps even translate?

Yasunari Kawabata. I’m a fan of Japanese literature, which I originally discovered through French translations. Yes, I wish I had learned Japanese and lived in Japan; such an experience would have given my life a completely different turn. Now, I enjoy the Greek translations of the multifarious author and translator, Panagiotis Evangelidis.

The translation field is characterised by difficulties for young professionals who wish to enter it. Are there ways to overcome these difficulties, and how do you think the future of translation will be shaped and what will the role of young professionals be in it?

I think difficulties exist in almost every profession today. Access to the labour market and working conditions are difficult for almost all young professionals. Translation, in my opinion, today requires a combination of solid encyclopaedic knowledge, constant technological updating, and a linguistic culture and sensitivity, whether we are talking about literary or technical translation. This is a difficult and rare combination nowadays. In the field of translation, your skills are constantly put to the test, as in this field there are people of different studies and backgrounds. It is no coincidence that no degree guarantees or excludes access to the field of translation. For example, access to the translation services of even the European bodies is based on an examination which can be taken by graduates of any specialty and not only those coming from the field of translation. However, the future of translation certainly has a lot to do with technology, and translation tools that are constantly evolving so I think that the profile of the translator in the future will increasingly resemble that of a multilingual editor.

How do you think technology and the continuous evolution of artificial intelligence will affect translation? Furthermore, do you think it will influence book writing, literature and poetry itself?

It can’t help but affect it. We are experiencing earthshaking changes, very handy on a practical level – we are saving time, we are saving energy, we have access to an unimaginable number of sources and knowledge. However, the primary element of writing, literature and poetry is creation. If we cede it over to artificial intelligence, tasking it to write a poem on a certain theme imitating a particular movement, what will our own participation and pleasure be?

You’ve travelled a lot in your life. But at the same time, there are many journeys that readers have taken through the books that you have translated. What would you like your role between the writer, the book and the reader to be, and what is it in the final analysis?

Yes, travel and translation have a lot in common, maybe that’s why they both excite me equally. Each new book is a new place, new people, new knowledge, new experiences. It is only books that can give us that feeling of being constantly refreshed. Moreover, translation removes the limitation of time, of the period in which we live. Before the reader, the translator is called upon to get to know and assimilate other times and places so that he or she can impart them unhindered. The role of the translator is that of a skilled craftsperson, an ingenious imitator, who will rewrite a work in a set of different language materials, will take the foreign author by the hand and introduce him or her to his or her distant reader. The translator’s movements should be appealing, skilful, gentle, devoid of self-satisfaction and arrogance. The success of the meeting between the reader and the foreign author is primarily the translator’s responsibility.

Apart from the unquestionable value of your translations, your long and distinguished career as a Professor at a Higher Education Institution lends particular weight to your opinion. So, given your many years of experience, how would you judge the current educational system in Greece, what would you regard as positive elements and what changes would you consider necessary so that it is healthy and can thrive in the challenging times of today?

It is difficult to answer such an all-important question. I can make some assumptions. There is a great gulf between technological progress and an educational system that is still deeply traditional, and I would dare say, outmoded, although this is not just a Greek phenomenon. The classroom up until the 1960s and 1970s was a place of attraction for many children who otherwise would not have access to knowledge, to the world. Today this knowledge is widely and readily dispersed, in a way that is more attractive than in the classroom – the pupil seems to be more familiar, if only superficially, with technological developments than the teacher. What should be taught at schools instead is the beneficial use of all kinds of sources and tools, their critical pairing, their utilisation, so that they do not remain a mere jumble of unrefined and disconnected knowledge.

You’re in charge of a series of Gutenberg publications regarding Fernando Pessoa’s work. What is it that makes this Portuguese writer and poet so great? Is there a book of his that you love the most that you would recommend that everyone read?

Fernando Pessoa is a writer born at the end of the 19th century, who writes at the beginning of the 20th – in its first three decades – as he dies in 1935, most of whose work remains unpublished until he is discovered at the end of the 20th century, and who gains global recognition in the 21st century. What makes him unique is the emphasis he places on the multiplicity and complexity of human nature, which he deals with in a theatrical way, inventing his legendary heteronymous identities. Undoubtedly, my favourite is the Book of Disquiet, this work in progress, an unclassified book, a diary, a collection of impressions, experiences, a record of feelings and philosophical reflections, an account of urban daily life, which allows the reader, or rather, I would say, urges the reader to an active reading. It is a book that you read and re-read, each time choosing which page to start from, inspired by your own mental and emotional mood.

If your life was a song, what would it be? 

“Non, je ne regrette rien,” (No, I regret nothing) by Edith Piaf.