Susan Bernofsky's Blog, page 2

Translationista News for 2020

Translationista being “busy.” ©Richard Gehr

Happy new year, everyone! 2020 marks the tenth anniversary of Translationista, which I started back in November 2010. Since then, I’ve written 830 posts. For a while I was regularly writing report-backs on lectures, conferences, and the like, as well as how-to guides, political reports from the field, and more personal essays. Over the last few years I’ve gotten busier and have kept up with the blog less; these days I often have trouble finding time even to write up and promptly post the most important announcements, such as submission and application deadlines and the winners of prizes (not to mention all the longlists and shortlists). Back in 2010, Translationista was filling an important need in the translation community, as there was no other website regularly collecting and publishing national and international translation news. Now the ALTA blog (from the American Literary Translators Association) has been much expanded and is an excellent source of more news than I was ever able to publish here. You’ll also find news and helpful features on the PEN Translation Committee page of PEN America. And for New York-based translation aficionados, there will soon be a monthly events feature appearing on the website of the Columbia University School of the Arts to take the place of Translation on Tap; more on that soon!  This doesn’t mean I’ll be deactivating Translationista, just that the blog will no longer aspire to be as much of a regular news source as it was in the past. Keep an eye out for more – and more occasional – content of other sorts, maybe even reviews of translated books (including by other hands).

Meanwhile, thank you to everyone who’s been reading Translationista all these years, sending in their news, queries, and comments, and generally helping to create a sense of community around literary translation. Translationland has become a much richer and more vibrant place in the course of the decade I’ve documented here, and it’s been a joy to be part of it.

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2020 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Winners

This year’s PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant recipients were chosen from among a record-size pool of 272 applicants. These grants, made possible by a donation by legendary translator and translation advocate Michael Henry Heim, support translations-in-progress, often work by first-time or otherwise emerging translators and often lead to projects finding publishers. This year’s advisory board, including Alta Price, Elisabeth Jaquette, Jenny Wang Medina, Jeremy Tiang, Katie Dublinski, Lara Vergnaud, Natasha Wimmer, Peter Constantine, Tess Lewis, and Chair Samantha Schnee, selected 11 projects translated from ussian, Italian, Korean, French, Portuguese, Galician, Vietnamese, Bengali, and Spanish. Ten of this year’s grants are worth $3,481 each, while one, to the winner of the PEN Grant for the English Translation of Italian Literature (always given out at the same time), amounts to $5000. More than half of this year’s supported projects are for books by women authors, which I’m delighted to see.

Here’s the list:

Curtis Bauer’s translation from the Spanish of Home Reading Serviceby Fabio Morábito

Fiona Bell’s translation from the Russian of Storiesby Natalia Meshchaninova

Kevin Gerry Dunn’s translation from the Spanish of Easy Readingby Cristina García Morales

Dawn Fulton’s translation from the French of Cajouby Michèle Lacrosil

Anton Hur’s translation from the Korean of Cursed Bunnyby Bora Chung

Yarri Kamara’s translation from the French of So Distant From My Lifeby Monique Ilboudo

Johnny Lorenz’s translation from the Portuguese of Notebook of Returnby Edimilson de Almeida Pereira

Shabnam Nadiya’s translation from the Bengali of The Meat Market and Other Storiesby Mashiul Alam

Quyen Nguyen-Hoang’s translation from the Vietnamese of Chronicles of a Villageby Hien Thanh Nguyen

Jacob Rogers’ translation from the Galician of Extraordinaryby Antón Lopo

Minna Zallman Proctor’s translation from the Italian of The Renegade: Natalia Ginzburg, Her Life and Writingby Sandra Petrignani (PEN Grant for the English Translation of Italian Literature)

Congratulations to all this year’s grant winners! More information about the grants and the projects can be found on the PEN website.

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2020 PEN Translation Prize Longlists Announced

PEN America has just announced the longlists for the 2020 PEN Translation Prize (for a book-length work of translated fiction) and the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation (for a book of translated poems). Each prize comes with a purse of $3000. This year’s jury in fiction includes Sean Gasper Bye, Jim Hicks, Geoffrey C. Howes, Sara Khalili, Elizabeth Lowe, Jenny McPhee; the poetry jury is comprised of Michael Eskin, Forrest Gander, and Pierre Joris.

PEN Translation Prize Semifinalists:

When Death Takes Something From You Give It Back: Carl’s Book, Naja Marie Aidt (Coffee House Press)

Translated from the Danish by Denise Newman


If You Cross the River: A Novel, Geneviève Damas (Milkweed Editions)

Translated from the French by Jody Gladding
Happiness, as Such, Natalia Ginzburg (New Directions Publishing)

Translated from the Italian by Minna Zallman Proctor
The Ten Loves of Nishino, Hiromi Kawakami (Europa Editions)

Translated from the Japanese by Allison Markin Powell
Beyond Babylon, Igiaba Scego (Two Lines Press)

Translated from the Italian by Aaron Robertson
The Dead Wander in the Desert, Rollan Seisenbayev (Amazon Crossing)

Translated from the Russian by Olga Nakston and John Farndon
Flowers of Mold & Other Stories, Ha Seong-nan (Open Letter Books)

Translated from the Korean by Janet Hong
At Dusk, Hwang Sok-yong (Scribe US)

Translated from the Korean by Sora Kim-Russell
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead: A Novel, Olga Tokarczuk (Riverhead Books)

Translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones


The Scent of Buenos Aires: Stories, Hebe Uhart (Archipelago Books)

Translated from the Spanish by Maureen Shaughnessy

PEN Award for Poetry in Translation Semifinalists:

Time, Etel Adnan (Nightboat Books)

Translated from the French by Sarah Riggs
Final Matters: Selected Poems, 2004-2010, Szilárd Borbély (Princeton University Press)

Translated from the Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet
Poems in Absentia & Poems from The Island and the World, Pedro da Silveira (Tagus Press)

Translated from the Portuguese by George Monteiro
Treasure of the Castilian or Spanish Language, Sebastián de Covarrubias Horozco (New Directions Publishing)

Translated from the Spanish by Janet Hendrickson
Room in Rome, Jorge Eduardo Eielson (Cardboard House Press)

Translated from the Spanish by David Shook
Daybook 1918: Early Fragments, J.V. Foix (Northwestern University Press)

Translated from the Catalan by Lawrence Venuti
Killing Plato, Chantal Maillard (New Directions Publishing)

Translated from the Spanish by Yvette Siegert
The Winter Garden Photograph, Reina María Rodríguez (Ugly Duckling Presse)

Translated from the Spanish by Kristin Dykstra and Nancy Gates Madsen
Songs from a Single Eye, Oswald von Wolkenstein (New Directions Publishing)

Translated from the German by Richard Sieburth
What We Live For, What We Die For: Selected Poems, Serhiy Zhadan (Yale University Press)

Translated from the Ukrainian by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps

The gender balance among the original-language writers on these two lists is striking: the prose list is 80% female, the poetry list 30% female; the prose jury is split down the middle between men and women, while the poetry jury is 100% male. Without surveying the full list of books submitted for each prize, I can’t say whether or not these proportions reflect the distribution of the books submitted. Given the long historical trend of prize juries favoring works originally authored by men, a mostly-male list and a mostly-female list are not parallel phenomena. I have to admit I was surprised to see an all-male roster for the poetry jury; I didn’t think we were doing that anymore. (Of course, it’s always possible there was originally a female jury member appointed who had to step down midstream or something; these things do happen; if so, it’s a shame she wasn’t replaced; representation matters.)

In any case, congratulations to all the translators who were named semifinalists for these two awards! The shortlists will be announced in January. For more information on the prizes and the longlisted books, please visit the PEN America website.

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Modern Language Association Announces 2018 Translation Prizes

So it turns out I’ve been misnumbering the Modern Language Association’s translation prizes for years now (unless they have).[image error]

2019 Society of Authors Translation Prize Shortlists Announced

The Translators Association (TA) in the UK, a division of the Society of Authors, has just announced the shortlists for the various translation prizes it gives out every year. The prizes themselves will be announced in early February. All these prizes celebrate works that were published in the UK in 2018, and all of these books are already highly recommended (or they wouldn’t have made the shortlists), so why not pick your favorite category and start reading? Maybe you’ll even pick the winning books ahead of the judges!

Behold the lists:

The TA First Translation Prize, which goes to a first-time translator of a book-length work and their editor:

Sarah Booker and their editor Lauren Rosemary Hook for a translation of The Iliac Crest by Cristina Rivera Garza (And Other Stories). Translated from Spanish.
Natascha Bruce and their editor Jeremy  Tiang  for a translation of Lonely Face by Yeng Pway Ngon (Balestier Press). Translated from Chinese (Singapore).
Morgan Giles and their editor Saba Ahmed for a translation of Tokyo Ueno Station by Yu Miri (Tilted Axis Press). Translated from Japanese.
Ellen Jones and their editors Fionn Petch and Carolina Orloff for a translation of Trout, Belly Up by Rodrigo Fuentes (Charco Press). Translated from Spanish.
William Spence and their editor  Tomasz Hoskins  o r  a translation of The Promise: Love and Loss in Modern China by XinRan Xue (I. B. Tauris). Translated from Mandarin.
Charlotte Whittle and their editor Bella Bosworth for a translation of People in the Room by Norah Langé (And Other Stories). Translated from Spanish.

The Schlegel-Tieck Prize for translations from German:

Margot Bettauer Dembo for a translation of The Seventh Cross by Anna Seghers (Virago Press)
Katy Derbyshire  for a translation of Gentleman Jack by Angela Steidele (Serpent’s Tail)
Iain Galbraith  for a translation of River by Esther Kinsky (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
Karen Leeder  for a translation of Thick of It by Ulrike Almut Sandig (Seagull Books)
Simon Pare  for a translation of The Flying Mountain by Christoph Ransmayr (Seagull Books)
Damion Searls for a translation of Anniversaries: From Year in the Life of Cresspahlby Uwe Johnson (New York Review Books)

The Scott Moncrieff Prize for translations from French:

Linda Coverdale for a translation of The Old Slave and the Mastiff by Patrick Chamoiseau (Dialogue Books)
Penny  Hueston  for a translation of Our Life in the Forest by Marie Darrieussecq (Text Publishing)
Adriana Hunter  for a translation of Women at Sea by Catherine Poulain (Jonathan Cape)
Tina  Kover for a translation of Disoriental by Négar Djavadi (Europa Editions)
Geoffrey Strachan for a translation of Tropic of Violence by Nathacha Appanah (MacLehose Press)
David Warriner  for a translation of We Were the Salt of the Sea by Roxanne Bouchard (Orenda Books)

The Premio Valle Inclán Prize for translations from Spanish:

Nick Caistor for a translation of Springtime in a Broken Mirror by Mario Benedetti (Penguin Classics)
Charlotte Coombe for a translation of Fish Soup by Margarita García Robayo (Charco Press)
William Gregory for a translation of The Oberon Anthology of Contemporary Spanish Plays by Borja Ortiz de Gondra, Blanca Doménech, Víctor Sánchez Rodríguez, Vanessa Montfort, and Julio Escalada (Oberon Books)
Sophie Hughes for a translation of The Remainder by Alia Trabucco Zeran (And Other Stories)
Jessica Sequeira for a translation of Land of Smoke by Sara Gallardo (Pushkin Press)

The Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for translations from Arabic:

Marilyn Booth for a translation of Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi (Sandstone Press)
Humphrey Davies for a translation of My Name is Adam: Children of the Ghetto  
Volume 1 by Elias Khoury (MacLehose)
Leri Price for a translation of Death is Hard Work by Khaled Khalifa (Faber & Faber)
Jonathan Wright for a translation of Jokes for the Gunman by Mazen Maarouf
(Granta Books)

The Vodel Prize for translations from Dutch:

David Doherty for a translation of Monte Carlo by Peter Terrin (MacLehose Press)
Antoinette Fawcett for a translation of Bird Cottage by Eva Meijer (Pushkin Press)
Nancy Forest-Flier for a translation of The Story of Shit by Midas Dekkers (Text Publishing)
Michele Hutchison for a translation of Stage Four by Sander Kollaard (Amazon Crossing)

The TLS-Risa Domb/Porjes Prize for translations from Hebrew:

Peter C. Appleaum for a translation of Hell on Earth by Avigdor Hameiri (Wayne State University Press)
Jessica Cohen for a translation of A Horse Walks into a Bar by David Grossman (Vintage)
Nicholas de Lange for a translation of Judas by Amos Oz (Vintage)
Rachel Tzvia Back for a translation of On the Surface of Silence by Lea Goldberg (Hebrew Union College Press)

Big congratulations and best of luck to all other translators competing for prizes. The winners will be announced at a ceremony in London in February 2020.

More information about all the prizes, judges, awards ceremony, and shortlisted books can be found on the Society of Authors website.

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Translation on Tap in NYC, Dec. 1 – 31, 2019

As we enter the dark weeks of the year, it’s good to remember that the days will start getting longer again before the month is out. Maybe some translation events will help as well! (So far I’ve just heard about one, so if you know of others, please send them my way.)

Saturday, Dec. 7:

Aline & Valcour: launch event for the first-ever translation of this book by the Marquis de Sade. With the book’s translators Jocelyne Genvieve Barque and John Galbraith Simmons joined by Allan Graubard and Tuli Velazquez Farley, moderated by translator Christopher Wink. . Unnameable Books, 600 Vanderbilt Ave., Brooklyn, 7:00 p.m.

 

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Apply Now for a 2020 ALTA Emerging Translator Mentorship

The Mentorship Program of the American Literary Translators Association is entering its sixth year and now accepting applications. The program pairs an emerging translator with an experienced mentor for a project of the emerging translator’s choosing to be worked on for a year. The program includes both language-specific mentorships in Arabic, Catalan, poetry from Hong Kong, Korean prose, Korean poetry, and Russian prose, or non-language-specific mentorships in either poetry or prose. The 2020 mentorship cycle will run from February to November 2020.

For more information and to apply, please visit ALTA’s mentorships page. This year’s deadline for applications is Dec. 8, 2019.

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2019 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation Announced

The winner of the 2019 (third annual) Warwick Prize for Women in Translation has just been announced: Annie Ernaux’s The Years, translated from French by Alison L. Strayer (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2018). Congratulations! The book has also been published in the U.S., by Seven Stories Books.

For more information about the prize, the winning book, and the 2019 longlist, visit the website of the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation at the University of Warwick.

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2019 National Book Award for Translated Literature Announced

It’s the second year of the newly revived National Book Award for Translated Literature, and the winning book from the stellar shortlist was announced last night: it’s Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming by László Krasznahorkai, translated from Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet and published by New Directions, which must certainly be celebrating taking home this prestigious award for the second year running. Many congratulations are in order, including to Ottilie Mulzet, who (along with George Szirtes and John Batki) has been translating this challenging and magnificent author for many years now.

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Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture Announces 2019-2020 Translation Prizes

The Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture has announced the winners of its 2019-2020 translation prizes, including the Japan-United States Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature and the Lindsley and Masao Miyoshi Translation Prize.

The 2019-2020 Japan-United States Friendship Commission Prize will be awarded to:

Janine Beichman for her translation of О̄ oka Makoto’s poems in Beneath the Sleepless Tossing of the Planets, Selected Poems 1972-1989 (Kurodahan Press, 2018)
Sam Bett for his translation of Mishima Yukio’s Star (New Directions, 2019)

The Lindsley and Masao Miyoshi Translation Prize will be awarded to:

Margaret Mitsutani for her translation of Tawada Yoko’s The Emissary (New Directions, 2018)
Matt Treyvaud for his translation of Shimura Fukumi’s The Music of Color (Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture, 2019)

More information about the prizes is available on the Donald Keene Center website.

All prizes will be awarded at a ceremony at Columbia University on Friday, April 3, 2020. Congratulations to all the translators whose work was selected to be honored!

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