Susan Bernofsky's Blog, page 25

2017 Best Translated Book Award Shortlists Announced

The shortlists for the 2017 Best Translated Book Award in Prose and Poetry have just been announced. The names of the winners in each category will be made public on May 4, 2017. Meanwhile, enjoy checking out the finalists, and congratulations to all the shortlisted translators!

 Fiction:

Wicked Weeds by Pedro Cabiya, translated from the Spanish by Jessica Powell (Dominican Republic, Mandel Vilar Press)

Chronicle of the Murdered House by Lúcio Cardoso, translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson (Brazil, Open Letter Books)

Eve Out of Her Ruins by Ananda Devi, translated from the French by Jeffrey Zuckerman (Mauritius, Deep Vellum)

Zama by Antonio di Benedetto, translated from the Spanish by Esther Allen (Argentina, New York Review Books)

Doomi Golo by Boubacar Boris Diop, translated from the Wolof by Vera Wülfing-Leckie and El Hadji Moustapha Diop (Senegal, Michigan State University Press)

War and Turpentine by Stefan Hertmans, translated from the Dutch by David McKay (Belgium, Pantheon)

Umami by Laia Jufresa, translated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes (Mexico, Oneworld)

Oblivion by Sergei Lebedev, translated from the Russian by Antonina W. Bouis (Russia, New Vessel Press)

Ladivine by Marie NDiaye, translated from the French by Jordan Stump (France, Knopf)

Among Strange Victims by Daniel Saldaña París, translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney (Mexico, Coffee House Press)

Poetry:

Berlin-Hamlet by Szilárd Burbly, translated from the Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet (Hungary, New York Review Books)

Of Things by Michael Donhauser, translated from the German by Nick Ho and Andrew Joron (Austria, Burning Deck Press)

Cheer Up, Femme Fatale by Yideum Kim, translated from the Korean by Ji Yoon Lee, Don Mee Choi, and Johannes Göransson (South Korea, Action Books)

In Praise of Defeat by Abdellatif Laâbi, translated from the French by Donald Nicholson-Smith (Morocco, Archipelago Books)

Extracting the Stone of Madness by Alejandra Pizarnik, translated from the Spanish by Yvette Siegert (Argentina, New Directions)

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2017 Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize Shortlist Announced

The Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize honors a master translator from German with a $10,000 prize (awarded on the basis of a single book rather than a life’s work). This year’s shortlist, drawn from the 30 books that were submitted, has three books on it. The winner will be announced at an event at the Goethe-Institut on April 27. Wishing the best of luck to the shortlisted translators! Here they are:

Charlotte Collins, for her translation of Robert Seethaler’s Ein ganzes Leben (A Whole Life, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2016)
Tony Crawford, for his translation of Navid Kermani’s Zwischen Koran und Kafka (Between Quran & Kafka

Polity Books, 2016)
Michael Hofmann, for his translation of Jakob Wassermann’s Joseph Kerkhovens dritte Existent (My Marriage

New York Review Books, 2016)

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Shortlist / Round Two Voting Open for 2017 Albertine Prize

The voters have spoken, and since the Albertine Book Prize for a French-language book in English translation actually runs functionally on democratic principles (as far as I know, anyhow), their choices are now reflected in the three-book shortlist still in the running for this $10,000 prize. Vote now to help your favorite book cross the finish line first! And come out on Tuesday, April 18 to hear experts make their arguments for each of the shortlisted books (RSVP recommended). Meanwhile, behold the shortlist:

The Heart  (Réparer les vivants) by Maylis De Kerangal, translated by Sam Taylor (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Eve Out of Her Ruins  (Ève de Ses Décombres) by Ananda Devi, translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman (Deep Vellum Publishing)
Bardo or Not Bardo  (Bardo or Not Bardo) by Antoine Volodine, translated by J. T. Mahany (Open Letter Books)

Congratulations to the short-listed translators, and remember to vote!

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Remembering Burton Watson (1925 – 2017)

Burton Watson, the great translator of classical Chinese and Japanese literature and recipient of the 2015 PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation, passed away in Japan earlier this month at the age of 91. Watson translated dozens of works of classical East Asian poetry over a long and fruitful career and inspired generations of readers, scholars, and translators. His translations included (among many others) the works of Chuang Tzu, Han-shan, Su Tung-P’o, and Po Chü-i – poetry, prose, histories and sacred texts. To honor him, translator Lucas Klein has been collecting remembrances of Watson on his blog, Notes on the Mosquito, from contributors including J. P. Seaton, Sam Hamill, Jonathan Chaves, John Bradley, Jeffrey Yang, Jesse Glass, and Victor Mair, with more to come. For a beautiful appreciation of Watson’s work, see Klein’s essay “Not Altogether an Illusion: Translation and Translucence in the Work of Burton Watson,” published in 2014 in World Literature Today. Heartfelt condolences to all who knew and loved him.

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Translation at the 2017 PEN World Voices Festival

The PEN World Voices Festival is coming up the first week of May, and a number of the panels on the program feature translation and translators. Here’s the lineup:

Tuesday, May 2:

Corrosive Power: translators Jennifer Hayashida, Julia Sanches, and Ellen Elias-Bursać join the poets they translate, Athena Farrokhzad (who’s Swedish and Iranian) and Noemi Jaffe (who’s Brazilian), to discus the borders of power, gender, language, place, and identity, examining where they intersect and diverge. This event is free. Poet’s House, 10 River Terrace, 7:00 – 8:30 p.m.

Wednesday, May 3:

Monkey Business: Japan/America Writers’ Dialogue: translators Motoyuki Shibata and Ted Goossen curate and moderate this conversation with Hiromi Ito, Hiroko Oyamada, Jamaica Kincaid, and Brian Evenson. Ticketed event. Asia Society, 725 Park Ave., 6:30 – 8:00 p.m.

Thursday, May 4:

What’s Old is New: Gender and Power in Iliazd’s Neglected Rapture: Translator Thomas Kitson speaks with Jennifer Wilson about Iliazd’s novel about a bandit and his lover that offended both Russia’s revolutionaries and their opponents in the 1920s. Free event. NYU Jordan Center, 19 University Place, 5:00 p.m.

Also Thursday, May 4:

Kitchen Table Translation: Migration, Diaspora, Contexts: When the movement of texts is linked with the movement of bodies, language and culture collide with politics, history, race and imperialism – the very contexts of migration. Immigrant and diasporic translators connect personal, cultural, and political dimensions of translation to the technical and aesthetic aspects of their work. With Eiko Otake, Dagmawi Woubshet, and Amy Sara Carroll, moderated by Madhu Kaza. Free event. McNally Jackson, 52 Prince St., 6:30 – 7:45 p.m.

Also Thursday, May 4:

Crises of Empathy: Translation and Migration. Migration and humanitarian crises as well as economic forces continue to disperse people around the globe. The resulting collisions of nation, language, and culture create narratives requiring interpretation and translation—forcing interpreters and translators to answer sociopolitical questions and navigate territory and testimony that goes well beyond the linguistic. Translator (and PEN Translation Committee Co-Chair) Allison Markin Powell speaks with translator Lina Mounter, joined by Jonathan Blitzer and Sahand Keshavarz Rahbar. Free event. McNally Jackson Books, 52 Prince St., 8:00 – 9:00 p.m.

Friday, May 5:

Translation Slam.This is always a favorite PEN World Voices event among translation aficionados. With Greg Pardlo and Katrina Dodson facing off (translating  Noemi Jaffe), and Janine Beichuan challenging Keith Vincent (translating Hiromi Ito), hosted by translator Michael Moore. Ticketed event. Nuyorican Poets Cafe, 236 E. 3rd St., 7:00 – 8:30 p.m.

Also Friday, May 5:

Lit Crawl (free events):

A Most Exquisite Corpse: Four translator-author teams join to create a multilingual exquisite corpse (one person writes the first page of a story, the final line of that page is sent to the next writer, who continues the story, and so on). The team is still being assembled, but will include translator Sean Bye as well as Filip Springer and Francisco Cantú. Free event. Court Street Grocers, 540 LaGuardia Place, 5:00 – 6:00 p.m.

Translating Women’s Voices: Translators Tess Lewis, Susan Bernofsky, Kaiama L. Glover, and Katrine Øgaard Jensen read from their work, followed by a discussion on the importance of translating work by women, moderated by translator Alta L. Price. NYU Deutsches Haus, 42 Washington Mews, 6:00 – 7:00 p.m.

Mysticism and Mastery in Middle Eastern Poetry: A conversation between translator Peter Cole and Brad Gooch on timeless and timely Middle Eastern poetry and mysticism. NYU Deutsches Haus, 42 Washington Mews, 7:00 – 8:00 p.m.

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2017 International DUBLIN Literary Award Shortlist Announced

The 2017 shortlist for the International DUBLIN Literary Award is here, and I’m delighted to see how multilingually international it is. Six of the ten titles are works in translation, and four are by women. Unfortunately the gender distribution isn’t so good among the works in translation – only one of the six translated titles is by a female author, the rest are by men, showing us yet again why we need a prize for women in translation in the U.S. (one was just established in UK, the Warwick Prize). In any case, with a purse of €100,000 (sponsored by the Dublin City Council), this is the biggest prize out there, though the translator of a translated book winning the prize receives “only” €25,000. One thing I love about this prize is that the books for the longlist are nominated by 400 libraries from around the world. We all should listen to librarians more.

Behold the shortlist:

A General Theory of Oblivion by José Eduardo Agualusa (Angolan) Translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn.
Confession of the Lioness by Mia Couto (Mozambican) Translated from the Portuguese by David Brookshaw.
The Green Road by Anne Enright (Irish )
The Prophets of Eternal Fjord by Kim Leine (Danish/Norwegian) Translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken.
The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli (Mexican) Translated from the Spanish by  Christina MacSweeney.
The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen (Vietnamese/American) First novel.
Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta (Nigerian-American) First novel.
A Strangeness in My Mind by Orhan Pamuk (Turkish) Translated from the Turkish by Ekin Oklap.
A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler (Austrian) Translated from the German by Charlotte Collins.
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (American)

More information on the shortlisted books is available on the International Dublin website. The winner will be announced on June 21, 2017.

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Translation on Tap in NYC, April 16 – 30, 2017

Spring has sprung, and there’s tons going on in Translationland. Check it out!

Sunday, April 16:

Currently & Emotion: Translations: launch event featuring translators (/writers) Uljana Wolf, Lawrence Venuti, Christian Hawkey, Sophie Seita, Karen Van Dyck, and Sophie Collins. More information here. Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop, 141 Front St., Brooklyn, 7:00 p.m.

Tuesday, April 18:

Such Small Hands: book launch for this new novel by Andrés Barba featuring the book’s translator Lisa Dillman (winner of the 2016 Best Translated Book Award) joined by Barba and translator Idra Novey. More information here. McNally Jackson Books, 52 Prince St., 7:00 p.m.

Wednesday, April 19:

Such Small Hands Redux: translator Heather Cleary speaks with the book’s author, Andrès Barba. More information here. Community Bookstore, 143 Seventh Ave., Brooklyn, 7:00 p.m.

Also Wednesday, April 19:

An Evening of Catalan Poetry: translator Mary Ann Newman in conversation with poet Maria Cabrera, moderated by translator Adrian Nathan West. Part of Sant Jordi in New York. More information here. El Born, 651 Manhattan Avenue, Brooklyn, 6:30 – 8:00 p.m.

Thursday, April 20:

The Little Buddhist Monk & The Proof: translator Heather Cleary speaks with the great Argentine writer (and translator!) César Aira about his forthcoming book. More information here. McNally Jackson, 52 Prince St., 7:00 p.m.

Also Thursday, April 20:

Night of the Translators with Mara Faye Lethem, Mary Ann Newman and moderator Sal Robinson. Part of Sant Jordi in New York, co-organized with The Bridge Series, Shakespeare&Co., 939 Lexington Ave., 6:30 p.m.

Friday, April 21:

Abdellatif Laâbi’s Poems of Love and Struggle with translators Donald Nicholson-Smith and Robyn Creswell. Part of Sant Jordi in New York. NYU, La Maison Française, 16 Washington Mews, 7:00 p.m.

Saturday, April 22:

Reading José Martí featuring translator Esther Allen with Ana Dopico, Part of Sant Jordi in New York. Word Up Community Book Shop, 2113 Amsterdam Ave. (Washington Heights), 4:00 p.m.

Also Saturday, April 22:

10th Birthday Party for InTranslation, the translation feature of the Brooklyn Rail. With translators Jen Zoble and Alyson Waters joined by editor Donald Breckenridge. RSVP requested, more information here. Pierogi Gallery, 155 Suffolk Street, 7:00 – 9:30 p.m.

Friday, April 28:

Translation, Women, & Italian Literature – Celebrating Natalia Ginzburg: Translator/writer Jenny McPhee speaks with translator Ann Goldstein and translator/writer Lynne Sharon Schwartz as well as authors Jhumpa Lahiri and Giovanna Calvino, and historian Ruth Ben-Ghiata about Ginzburg’s life and work apropos of McPhee’s new translation of Ginzburg’s novel Family Lexicon. RSVP strongly recommended more information here. NYU Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimo, 24 W. 12th St., 6:00-7:30 p.m.

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2016 French Voices Awards Announced

For the past decade, the French Cultural Services of the French embassy has been presenting the French Voices program to draw attention to excellent works-in-progress of French-language literature in English translation. The French Voices awards (sponsored by the FACE Foundation) include one Grand Prize (with a purse of $10,000) and ten additional awards  ($6000 each), with all prize moneys split between the translator and publisher of the book in English. Some of the projects selected for support don’t have publishers yet – calling all publishers to take a look at this list!

The 2016 French Voices Grand Prize recipient is Youna Kwak for her translation of Daewoo by François Bon, to be published in 2019 by Diálogos Books.

The additional ten awards went to:

Le Séminaire (2013) by Alain Badiou, translated by Susan Spitzer, Columbia University Press, 2017
Amitié Eternelle (2014) by Anouck Durand, translated by Elizabeth Zuba, Siglio Press, 2017
Mémoires d’outre-mer (2015) by Michaël Ferrier, translated by Martin Munro (this project still needs a publisher)
Les Bas-fonds. Histoire d’un imaginaire (2013), by Dominique Kalifa, translated by Robin Holing (this project still needs a publisher)
Lévi-Strauss (2015), by Emmanuelle Loyer, translated by Susan Spitzer, Polity Press, 2017
Global Gay, Comment la revolution gay change le monde (2013) by Frédéric Martel, translated by Patsy Baudoin, The MIT Press, 2018
La vengeance du traducteur (2006), Brice Matthieussent, translated by Emma Ramadan, Deep Vellum, 2017
Achab (séquelles) (2015) by Pierre Senges, translated by Jacob Siefring, Contra Mundum Press, 2017
Lire La Torah (2014) by Catherine Chalier, translated by Michael B. Smith, Duquesne University Press, 2017
Joseph (2014) by Marie-Hélène Lafon, translated by Laurie Postlewate (this project still needs a publisher)

Congratulations to all the translators whose work was selected for support (and particularly to Susan Spitzer, who has two titles on the list)!

Applications are now being accepted for the 2017 round of prizes (May 15, 2017 deadline). You’ll find application guidelines on the French Embassy’s website.

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New Global Humanities Translation Prize Announced

Carl Ernst

The Global Humanities Initiative at Northwestern University and Northwestern University Press have teamed up to create the Global Humanities Translation Prize, intended to foster international dialogue and awareness in the English-speaking world of “Underrepresented and experimental literary voices from marginalized communities, humanistic scholarship in infrequently translated languages, and important classical texts in non-Western traditions and languages.” In its inaugural year, as has just been announced, the $5000 prize will be split between two projects, both of which will be published by Northwestern University Press. The 2016 recipients are:

Jason Grunebaum and Ulrike Stark for a translation of Manzoor Ahtesham’s The Tale of the Missing Man from modern Hindi
Carl Ernst for an annotated translation of the classical Arabic poems of Persian mystic Mansur al-Hallaj

Congratulations to these translators!

For its second annual competition, the Global Humanities Translation Prize will release a call for applications early this summer, with an August 1 deadline. I’ll post the information as it comes my way.

 

 

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2016 Gulf Coast Translation Prize Winner Announced

Somehow I always get press releases asking me to publicize the deadline for the Gulf Coast Translation Prize competition and no one ever tells me when the winners have been selected, but I heard by chance last night that the 2016 prize had recently been awarded, and look, the announcement is up on the Gulf Coast website, so I guess it’s official: congratulations to Carina del Valle Schorske, who was selected for the prize by judge Idra Novey for her translation of poetry by Marigloria Palma. Honorable mentions to Ondrej Pazdirek and Tim DeMay. The annual Gulf Coast Translation Prize comes with a $1000 purse for the winner and $25 for honorable mentions, who will be published in the print journal and online respectively. Congratulations to the 2016 honorees!

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