The Art of Translating

Roberto “Bob” van Eyken ’74 has always been a writer. “How do you know you need to be a writer?” he ponders. “Maybe it’s like being in love. Maybe you just know.”

For van Eyken, writing is also in his blood. In 2020, after careers in teaching and journalism, he embarked on a project to translate the collection of novels written by his grandfather, revered Brazilian writer José Geraldo Vieira, from Portuguese to English. For van Eyken, translating is “a particular art form within writing” — one that he didn’t expect to find but for which he had always been preparing.

Born in Rio de Janeiro, van Eyken moved with his family to the United States when he was young, settling in Maryland. His many interests in languages, history, political science and writing drew him to William & Mary.

During his time at W&M, he took full advantage of the liberal arts curriculum, enjoying courses with professors Pierre Oustinoff in the French department, David C. Jenkins in creative writing and Margaret Hamilton in government. He also wrote for the Flat Hat.

While he loved writing, his undergraduate studies explored a variety of subjects.

“I was into adventure,” he says, which fueled his decision to self-design a major: European studies. The major enabled him to pursue his interests in European history and politics during the period of European integration. He says, “It nurtured my interests in foreign travels and foreign affairs.”

Following graduation, he traveled to Cameroon to teach English with the United States Peace Corps. “It was a chance to go overseas and decide afterward what I wanted to do,” he says. The experience would provide the foundation for a career in translating.

“A translator has to have a good sense of not only the language from which they are translating, but also its culture,” he says. “Living in Cameroon, I was immersed in the French language and had to translate my way of being, acting and relating to people to be understandable in the culture.”

Van Eyken continued writing and engaging with literature, working as a journalist and later as an English literature teacher in California before turning his attention to translating, a project his mother inspired. “I remember her telling me when I was a very young man, ‘You will translate my father’s works,’” he says.

Before he died in 1977, van Eyken’s grandfather, Vieira, published 15 works, including novels, poetry and a collection of art criticism. His novels explore religious and moral questions with vivid, original metaphors. His work was praised by Brazilian critics, one of whom compared him to well-regarded American-British author Henry James and German author Thomas Mann.

Van Eyken had corresponded with Vieira in French as a young man, but was motivated by a desire to know more about his life. Noting that Vieira’s works incorporate autobiographical elements, van Eyken originally intended to share the manuscript with just his family. “I was just going to translate the works because I have two sisters, a wife and two children who don’t speak Portuguese,” he explains. “The original impetus was not to publish.”

A publisher’s interest in bringing Vieira’s novels to English-speaking audiences turned the project into a career. Van Eyken’s translations of “The Slope of Memory” and “The Woman Who Escaped From Sodom” are published and a third, “The Fortieth Door,” will be in print in October. “The Woman Who Escaped From Sodom,” perhaps one of Vieria’s best-known works, is set in 1920s Brazil and Paris and explores a man’s descent into a world of vice. It was republished four times during his lifetime with substantial revisions from the author each time. “The Fortieth Door” is critically acclaimed as his most important work.

Vieira, as van Eyken describes him, was a polymath, well-versed in theology, philosophy, politics and even medicine, as he also worked as a radiologist. He spent his youth in Europe and continued to travel there for school and work while making his home in Brazil. In his role as translator, van Eyken faces the challenge of familiarizing himself with linguistic and cultural elements, historical events, artwork and more from Vieria’s works to illuminate his grandfather’s allusions for modern, English-speaking readers.

As a result, van Eyken has accumulated an extensive library. “I collected an enormous number of books simply because my grandfather quoted from them,” he says. “I have a medical dictionary and the works of certain writers he liked. It became a habit: When he alluded to something, I would go get that book.”

Vieira himself translated many English works to Portuguese. He was the first to translate James Joyce’s “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” into Portuguese. “He was, as I understand it, a master,” van Eyken says.

In “The Slope of Memory,” Vieira likens translating to “demolishing a building and then rebuilding it with the same materials.” Van Eyken concurs and explains, “You have to convey ideas in a way that is true to what the author was trying to say, but you also have to do so in a way that’s intelligible in the other language.”

In addition to more Vieira translations, van Eyken hopes an original novel will eventually hit the shelves. “I’m going to create a fictional character, based on my mother, who is translating her father’s works in an effort to try to find out something about him and about herself,” he says.

As a full-time writer and translator, he encourages aspiring writers to be true to themselves. “Do whatever you need to do to get at your core spirit,” he says. “When you know that, go for it and don’t let anything stand in your way.”