Martina Hefter’s Hey Guten Morgen, wie geht es dir? Winner of the prestigious Deutscher Buchpreis 2024 (German Book Prize). Loved by many… yet its English translation was hated by The Guardian book reviewer*. So what happened? Was the translation to blame, or did the wonders of the original text just not connect with anglophone audiences?
My own impressions of Hey Guten Morgen (German version)
After a couple of false starts while I found my feet with its pared-back style and allegorical approach, I really enjoyed this novel. It has a slightly suspended style, like you’re waiting for a shoe to drop, which fits the main theme of the novel very well: caring for a loved one with a significant, life-limiting illness means you’re living your life in suspended animation. Will they suddenly go downhill? Could they suddenly fall? How will I cope? When will I lose them? It is the sort of novel that you finish quickly, but when you finish it, you are still unsure whether you liked it or not. It’s a sticky book, hanging around in your mind as you keep pondering the themes while you go about your week.
On the face of it, Hey Guten Morgen is about a middle-aged woman struggling with the burden of caring for her partner, who spends her time in meaningless conversations with scammers. However, the book’s multiple themes run much deeper than that. Themes of loss and longing, the impact of being pushed into a reality or a role you didn’t ask for, waiting for something ominous that taints the future and how you deal with that, and the impact of serious illness on a relationship.
Hey Guten Morgen is also packed full of tiny, allegorical details that are perfect for a bookclub discussion (namedrop: the ITI’s excellent German Network bookclub, who chose the novel for us to read). Most of the themes lie just beneath the surface of the narrative, and as the reader, you need to dig beneath the novel’s clipped, understated style and explore the connections to Juno’s mental world. Honestly, if you’re not weaving together all the threads to create an impression of Juno’s mindset, the novel could very quickly become very dull indeed, because there is precious little narrative.
The novel’s themes
The wealth of allegorical details have been carefully chosen to give windows into Juno’s thought life. Juno’s internal world feels like the inevitable interplanetary collision she describes from the film Melancholia, which is a theme that runs through the book to illustrate Juno waiting in a dysthymic, almost inert state for the very worst to happen. She uses her online chats with scammers to escape the inertia she feels. Jupiter is conspicuous by his absence for the larger part of the book, yet the weight of his illness is felt on every page. Juno’s physical expression through dance is juxtaposed with her husband requiring a wheelchair to move around, and this highlights her sense of being trapped by his illness. Wider societal themes are threaded through the text, such as racism, colonialism, exploitation, and honesty in an online world. But these themes aren’t handed to you on a plate. One of the things I enjoyed most about the novel was how much you had to read between the lines.
Juno and Jupiter are not names picked out of a hat. The Roman god Jupiter and goddess Juno are married, drawing the reader’s attention to Juno and Jupiter’s relationship. Jupiter is king of the gods; in the book, everything must orbit around Jupiter’s illness, including Juno’s life. In Roman mythology, Juno is a protective force, full of life, eternal youthfulness, and is the goddess of marriage, whereas Juno in Hey Guten Morgen is nominally Jupiter’s wife and carer, but is somewhat the antithesis of her namesake: Juno neglects to cook Jupiter the nutritious meals he requires, forgets to order his medication, and is somewhat ‘checked out’ of both the situation and her marriage. She feels stuck in a role she never asked for and doesn’t know how to come to terms with.
The beauty of this book is in the unanswerable questions it leaves in your mind after you finish it. What is our reality? How do you mentally handle a reality that isn’t fun/pleasant? Is having a secret life a valid way to deal with a difficult situation? Can you construct your own reality to live in? Who do you want to be? This book explores honesty, handling the online world, and having the world in your pocket.
So what went wrong in English?
Juno’s struggles with her caring role are presented in the German blurbΔΔ, but downplayed in the English blurbΔ, which instead foregrounds the connection between Juno and Benu, and this taints the reader’s preconceptions about the book. It’s not a good love story – but it was never meant to be one. The English blurb has cut Jupiter out of the picture, and that misses arguably the main theme of the novel, setting the reader up to fail. It gives the impression that the relationship between Juno and Benu is almost ‘star-crossed lovers’, which overstates their connection and bumps the book into the category of romance in the reader’s mind. The upbeat styling of the English cover compounds this. I also wouldn’t have described it as ‘a whirlwind of a novel’: I would liken the novel’s feel more to the eeriness of the film Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, rather than a romantic romp.
So, how would I have translated it differently?
Of course, the best way to find out how difficult a text is to localise is to try translating it yourself, so I gave it a go.***
Languages explain things to different degrees, so an idea that needs more words in German will sound cluttered in English unless it’s trimmed back slightly to English standards. Equally, a phrase that needs fewer words in German will feel hacked to the bone or piecemeal, if transferred directly into English as is. Too few words can make the text ‘fall apart’; too many words and the language feels laboured. Particularly with this understated, pared-back style, you need to be sure that you are always carrying the reader along with you. That’s something that is tricky to do as the author, but even harder to do in translation, and I didn’t think the translator (Gaus) fell the right side of the line in some places. Overexplaining parts of the language in this way can distance the reader from the character, and some of Gaus’ word choices for these elements did not feel idiomatically satisfying to my British ears**. This could unfortunately leave the reader unconvinced by the prose.
One of the issues is that the bulk of the text is third-person description interspersed with internal commentary. Especially given the understated style, this is a difficult style to pull off, because you’re constantly pivoting linguistically between two points of view. I would have retained some of the characteristic, slightly-clipped style present in the original German, and ensured a stronger sense of internal monologue; for me, it should feel more like small details are being dripped onto the page, rather than expanded prose. It should be clearer that the various ‘descriptive’ passages are Juno’s subjective experience, told from the character’s point of view; I found Gaus’ wording slightly stilted in some of these places. This compensation during translation would have been to ensure the English sentences did not feel disconnected, but I felt it was sometimes overworked.
Some phrases are overexplained and so don’t give a sense of Juno talking to the reader, instead coming across as a little perfunctory. An example is on p.9, where social media messages are interspersed with:
‘The love scammer didn’t answer.’
‘The love scammer didn’t read the message.’
‘The love scammer didn’t read the message.’
‘The love scammer stopped answering.’
Instead, I might rework these interjections as:
→
No reply.
Left unread.
Left unread.
Stopped responding ( / Completely ignored)
Using colloquial language gives the sense of Juno telling the reader a story. I’m a little undecided about my choice between ‘completely ignored’ and ‘stopped responding’; ‘stopped responding’ is probably closer to the German. However, by writing ‘completely ignored’, you can draw the reader’s attention back to Juno’s experience: without a sentence subject, is Juno saying her message was ignored, or that she herself is being ignored? This leaves the reader wondering how Juno experiences that rejection internally. It could be argued that this addition oversteps the role of translator, but it may be a translation option worth discussing with the author.
The issue with saying ‘The love scammer’ each time is that it comes across as too dry in English, with the language suggesting that of a report. This loses the sense of Juno telling us a story. The German, interestingly, names the man ‘Love Scammer’, so a more direct translation might be ‘Mr Love Scammer didn’t answer’; however, I think this would feel a little artificial and contrived in English, so I agree with avoiding it.
Specifically, I felt there were a few missed opportunities to introduce a ‘spoken tone’ to the translation, and I think the prose is weaker for it, since Juno must remain the narrator for the mix of third-person description and internal monologue to gel. There are a few places where more idiomatic phrasing could have been inserted to suggest spoken language, such as ‘silver foxes’, which would also emphasise the sense that the scammers are posting thirst traps:
(p.4) ‘Suntanned men standing in front of yachts; white, grey-haired men with baseball caps and three-day-old beards.’
→ Tanned white guys on yachts; silver foxes with baseball caps and three-day stubble.
Other places where I felt more idiomatic word choices were missed included:
(p.5) ‘how many women there were who believed talk like this’ → how many women fell for it
(p.4) ‘kitschy lies’ → sweet little lies
(p.39) ‘falls over dead’ → drops dead
Finally, on page 39, there is a passage that felt to me like Juno introducing herself, creating a précis of her life:
Published translation:
‘Juno Isabella Flock: white woman, lives in Germany.
Privileged.
No children.
Therefore, not quite average in Germany.
Freelance performance artist; sometimes she earns more, sometimes less money.
Hopes that she can work as an artist until the end of her life.
And then falls over dead without much fuss.
Flock is over fifty and thus no longer so privileged.’
→
My translation:
Juno Isabella Flock: white female, living in Germany.
A privileged life.
No kids.
So not entirely average, for Germany.
Freelance performer: sometimes it pays well, sometimes not so much.
Hopefully will continue working as an artiste until the end of her life.
And then drops dead without any further ado.
Juno Flock is over fifty now, so is no longer that privileged.
Although the third person is used in these places in the German original, I would argue that here, Juno is actually talking about herself in third person, perhaps indicating that she is distanced from her own experiences and her own life. This has to be carefully managed in translation, otherwise you risk putting too much distance between the character and the reader, and the text can lose its immediacy. For me, the book as a whole should have the feel of Juno telling her story. Employing colloquial wording such as ‘no kids’ suggests the character is talking, thereby reducing the gap between the reader and the character.
Conclusion
Translation choices such as the ones described above can pull the reader into the story, and if that continuity is lost, the descriptions alone are not enough to carry the book. Hey Guten Morgen is meant to be an introspective view of the loss of identity sometimes experienced by loved ones who become carers, giving the sense of being trapped in a life that is no longer your own as you orbit around someone else 24/7. That’s what the novel is about, and that is what makes it so powerful.
Links:
https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/314269/martina-hefter
* Dina Nayeri reviewed the English translation of Hey Guten Morgen in the Guardian: see above link. The English edition was translated by Linda Gaus.
** Nayeri is an Iranian-American author based at the University of St Andrews.
*** Honestly, it’s no bother. I could quite happily translate the whole book just for the heck of it. That’s just how I’m wired.
Δ Here’s the blurb for the English version:
Juno Isabella Flock is a dancer and performance artist who spends her days caring for her ailing husband, and her nights chatting to love scammers online. She’s aware of the risks these men pose – she’s watched a documentary about them – but she’s also discovered a heady freedom in these online conversations, and the things they allow her to say.
When Juno meets Owen_Wilson223 – or, to use his real name, Benu – she senses an immediate connection between them, even though they’re separated by thousands of miles. Gradually, they reveal more and more about themselves to each other: about their real selves, and about who they really want to be. And just as Juno sees through Benu’s lies, he sees through hers too.
Hey, Good Morning, How Are You? is a whirlwind of a novel. It’s about yearning to stay young while age marches on; it’s about how to stay truthful while the internet changes everything; it’s about love and desire in all their many, conflicting forms. And most of all, it’s a novel about the way we are all connected, by the same constellations and the same night sky, however different our circumstances.
Hey, Good Morning, How Are You? by Martina Hefter, tr. Linda L. Gaus (Penguin 2026).
ΔΔ This is the original blurb, which I’ve translated fairly literally to give you a better sense of the meaning of the German:
Day in and day out, Juno supports her husband Jupiter to manage daily life. She is an artiste who dances and performs in theatres. But by night, unable to sleep, she chats with love scammers online. Martina Hefter has written a moving book about needs and longing. And how far you are ready to go for love.
Inside the dustcover, the original German version continues:
Juno chats with men who confess their love to women online so they can ply them for money. But instead of falling for their scams, chatting to these men represents a kind of freedom for Juno. In her chats, she can be whoever she wants to be – supposedly without consequence. In complete contrast to the rest of her life, in which she is always on the go, always concerned about Jupiter, always busy and tied down. So Juno flits back and forth between her everyday life and her life online, playing games with these men who are lying to her, and becoming a liar herself. Isn’t it true that when you lie, you are firstly lying to yourself? One day, Juno meets Benu, who sees through her statements as clearly as he does his own. And despite the distance between them, they have a connection. ‘Hey Guten Morgen, wie geht es dir?’ is a novel that dives deeply, while treading as lightly as a comedy.
Roughly translated by Harriet Cooper from Hey Guten Morgen, wie geht es dir?, written by Martina Hefter. (Klett-Cotta, 2024)