Nodirabegim Ibrohimova: "Translation is the agony of patience and word choice..."

Nodirabegim Ibrohimova: "Translation is the agony of patience and word choice..."

When reading "The War of the Worlds," you involuntarily fall into thought: is what captivates you simply fantastic events, or the hidden experiences of the human psyche? Nodirabegim Ibrohimova is one of the creators who has masterfully made such substantial works of foreign literature speak in our own language.

Born in Fergana in 1989, Nodirabegim graduated from the University of World Languages, Tashkent State University of Uzbek Language and Literature, and the Institute of Social and Spiritual Research. Today, she is a Doctor of Philosophy and a member of the Writers' Union. The writer's books, such as "The Witch or a Thousand Years of Life," "Me, My Dad, and Alzheimer's," and "From White to Red," have won a deep place in the hearts of readers. Thanks to her creative efforts, she became the winner of the "Best Young Creator of the Year" (2017), the Writers' Union Award (2021), and the Ogahiy International Award (2025).

She has also masterfully translated more than ten famous novels into Uzbek as a translator, including Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own" and "To the Lighthouse," Franz Kafka's "Letters to Milena," Hermann Hesse's "Beneath the Wheel," Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go," and H.G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds."

In today's conversation, we will talk in detail about Nodirabegim's creative world, the hardships of translation, and her views on life and literature.

— In addition to translation, you also write prose and poetry. Does working with another writer's text for a long time affect you when you are writing a work of your own?

— Translation and my own creative writing have always been two directions that feed each other, but at the same time, compete with each other. If I look back at the path I have traveled, translation actually served as a great school and a selfless teacher in my formation as a creator. I started translating at the age of 15, and under the influence of reading and practice, at the age of 17, I felt a desire to write independent stories. Naturally, the first experiences started with imitation: for example, being fond of O. Henry's work, I tried to create unexpected solutions and unique logical twists in my stories. By carefully translating the texts of other writers, I learned in practice the subtlety of artistry, building a solid composition, the balance of climax and resolution, and the responsibility of word choice.

But there is also a second, more complex side to this process. Today, translation has completely taken over my time: whether it is contractual work with publishing houses or major works taken up at the behest of my heart, personal creativity remains in the shadow under their influence. Translation is a spiritual responsibility that requires entering the author's soul and living with their worldview. Such a process leaves almost no time for the silence and calm contemplation necessary for prose or poetry. I tell myself that I will write poetry when the translations are finished, but the translations never seem to end... World literature is an unexplored virgin land; I wish to manage to translate as many good works as possible into the Uzbek language until the end of my life.

— What do you understand by "pure translation"? What do you pay attention to during the translation process of authors with very different styles, such as Woolf, Faulkner, Kafka, and Nietzsche, so as not to lose their unique voice?

— For me, "pure translation" is the rebirth of the author's psyche, text rhythm, and style in another language, free from false decorations and the translator's alterations. Every author has an internal rhythm. In Virginia Woolf's texts, the stream of consciousness, lyrical transformations, and the gentle connection of thoughts to one another are important. In William Faulkner, polyphony, long, hypnotic sentences where the concepts of time and space blend together prevail. If a translator breaks his one-page sentences into five or six compact sentences under the pretext of adapting them to the Uzbek language, Faulkner's unique tragic and heavy weight is lost. Franz Kafka's style, on the other hand, is absurdity presented with emotionless details. Here, trying to make it artistic by inserting overly emotional adjectives or colorful Uzbek idioms ruins the cold numbness created by the author. In Friedrich Nietzsche, there is a tendency toward aphorism, melody, and fierce energy. Translating him means transmitting the impact of thought.

The translator must submit to the author's criteria for word choice, not show off their vocabulary. The boundary between loyalty to the author and naturalness in the Uzbek language is often tested in the internal nature of the language. If you over-Uzbekify the text, for example, by introducing completely Uzbek idioms, folk proverbs, or nationally colored sentences into the speech of a character in a 19th-century English or German village, this is no longer a translation; the character is detached from their historical and cultural ground and takes on a false appearance. At this point, the boundary is broken, and the work moves into the territory of rewriting. The translator is free only within the natural grammatical flow of the language. That is, not blindly copying the sentence structure of Russian or English into Uzbek, but ensuring that the sentence sounds fluent, expressive, and understandable is the territory of freedom. But simplifying the author's thought, making their complex metaphor easy, or adding one's own views to the text is betrayal. When a translator is not satisfied with the author's language and starts to correct it; when the translator's temperament, worldview, and personal style begin to stand out in the text instead of the writer's, at that point, the translation ends and a foreign text emerges. A good translator should be like an invisible mirror: through it, the reader should be able to see the landscape created by the author in its full stature, not the translator's skill.

— Today, in an era of advanced technology, artificial intelligence translates text in a few seconds: it offers options and adapts the style. Can young translators rely on the ready-made result in this regard? When does artificial intelligence become an assistant to a translator, and when does it start working instead of them?

— The current level of artificial intelligence has brought convenience to the translation field, but at the same time, it has also created serious professional risks. The risk of young translators relying on ready-made results is not only present, but it is a process that is openly observed today. The text offered by artificial intelligence looks smooth, grammatically flawless, and fluent on the surface. This smoothness creates a deceptive peace of mind in the young writer. But this is exactly where the big loss begins: the author's style and spirit are dropped. Artificial intelligence compiles language based on logical-statistical algorithms, while translation requires emotion, cultural memory, and excitement beyond logic. A translator who is used to taking a ready-made version and doing only cosmetic editing gradually loses the opportunity to feel the internal nature of the text, suffer the agony of word choice, and sharpen their professional intuition. Artificial intelligence is an assistant, a virtual dictionary, and an aide. If it is used to expand the spectrum of synonyms, search for the origin of an unfamiliar idiom, quickly check historical or highly specialized details, or catch unnoticed spelling errors, it speeds up the process. In this case, both the initiative and the final artistic decision remain in the hands of the translator. Only the human heart can perceive art.

— Is knowing a language enough to be a good translator? What is the difference between a good translator and a simple text translator?

— Knowing a language is just a tool of translation. Knowing a foreign language perfectly alone does not make a person a translator, just as a person who has memorized a dictionary does not become a writer. Two languages participate in the art of translation, and often the big limp comes precisely from not deeply feeling one's mother tongue. If a specialist who knows a foreign language at the C2 level does not understand the subtlety of the Uzbek language, the richness of its synonyms, the place of its proverbs and sayings, and its national tone, they can never be a good literary translator. A simple text translator translates words and sentences. A true translator, however, can see the silence behind the sentences, the author's irony, the character's internal drama, and unwritten meanings. They feel the era in which the author lived, the philosophy, and the symbols in the work. In a simple translation, sentences merely obey grammatical rules. For an experienced translator, the text turns into music. The most painful point is that young translators read Uzbek classical and modern prose very little. Because their language reserve is narrow, they tend to directly copy foreign idioms, creating artificial constructions that are foreign to our language. Translation means the agony of patience and word choice. In today's fast-paced world, many young people avoid searching for days and digging through dictionaries to find a suitable equivalent for a single word. There are many cases of being satisfied with the first option provided by artificial intelligence or ready-made translation programs. A literary work does not consist only of its plot. Mythology, religion, art history, philosophy, and psychology are blended in it. If the translator's general scope of knowledge is narrow, they will not notice the author's subtle hints and will simply present the text superficially.

— Another painful issue in translation is the appreciation of labor. To what extent do issues such as the translator's fee, copyright, and relations with the publishing house seem problematic to you today?

— Although private publishing houses have multiplied in recent years and the book market seems to have revived, the legal and economic value of the translator's work has not yet been fully formed. Literary translation is highly intellectual work, a difficult process that requires focus and health for months, sometimes years. Unfortunately, the fee paid to the translator in our country still does not cover the time and spiritual hardship they spent on the work. Legally, the translator is considered the author of the derivative work created. But in practice, the translator still remains in the status of a technical worker whose name is mentioned only in small letters on the book cover or title page. The system of paying royalties (percentage) to the translator from reprints of the book practically does not work; most publishing houses try to buy the copyright completely with a one-time fee. Even if the book is resold in tens of thousands of copies, the translator is left with only the money they first received. Only when publishing houses start to see the translator not simply as a text translator on order, but as an equal co-author of the book, and when the price of quality translation and semi-literate translation is sharply differentiated in the market, will there be a quality explosion in the field. Unless the translator's work reaches a level where they can live decently from it, literary translation will remain not a profession, but only a desire of the heart of dedicated people. For example, my permanent job is translation. I sit at home during the day and am busy only with this. I do not work elsewhere, I do not get distracted, just so that it turns out high-quality. Of course, I want to have a monthly income accordingly; after the publishing houses receive the translation, they pay the fee 1-2 months later, sometimes a year later. At least, the fees are much better compared to previous years, and book sales have increased. The more books the people buy, the better income the translator earns.

— You have translated more than ten works. Which of them was the most difficult for you? If there were an opportunity to return to that work and translate it again today, would you do anything differently?

— Among my translations, the most complex was Herbert Wells' novel "The War of the Worlds." Many people think that science fiction consists simply of a rapid development of events. In fact, this genre requires great lexical and scientific preparation from the translator. Wells was a thinker who deeply knew biology and natural sciences. For this reason, the novel contains special terms characteristic of the science of that era, physical and astronomical descriptions, and especially unique names related to flora and fauna. It was when working on this work that I encountered how weak and scattered the specialized dictionary database of the Uzbek language related to natural sciences, botany, and zoology is in the context of literary fiction. Many words belonging to the plant and animal world and biological structures were either completely absent from our dictionaries or were given only as scientific terms, making it difficult to integrate them into the flow of the artistic sentence. Finding the Uzbek equivalent of each detail, and when necessary, creating natural new combinations while preserving the meaning and spirit, means great work. Translation is such an endless process that when you return to a work you translated years ago, you look at it with completely new eyes. Even now, whenever I pick up one of my translated books, I encounter sentences that need to be changed again.

— Among the works you have translated, is there one that taught you something or influenced your worldview?

— Every work I have translated has left a certain mark on me, but the book that changed my worldview and directly influenced my life not only as a creator but also as a mother was Hermann Hesse's novel "Beneath the Wheel." The process of working on the work was an opportunity for me to audit my relationship with my children. Hesse ruthlessly showed how the selfish dreams of society, the education system, and especially parents crush a young, delicate psyche like a millstone. The tragedy of the protagonist Hans is the tragedy of thousands of children who fell victim to only excellent grades, continuous successes, and the high demands of adults. It was after translating this book that I reviewed my method of upbringing and the demands I place on my children. I realized that urging a child day and night only to read books, to high results, to continuous competition, and loading the unfulfilled regrets of parents as a burden on their shoulders is a dangerous mistake. I understood that a child needs the joy of living, breathing freely, and the right to simply be a child more than success. I started leaving more free time for my children to daydream, rest, be bored, and engage in their hobbies. I am emphasizing going out into nature more with them, traveling, going to cultural places, exhibitions, and theaters. Most importantly, I do not impose the pressure of "you must become so-and-so" on them. I have decided to give them freedom in choosing which profession to choose in the future and how to find their place in life. Hesse taught me one truth: a child is not plasticine that we must shape and put into our mold; they are a delicate sapling that needs care and must open in its own time. The book "Beneath the Wheel" was a great lesson that helped save my children's lives from being crushed under the wheel of systems and expectations.

— Thank you for the meaningful conversation.