The way London’s literary community handles its translators is both ridiculous and illuminating. They are both everywhere and nowhere; they are named in small print on spines, thanked at prize ceremonies on occasion, and seldom given any serious consideration. Michael Hofmann is more familiar with this than most, having translated almost eighty books from German into English. Additionally, he is aware that he has been fortunate compared to others, which typically makes him feel bad.
Born in Freiburg in 1957, Hofmann and his family relocated to England when he was four years old. He doesn’t recall ever learning English. German was always spoken at home, and the two languages coexisted peacefully in his mind. He observed the novelist Gert Hofmann, his father, drafting manuscripts, clipping them with bulldog clips, and hanging them from the rafters “rather like hams.” It’s the kind of detail that sticks: deeply literary, somewhat humorous, and domestic. Later, Michael would use the same strategy for his own translations, putting drafts on hold for months before coming back to make five, ten, or twenty revisions.
His goal was not to become a translator. He was living the freelancer’s life of short deadlines and meager pay in the early 1980s, writing poetry and book reviews for London publications. When an editor at Chatto & Windus offered him Kurt Tucholsky’s Castle Gripsholm in 1985, translation came into the picture almost by coincidence. Five hundred pounds was the cost. Hofmann’s literary period, the 1920s and 1930s, seemed to be fixed almost permanently by the strange, humorous novel that took place during a summer vacation in 1935. In the same way that carbohydrates supplement a diet, he estimated that he would translate one book annually to augment his income. Then Beat Sterchi’s four-hundred-page Swiss novel about a cow, Blösch, came out, and all of a sudden he was a serious translator.
Hofmann’s status in London’s literary circles is complicated by the fact that he was never merely a translator, which makes him unique. In 1983, his debut collection of poetry, Nights in the Iron Hotel, brought him instant fame in Britain. Acrimony, his second, was awarded the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. For many years, he has written reviews and essays for the London Review of Books. People were already familiar with his name from other contexts when his translations were published. He has publicly acknowledged this, describing himself as “unfairly privileged” in comparison to someone who might be “just Joe-translator.” That admission is unsettling because it gives the impression that translators are only acknowledged by the literary establishment after they have established themselves in another, more prestigious capacity.
Here, it’s difficult to ignore a larger trend. Approximately two to three percent of all books published annually in the UK are translated works of fiction. Although Jenny Erpenbeck’s Kairos, translated by Hofmann, won the 2024 International Booker Prize, the systemic neglect still exists. Translators bear what Hofmann refers to as a peculiar guilt—the guilt of producing books you haven’t yourself written—while working under appalling contracts and receiving scant or nonexistent reviews. Translation, no matter how imaginative, finds it difficult to fit into the literary world of London, which values originality above all else.
When Hofmann criticizes other translators rather than the publishing industry, his criticism becomes more acute. His 2025 essay on English translations of César Vallejo in the London Review of Books is scathing, contending that translators too frequently sacrifice voice, sound, and emotional impact in favor of literal fidelity. “Take away their originals and their dictionaries and they have nothing,” he says. It’s the kind of sentence that simultaneously makes you nod and wince. Even though the words are completely different, he wants translations to sound like speech rather than homework, with the original’s snarl and rhythm.
Hofmann, a German-born poet who was raised in England and has spent decades transporting literature between languages and continents, finds himself in an odd position as a professor at the University of Florida. He is acknowledged and honored, but he still works in a system that essentially devalues what he does. He seems to be particularly admired by the literary establishment because he transcends the category, which is somewhat offensive to all other writers in that field. The hams are still hanging from the rafters, silently curing after nearly eighty books.
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