Susan Bernofsky's Blog, page 26

2017 Best Translated Book Award Longlists Announced

The 2017 Best Translated Book Award longlists are here! I’m very delighted to be on the Fiction longlist in such excellent company. Special commendation is due to the inestimable Margaret Jull Costa, who translated three and a half of the books on the Fiction longlist. She’s such a champ – I love her work, as I do that many of the translators whose books are listed here in both poetry and prose. I don’t envy the judges their task.

This year’s juries include Trevor Berrett, Monica Carter, Rachel Cordasco, Jennifer Croft, Lori Feathers, Jeremy Garber, Mark Haber, George Henson, and Steph Opitz (Fiction) and Jarrod Annis, Katrine Øgaard Jensen, Tess Lewis, Becka McKay, and Emma Ramadan (Poetry).

And now the longlists (in alphabetical order by author):

Fiction:

The Queue by Basma Abdel Aziz,

translated from the Arabic by Elisabeth Jaquette (Egypt, Melville House)

The Young Bride by Alessandro Baricco, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein (Italy, Europa Editions)

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)

On the Edge by Rafael Chirbes, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa (Spain, New Directions)

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

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

A Spare Life by Lidija Dimkovska, translated from the Macedonian by Christina Kramer (Macedonia, Two Lines Press)

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

Night Prayers by Santiago Gamboa, translated from the Spanish by Howard Curtis (Colombia, Europa Editions)

Angel of Oblivion by Maja Haderlap, translated from the German by Tess Lewis (Austria, Archipelago Books)

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)

Last Wolf and Herman by László Krasznahorkai, translated from the Hungarian by George Szirtes and John Batki (Hungary, New Directions)

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

Thus Bad Begins by Javier Marías, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa (Spain, Knopf)

In the Café of Lost Youth by Patrick Modiano, translated from the French by Chris Clarke (France, New York Review Books)

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)

Moonstone by Sjón, translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb (Iceland, FSG)

Memoirs of a Polar Bear by Yoko Tawada, translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky (Japan/Germany, New Directions)

Vampire in Love by Enrique Vila-Matas, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa (Spain, New Directions)

My Marriage by Jakob Wassermann, translated from the German by Michael Hofmann (Germany, New York Review Books)

Moshi Moshi by Banana Yoshimoto, translated from the Japanese by Asa Yoneda (Japan, Counterpoint Press)

Super Extra Grande by Yoss, translated from the Spanish by David Frye (Cuba, Restless Books)

Poetry:

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

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

Instructions Within by Ashraf Fayadh, translated from the Arabic by Mona Kareem, Mona Zaki, and Jonathan Wright (Palestine, Operating System)

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)

The Thief of Talant by Pierre Reverdy, translated from the French by Ian Seed (France, Wake eld Press)

tasks by Víctor Rodríguez Núñez, translated from the Spanish by Katherine M. Hedeen (Cuba, co-im-press)

Building the Barricade by Anna Świrszczyńska, translated from the Polish by Piotr Florczyk (Poland, Tavern Books)

Antígona González by Sara Uribe, translated from the Spanish by John Pluecker (Mexico, Les Figues Press)

Congratulations to all the longlisted translators and authors. You’ll find more information about the longlisted books (and jury members) on The Millions, where the longlists were announced. Shortlists will be released on April 18, and the winners announced on May 4, 2017 at an event in NYC.

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Translation on Tap in NYC, April 1 – 15, 2017

Spring is in the air, a great season to translate something and talk translation with friends. Here are some opportunities coming up:

Sunday, April 2:

Cedilla & Co: The new translators’ collective that seeks to use collaboration to further literature in translation presents new work from the Cedilla portfolio. Readers include translators Allison Markin Powell, Alta L. Price, Elisabeth Jaquette, Heather Cleary, Jeffrey Zuckerman, Jeremy Tiang, Julia Sanches, Marshall Yarbrough, and Sean Gasper Bye. More information here. KGB Bar, 85 E. 4th St., 7:00 – 9:00 p.m.

Tuesday, April 4:

Dos Madres Press reading featuring translator G.J. Racz joined by Paul Pines and Daniel Shapiro. More information here. Book Culture, 536 W. 112th St., 7:00 p.m.

Wednesday, April 5:

Subsisters: translator-poet Uljana Wolf joins her translator Sophie Seita to read from their forthcoming book (Belladonna* 2017), also with translator-poet Eugene Ostashevsky. More information here. Poetry Project, St. Mark’s Church, 131 E. 10th Street, 8:00 p.m.

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French-American Foundation Translation Prize 2017 Shortlists Announced

The finalists for the French-American Foundation and Florence Gould Foundation 30th Annual Translation Prizes have just been announced. These are $10,000 awards for the translator of a book published in the U.S. during the previous calendar year in each of two categories: fiction and nonfiction. The winner will be announced on June 8. Meanwhile, behold the lists of finalists:

Fiction:

Sam Taylor for The Heart by Maylis de Kerangal (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Natasha Lehrer and Cécile Menon for Suite for Barbara Loden by Nathalie Léger (Dorothy, A Publishing Project)
Donald Nicholson-Smith for Paris Vagabond by Jean-Paul Clébert (New York Review Books)
Chris Clarke for In the Café of Lost Youth by Patrick Modiano (New York Review Books)
Lazer Lederhendler for The Party Wall by Catherine Leroux (Biblioasis International)

Nonfiction:

Lauren Elkin and Charlotte Mandell for Jean Cocteau: A Life by Claude Arnaud (Yale University Press)
Nicholas Elliott for Flaubert by Michel Winock (Harvard University Press)
Jordan Stump for Cockroaches by Scholastique Mukasonga (Archipelago Books)
Catherine Porter for Freud: In His Time and Ours by Élizabeth Roudinesco (Harvard University Press)
Jane Marie Todd for The French Resistance by Olivier Wieviorka (Harvard University Press)

I have to say: that’s a pretty impressive showing for Harvard UP on the nonfiction shortlist! So far I’ve only read one of the shortlist books and loved it, but I’m sure others are excellent as well. More information about these books can be found on the French-American Foundation website. Congratulations to all the shortlisted translators, and may the best book win!

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What I’m Reading: Scholastique Mukasonga

I first encountered Scholastique Mukasonga’s work in 2013 when I was working on co-editing, with Christopher Merrill, Landmarks, the 20th anniversary issue of the Two Lines Anthology published by the Center for the Art of Translation in San Francisco. Translator Lara Vergnaud had submitted a short story by Mukasonga entitled “Fear,” from her 2010 collection L’Iguifou, novellas rwandaises, that was so striking (and beautifully translated) that we used it to lead off the anthology. As far as I know, this story that tells of the constant vigilance that a group of Tutsi schoolchildren learn to incorporate into their lives because of the constant threat of violence from Hutu soldiers was the first work by Mukasonga to appear in English. Then in 2014 Archipelago Books published Mukasonga’s novel Our Lady of the Nile, translated by Melanie Mauthner, about Rwandan schoolgirls in a strongly Francophile Catholic boarding school catering to the daughters of country’s elite. The whimsical storytelling about the friendships and rivalries of these young girls reminded me a little of Muriel Spark’s The Girls of Slender Means. But the threat of ethnic violence hovers around the edges of Mukasonga’s novel, eventually erupting in the midst of the girlish idyll. In the world of her clear, matter-of-fact storytelling, these spheres that seem so far apart (girlish cliquishness, military violence) are shown to be intimately interlinked. The book received a fair bit of attention: it won the 2014 French Voices Award and was longlisted for the Best Translated Book Award and shortlisted for the prestigious International Dublin Literary Award.

Last year Archipelago published Mukasonga’s autobiographical work Cockroaches (translated by Jordan Stump), a memoir of life in Rwanda in the decades leading up the mass genocide of the Tutsi in 1994. This one is anything but an idyll: when Mukasonga is still a small child, her family is forced from their home and sent into exile in the inhospitable Bugasera district in the southeast, a wasteland of brush that the refugees clear so they can farm and survive. Eventually a makeshift life is cobbled together, even a school for the children, but always with the threat of violence from Hutu soldiers on patrol for whom these Tutsi refugees will only ever be the Inyenzi of the book’s title. Eventually Scholastique (as good in school as her name suggests) is chosen to go off on scholarship to study social work, setting her on the path that will eventually take her as far as France. It’s because she’s in France that she survives the 1994 genocide in Nyamata that takes the lives of 27 of her closest family members: her parents, sisters, brothers, nieces and nephews. The final part of the book chronicles her return to Rwanda a decade after the slaughter to find what traces remain. Most of the book, though, is devoted to the life her family leads in exile – the constant fear, the childish pleasures. Children walking to school learn what to do when soldiers arrive (dive headlong into the brush to hide) or when elephants appear on the path (walk always behind them, never in front, no matter how slowly they amble). Schoolgirls strategize how to get past military checkpoints. A long loving passage is devoted to the brewing of banana beer. Mukasonga’s storytelling is always clear and sharp. I’ve read her in three different translations now, and in all of them I hear her voice clearly. Here’s the story (from Cockroaches) of a child who, having just made the acquaintance of powdered milk, is presented with a new food as well:

Then there were the tomatoes. We were familiar with tomatoes, of course, but little ones, cherry-sized, used for making sauce and cooking bananas. The tomatoes they gave us were huge. We didn’t know what to do with them. My parents refused to eat them raw. But since there was nothing else, they forced them on the children. I wept as I ate my first tomatoes.

These tomatoes in all their alienating hugeness are emblematic of the exile’s fractured and fracturing experience. This passage is also a good example of Mukasonga’s use of short sentences to nail down an experience from several angles – well-captured here in Jordan Stump’s English that ends the paragraph on a powerful note. What I love so much about Mukasonga’s writing is how she manages to interweave the political and the personal so skillfully and to such powerful effect. Everything I’ve read by her so far has been gorgeously written and incredibly moving. I hope we’ll have more books by her in English soon.

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Vote Now for 2017 Albertine Prize

The Cultural Services of the French Embassy has announced a new award, the Albertine Prize (which shares a name with the lovely bookstore run by the embassy), to honor a French-language work in English-language translation published in the U.S. over the previous academic year. This $10,000 prize honors both the original work and the translation, according to the press release sent out with the longlist this week, though I was sorry to see that the press release fails outright to mention the names of the longlisted translators, and also that only 20% of the prize money will go to the translator of the winning book. Let’s hope that the translator-appreciation part of this award is still a work-in-progress. The ten-book longlist was assembled by the Albertine staff and approved by the prize’s co-chairs (Lydia Davis and François Busnel). The winner of the award will now be selected by you and everyone else who chooses to participate in crowd-source-judging the competition. Voting will take place in two rounds, so you can start by voting for your favorite book from the longlist between now and April 14, 2017, and then come back to vote again between April 14 and 30 after the shortlist of three finalists is announced. Here are this year’s longlisted books:

Couple Mechanics  (Moment d’un couple) by Nelly Alard, translated by Adriana Hunter (Other Press)
Constellation  (Constellation) by Adrien Bosc, translated by Willard Wood (Other Press)
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)
The Little Communist Who Never Smiled  (La Petite Communiste qui ne souriait jamais) by Lola Lafon, translated by Nick Caistor (Seven Stories Press)
Suite for Barbara Loden   (Supplément à la vie de Barbara Loden) by Nathalie Léger, translated by Natasha Lehrer and Cécile Menon (Dorothy, a publishing project)
Ladivine  (Ludivine) by Marie NDiaye, translated by Jordan Stump (Knopf)
Infidels  (Infidèles) by Abdullah Taïa, translated by Alison L. Strayer (Seven Stories Press)
Naked  (Nue) by Jean-Philippe Toussaint, translated by Edward Gauvin (Dalkey Archive)
Bardo or Not Bardo  (Bardo or Not Bardo) by Antoine Volodine, translated by J. T. Mahany (Open Letter Books)

Congratulations to all the longlisted authors and translators. Ready, read, vote! and may the best book win!

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Apply Now for 2017 Translation Lab at Ledig House

I’ve blogged about Ledig House’s Translation Lab before, and am delighted to blog it again. The program allows four pairs of translators and their authors to work together on the beautiful grounds of Art Omi for 12 days of intense collaboration. This year’s Lab is scheduled for Nov. 8 – 19 2017.

DW Gibson, Director of Writers Omi writes:

All residencies are fully funded, including airfare and local transport from New York City to the Omi International Arts Center in Ghent, NY. Please note: accepted applicants must be available for the duration of the Translation Lab (November 8-19, 2017). Late arrivals and early departures are not possible. Please do not submit a proposal unless both parties involved (translator and writer) are available for all dates.

Each proposal should be no more than three pages in length and provide the following information:

• Brief biographical sketches for the translator and writer associated with each project

• Publishing status for proposed projects (projects that do not yet have a publisher are still eligible)

• A description of the proposed project

• Contact information (physical address, email, and phone)

For more information, see the Writers Omi website.

All proposals and inquires should be sent by e-mail to DW Gibson at Ledig House. Proposals will be accepted until July 15, 2017.

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2017 Man Booker International Longlist Announced

The Man Booker International Prize is now in its second year, having gone last year to Han Kang and Deborah Smith for The Vegetarian. This is one of the largest-ticket prizes out there for translations, with a £50,000 purse split equally between author and translator. And now the 2017 has been announced, and look at all the beautiful books on it!

Mathias Enard (France), trans. Charlotte Mandell, Compass (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
Wioletta Greg (Poland), trans. Eliza Marciniak, Swallowing Mercury (Portobello Books)
David Grossman (Israel), trans. Jessica Cohen, A Horse Walks Into a Bar  (Jonathan Cape)
Stefan Hertmans (Belgium), trans. David McKay, War and Turpentine (Harvill Secker)
Roy Jacobsen (Norway), trans. Don Bartlett, Don Shaw, The Unseen (Maclehose)
Ismail Kadare (Albania), trans. John Hodgson, The Traitor’s Niche (Harvill Secker)
Jon Kalman Stefansson (Iceland), trans. Phil Roughton, Fish Have No Feet (Maclehose)
Yan Lianke (China), trans. Carlos Rojas, The Explosion Chronicles (Chatto & Windus)
Alain Mabanckou (France), trans. Helen Stevenson, Black Moses (Serpent’s Tail)
Clemens Meyer (Germany), trans. Katy Derbyshire, Bricks and Mortar (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
Dorthe Nors (Denmark), trans. Misha Hoekstra, Mirror, Shoulder, Signal  (Pushkin Press)
Amos Oz (Israel), trans. Nicholas de Lange, Judas (Chatto & Windus)
Samanta Schweblin (Argentina), trans. Megan McDowell, Fever Dream (Oneworld)

I’m disappointed to see only three female authors on the thirteen-author list this year, though (last year’s list had four, which was already disappointing). All the more reason we need a prize for women in translation, though of course the existence of the Warwick Prize shouldn’t mean we’re reserving all other prizes for men. In any case, there are more women than men on this year’s jury (Nick Barley, Daniel Hahn, Helen Mort, Elif Shafak, Chika Unigwe).

The shortlist will be announced on April 20, the winner on June 14. Wishing the best of luck to all the longlisted translators!

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Apply Now for an ALTA Travel Fellowship

This is the weekend to set your clocks ahead, which must mean that the deadline for this year’s ALTA Travel Fellowships is approaching. These are $1000 fellowships to help emerging (unpublished or minimally published) translators attend the conference. There are 4-6 of these fellowships available each year, and starting last year, an additional fellowship was added, the Peter K. Jansen Memorial Travel Fellowship, which is specifically earmarked for “an emerging translator of color or a translator working from an underrepresented diaspora or stateless language”; if you qualify, there’s a box you can check on the ALTA Travel Fellowship application to be considered for a Jansen Fellowship as well. As readers of this blog probably already know, attending the conference is a fantastic way to jumpstart your translation career – it gives you a chance to meet other translators working in your language area, learn what sorts of questions other translators are wrestling with in their work, learn about new authors, and generally get inspired. ALTA Fellows are additionally invited to read their work at a keynote event during the conference. The 2017 conference, entitled “Reflections/Refractions” will be a particularly special one: it’s ALTA’s 40th anniversary. The conference will be held in Minneapolis from Oct. 5 – 8, 2017. If you’re able to attend and qualify for a travel fellowship (you’ll find requirements and application information on the ALTA website), I hope you’ll do so, and look forward to seeing you there. The deadline for travel fellowship applications is April 7, 2017.

 

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Announcing the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation

Lots of us have been wishing and asking for this, and now it’s arrived. Thank you, Universe. It doesn’t make up for all the other insanity you’ve been hurling at us recently, but it’s a good start: the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, a brand-new yearly award sponsored and administered by the University of Warwick that will honor an outstanding work in translation by a female author (gender of the translator irrelevant). The prize is open to works of many sorts: novels, novellas, collections of short stories, collections of poetry, book-length works of literary non-fiction or book-length works of fiction for children or young adults. The only catch is that to qualify, a work has to have been published in the UK or Ireland between (for this year’s competition) April 1, 2016 and March 31, 2017. Previous publications in other parts of the world do not affect a work’s eligibility. The prize comes with a purse of £1000, to be split evenly between translator and author (or awarded entirely to the translator in the case of an author no longer living) and will be judged by a three-person panel. I just want to say how thrilled I am to see such a prize in existence, an acknowledgment of the way in which the international publishing world still (after all these years and conferences) skews solidly male. Celebrating the work of outstanding women writers is an excellent way to chip away at that boulder. I’m hoping they’ll publish some nice juicy longlists and shortlists. And I hope that some U.S.-based institution will soon take up the banner (PEN? ALTA?) and offer a similar prize for a work published in the U.S.

Entries for the Warwick prize can be submitted by U.K. and Irish publishers between April 3 and July 3, 2017. Application details here. Brava to everyone involved in its creation!

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Translate at Bread Loaf in Summer 2017

© 2015 Brett Simison

I just loved teaching in the Translator’s Conference at Bread Loaf in 2015, spending a week in hilly Vermont in conversation with other translators and writers. Here’s my summary of the experience:

Lovely surroundings (hiking trails everywhere), delicious, wholesome food, Robert Frost’s cabin just down the road, convivial atmosphere. As a bonus, the Orion Environmental Writers’ Conference takes place at the same time, so you get to interact with the writers who came up the mountain for that program – there are joint readings, too, and all meals are at communal tables, so there are lots of opportunities to meet and chat (and yes, you can also just sit by yourself in a corner if that’s what you prefer).

This year the Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference will be taking place for the third time from June 3 – 9, 2017, with a new faculty to provide new insights for returning attendees, including Maureen Freely, Jennifer Grotz, Suzanne Jill Levine, Christopher Merrill, and Idra Novey. They’ll be joined by a number of publishing-world guests with whom participants can book consultations. This year’s guests haven’t been announced yet (keep an eye on the website), but to give you an idea, here’s the roster from 2016: Katie Dublinski, Associate Publisher, Graywolf Press; Susan Harris, Editorial Director, Words Without Borders; Tynan Kogane, Editor, New Directions; Carolyn Kuebler, Editor, New England Review; and Kaija Straumanis, Editorial Director, Open Letter.

Participants are sorted into workshops of various levels from novice to expert and by genre. In the translation manuscript workshops, you can get critiqued on a translation of up to 4000 words.

More good news this year: there are increased possibilities for fellowship support.

To apply, and for information on fees and scholarship aid, visit the Bread Loaf website.

The deadline for applications this year is March 15, 2017.

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