Susan Bernofsky's Blog, page 13

Translation on Tap in NYC, Aug. 1 – 31, 2018

As readers of this blog know, August is Women in Translation Month, and this month’s events beautifully reflect that fact. The perfect August day: head to the beach, soak up some sun and sand, read a book by your favorite woman writer, and then come back to the city for an evening reading with friends.

Thursday, Aug. 2:

Women in Translation Month Open Mic: Please drop by to read from your original translations of women poets, published or in progress, or a piece by a favorite women poet in translation. Readings limited to 3 minutes, signup sheet available at 6:45 p.m. More information here. Book Culture, 536 W. 112th St., 7:00 p.m.

Thursday, Aug. 16:

Get WiT Us! Women in Translation: A Reading and Discussion featuring translators Katrina Dodson, Allison Markin Powell, Tim Mohr, and Jenny Wang Medina. More information here. Word Bookstore, 126 Franklin Ave., Brooklyn, 7:30 p.m.

Friday, Aug. 17:

Save the date for a Women in Translation Month cocktail hour event at Book Culture on Columbus. I’ve been asked to read as part of this event, but don’t have any further details as of this writing.

Thursday, Aug. 23:

Cedilla WiT reading featuring translators Heather Cleary, Allison Markin Powell, Alta Price, Julia Sanches, Jeremy Tiang, Marshall Yarborough, and Jeffrey Zuckerman. More information here. Community Bookstore, 143 7th Avenue, Brooklyn, 7:00 p.m.

The post Translation on Tap in NYC, Aug. 1 – 31, 2018 appeared first on TRANSLATIONiSTA.

Apply Now for the Harvill Secker Young Translators’ Prize

The Harvill Secker Young Translators’ Prize invites emerging translators aged 18-34 to submit competing translations of a particular text. The language of the competition changes every year. This year’s competition is for translations from Bengali, and entrants will submit  translations of the short story “Half-Timer Pawre” by Shamik Ghosh, from his collection Elvis O Amolasundari. To qualify to enter the competition, you must not have published more than one book-length translation. The prize is based in the UK, but translators from around the world are invited to apply. The judges this year include translator Arunava Sinha, anthropologist and novelist Tahmima Anam, writer and television presenter Konnie Huq, and Harvill Secker editor Mikaela Pedlow. The prize comes with a purse of £1,000, a stack of Harvill Secker books, and a year-long mentorship with Arunava Sinha. For more information – including a list of previous winners – please visit the Harvill Secker website (and scroll down for information about the prize).

All entries must be received by August 28, 2018.

The post Apply Now for the Harvill Secker Young Translators’ Prize appeared first on TRANSLATIONiSTA.

Kate Briggs, “This Little Art”

It’s an exciting moment for new books on literary translation. One I read with special pleasure recently was Karen Emmerich’s Literary Translation and the Making of Originals, which argues clearly and cogently something that everyone in the field has no doubt viscerally felt but perhaps never articulated: that virtually every discourse of translation studies is predicated to a greater or lesser extent on the assumption that we know what an “original” is and can define it as a stable entity. The notion of stability is deeply embedded in the vast majority of our metaphors for discussing translation as transfer, and this book – by putting that stability in question – radically unsettles the field while at the same time opening up immediately compelling possibilities for new readings and understandings of the manifold, multifaceted relationship(s) between translation(s) (necessarily understood as inherently plural) and the shifting linguistic field that contains and comprises them (itself always in flux). She also teaches us new things about Gilgamesh, Greek folk songs, Emily Dickinson, Cavafy, and Jack Spicer. That was a great read.

And then this spring I picked up the new book This Little Art by Kate Briggs, a fascinating meditation on the art of translation that brilliantly intertwines threads plucked both from the world of books and ideas (particularly Roland Barthes, whom Briggs has translated) and the fabric of real life – the experience of attending an exercise class in Paris, issues of childrearing, and, yes, wrestling with translation problems. Delving into Thomas Mann, Briggs reexamines the work of Mann’s much-disparaged first English translator, Helen Lowe-Porter, finding much richer contributions to the development of the translator’s art than Lowe-Porter is generally given credit for. In challenging us to complicate our thinking about translation, Briggs’s book-length essai gains in depth on virtually every page, exploring all the different ways texts grow, expand, and shift in translation as new webs of association are woven in their new linguistic and cultural contexts. Her book is the perfect companion piece to Emmerich’s: two different approaches that both, with satisfying clarity, invite us to augment our thinking about what translation is and how it works.

I picked up Briggs’s book again three weeks ago when the The New York Times Book Review published a shockingly dismissive review of it by a reviewer who I’m not sure even read the book. The NYTBR editors must have had their doubts too, since they included Briggs’s book on a list of recommended new titles in the very next issue. If you’re interested, you can read the letter that a handful of colleagues and I co-authored in response to the review. Or just pick up Briggs’ book, and Emmerich’s, head to a beach or park or wherever you like to do your summertime reading, and enjoy!

A third recently-out title that belongs on this list is Mark Polizzotti’s Sympathy for the Traitor, which I very much look forward to picking up after I’ve read my way out from under the big juicy pile of National Book Award submissions (so many fantastic books in there!) currently impeding movement in the hallway of my apartment. Longlist forthcoming in mid-September.

The post Kate Briggs, “This Little Art” appeared first on TRANSLATIONiSTA.

Translator’s Discount, Willamette Writers Conference

This year the Willamette Writers Conference in Portland, Oregon (Aug. 3-5) is offering a day-long translation master class entitled “Maintaining the Author’s Voice in Translation,”  led by Lisa Carter. To encourage more translators to attend the conference, a discounted registration fee (50% off) is now being offered for this session, which will be held on Thursday, Aug. 2, 2018. You can sign up for the master class whether or not you register to attend the rest of the conference, using discount code WWC18LC. For more information, visit the Willamette Writers Conference website.

The post Translator’s Discount, Willamette Writers Conference appeared first on TRANSLATIONiSTA.

2018 National Translation Award Longlists Announced

It’s been 20 years now since the National Translation Award was first established by the American Literary Translators Association, and four since it was split into separate awards for poetry and prose. Unlike most multilingual translation prizes, the NTA includes a round of judging in which the translation is read against the original by a colleague specializing in that language area. But like most translation prizes, the NTA rewards translations that are not only accurate but also beautiful works in their own right. It’s one of the great honors for a literary translator to be selected for acclaim by a jury of their peers.

And this year’s longlists have just been announced, and here they are:

Poetry

The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa, translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa

(New Directions)

Directions for Use by Ana Ristović, translated from the Serbian by Steven Teref and Maja Teref

(Zephyr Press)

Hackers by Aase Berg, translated from the Swedish by Johannes Göransson

(Black Ocean)

I Remember Nightfall by Marosa di Giorgio, translated from the Spanish by Jeannine Marie Pitas

(Ugly Duckling Presse)

If I Were a Suicide Bomber by Per Aage Brandt, translated from the Danish by Thom Satterlee

(Open Letter Books)

Magnetic Point: Selected Poems by Ryszard Krynicki, translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh

(New Directions)

My Lai by Carmen Berenguer, translated from the Spanish by Liz Henry

(Cardboard House Press)

The Odyssey by Homer, translated from the Greek by Emily Wilson

(W. W. Norton & Company)

Oxygen: Selected Poems by Julia Fiedorczuk, translated from the Polish by Bill Johnston

(Zephyr Press)

Sonic Peace by Kiriu Minashita, translated from the Japanese by Spencer Thurlow and Eric Hyett

(Phoneme Media)

Spiral Staircase: Collected Poems by Hirato Renkichi, translated from the Japanese by Sho Sugita

(Ugly Duckling Presse)

Third-Millennium Heart by Ursula Andkjær Olsen, translated from the Danish by Katrine Øgaard Jensen

(Action Books)

Prose

Affections by Rodrigo Hasbún, translated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes

(Simon & Schuster)

August by Romina Paula, translated from the Spanish by Jennifer Croft

(Feminist Press)

Compass by Mathias Énard, translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell

(New Directions)

Dandelions by Yasunari Kawabata, translated from the Japanese by Michael Emmerich

(New Directions)

Ghachar Ghochar by Vivek Shanbhag, translated from the Kannada by Srinath Perur

(Penguin Books)

The Impossible Fairy Tale by Han Yujoo, translated from the Korean by Janet Hong

(Graywolf Press)

The Invented Part by Rodrigo Fresán, translated from the Spanish by Will Vanderhyden

(Open Letter Books)

Italian Chronicles by Stendhal, translated from the French by Raymond N. MacKenzie

(University of Minnesota Press)

Moving the Palace by Charif Majdalani, translated from the French by Edward Gauvin

(New Vessel Press)

Old Rendering Plant by Wolfgang Hilbig, translated from the German by Isabel Fargo Cole

(Two Lines Press)

Swallowing Mercury by Wioletta Greg, translated from the Polish by Eliza Marciniak

(Transit Books)

The World Goes On by László Krasznahorkai, translated from the Hungarian by George Szirtes, Ottilie Mulzet, and John Batki

(New Directions)

The NTA longlists will be announced in September, and the prizes awarded at a ceremony at the 2018 ALTA Conference in Bloomington, Indiana in early November.

Congratulations to all the longlisted translators!

The post 2018 National Translation Award Longlists Announced appeared first on TRANSLATIONiSTA.

Submit Now for the 2019 TA First Translation Prize

The second year of the TA (=Translators Association) First Translation Prize is coming right up, and the deadline for applications is rapidly approaching. If you’re a first-time translator of a book-length translation into English that appeared with a UK publisher between April 1, 2017 and March 31, 2018, this one’s for you. The judges this year include the prize’s founder Daniel Hahn along with Margaret Jull Costa and Philip Gwyn Jones. The prize comes with £2000 (to be shared with the book’s editor) and lots of glory. Visit the Society of Authors website for complete application information, and make sure to get your applications submitted by August 14, 2018.

The post Submit Now for the 2019 TA First Translation Prize appeared first on TRANSLATIONiSTA.

Fall 2018 PEN Translates Awards Announced

The latest crop of PEN Translates awards given out by English PEN (with support from Arts Council England) has just been announced. These awards are available to help with the publication costs of translations of work in a variety of genres, up to 75% of translation costs, or even up to 100% in the case of smaller publishers. Only UK publishers may apply, but the translator may be of any nationality (including U.S.-American), which is good to keep in mind when you’re thinking about whom to pitch your projects to.

Here’s the list of freshly supported projects:

The Distance between Us by Renato Cisneros, translated from Spanish by Fionn Petch. Charco Press, August 2018 Country of origin: Peru
The Sea Needs No Ornament edited and translated from Spanish by Loretta Collins Klobah and Maria Grau Perejoan. Peepal Tree Press, autumn 2018. Country of origin: The Bahamas, Barbados, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Trinidad & Tobago, Virgin Islands
The Book of Cairo edited by Raph Cormack. Comma Press, January 2019. Translated from Arabic by Raphael Cohen, Basma Ghalayini, Thoraya al-Rayyes, Elisabeth Jaquette, Andrew Leber, Raph Cormack, Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp, Kareem James Abu Zeid, Yasmine Seale, Adam Talib. Country of origin: Egypt
Resistance by Julián Fuks, translated from Portuguese by Daniel Hahn. Charco Press, October 2018. Country of origin: Brazil
Negative of a Group Photograph by Azita Ghahreman, translated from Farsi by Maura Dooley and Elhum Shakerifar. Poetry Translation Centre/Bloodaxe Books, October 2018. Country of origin: Iran/Sweden
My Name is Adam by Elias Khoury, translated from Arabic by Humphrey Davies. Maclehose Press, November 2018. Country of origin: Lebanon
Song of Stars by Guus Luijters, translated from Dutch by Marian de Vooght. Smokestack Books, October 2018. Country of origin: The Netherlands
Thirteen Months of Sunrise by Rania Mamoun, translated from Arabic by Elisabeth Jacquette. Comma Press, April 2019. Country of origin: Sudan
Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda, translated from Japanese by Polly Barton. Tilted Axis Press, 2019. Country of origin: Japan
Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor, translated from Spanish by Sophie Hughes. Fitzcarraldo Editions, October 2019. Country of origin: Mexico
Sergius Seeks Bacchus by Norman Erikson Pasaribu, translated from Indonesian by Tiffany Tsao. Tilted Axis Press, 2019. Country of origin: Indonesia
To Leave with the Reindeer by Olivia Rosenthal, translated from French by Sophie Lewis. And Other Stories, March 2019. Country of origin: France
The Madwoman of Serrano by Dina Salústio, translated from Portuguese by Jethro Soutar. Dedalus Books, January 2019. Country of origin: Cape Verde
Singer in the Night by Olja Savičević, translated from Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth. Istros Books, March 2019. Country of origin: Croatia
The Remainder by Alia Trabucco Zerán, translated from Spanish by Sophie Hughes. And Other Stories, November 2018. Country of origin: Chile/UK
The Frightened Ones by Dima Wannous, translated from Arabic by Elisabeth Jacquette. Harvill Secker, April 2019. Country of origin: Syria
Zuleikha by Guzel Yakhina, translated from Russian by Lisa Hayden. Oneworld Publications, April 2019. Country of origin: Russia

Can you spot the translator who has two books on the list? How about the translator who has three? Huge congratulations to them and all the others whose work was selected for support.

The post Fall 2018 PEN Translates Awards Announced appeared first on TRANSLATIONiSTA.

Translation on Tap in NYC, July 1 – 31, 2018

It’s almost July, which means we need to be either at the beach or at a demonstration. But eventually you’ve got to come back to the city, and when you’re back, here are some nice translation events that will be waiting for you.

Monday, Jul. 9:

One Love … or Twelve: Translator Tess Lewis reads and speaks with Monique Schwitter about her translation of Schwitter’s novel One Another. More information here. Deutsches Haus at NYU, 42 Washington Mews, 6:30 p.m.

Tuesday, Jul. 17:

“The Dead:” Translator Eric Jarosinski joins author Christian Kracht for an evening of readings and discussion. More information here. Deutsches Haus at NYU, 42 Washington Mews, 6:30 p.m.

Friday, July 27:

Us & Them: Translators (who are also writers) Kristina Bicher, Elina Alter, Sam Malissa, and Chloe Garcia Roberts present their translations from Swedish, Russian, Japanese, and Chinese, as well as work they wrote in English in forms other than translation. More information here. Molasses Books, 770 Hart St., 8:00 p.m.

The post Translation on Tap in NYC, July 1 – 31, 2018 appeared first on TRANSLATIONiSTA.

Words Without Borders Wins Inaugural Whiting Magazine Prize

I couldn’t be more thrilled to hear that Words Without Borders – the fantastic online journal of international literature in translation – has been selected for one of the three Whiting Literary Magazine Prizes in this, the first year of these awards. The win was in the “digital” category. This prize of up to $30,000 total, in the form of a $10,000 grant in the first year, followed by 2:1 matching grants up to $10,000 in each of the following two years, will make a big difference to this relatively low-budget but high-impact enterprise. Words Without Borders, which is just celebrating its 15th year of publication, has been instrumental in creating a space and audience for translated literature. It also foregrounded the work of translators right from the start, with essays and interviews by and about translators a regular feature. I’ve been very proud to have some of my work published in its pages over the years (I think the first time was this little Yoko Tawada story in 2005). Thank you so much, Whiting Foundation, for recognizing the important work of this crucial journal of Translationland. A big cheer and huge congratulations, WWOB!

The post Words Without Borders Wins Inaugural Whiting Magazine Prize appeared first on TRANSLATIONiSTA.

2018 Transatlantyk Prize Announced

The Transatlantyk Prize – awarded annually by the Polish Book Institute for an eminent promoter of Polish literature abroad – doesn’t always go to a translator, though most of the recipients into recent years have been translators of Polish literature into various languages, including Chinese (Yi Lijun), Dutch (Karol Lesman), English (Bill Johnston), French (Laurence Dyèvre), Romanian (Constantin Geambaşu), and Hungarian (Lajos Pálfalvi). Last night this prize, which comes with a €10,000 purse and a statuette by Łukasz Kieferling, was awarded to the British translator of Polish literature Antonia Lloyd-Jones, known for her translations of Jacek Dehnel, Paweł Huelle, Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, Zygmunt Miłoszewski, Żanna Słoniowska, Olga Tokarczuk, and others, as well as for her tireless work in support of both Polish literature and the literary translation community.

She is the second translator of Olga Tokarczuk to receive major honors this year.

Congratulations, Antonia!

The post 2018 Transatlantyk Prize Announced appeared first on TRANSLATIONiSTA.