Susan Bernofsky's Blog, page 28

Submit Now for Epiphany Magazine’s 2017 Translation Contest

Epiphany Magazine is running a translation contest this year, judged by Ann Goldstein of Elena Ferrante and Primo Levi fame. The top prize comes with $400 and publication in the magazine ($100 and publication for the runner-up). The $20 submission fee also nets you a year’s subscription. You’ll find details and instructions on the Epiphany website. Deadline for submissions is Feb. 20, 2017.

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A Joint Statement on the Executive Order Restricting Immigrant and Refugee Entry into the US

We the undersigned wish to affirm that freedom of expression and unfettered exchange of ideas are among the core tenets of our society as much as they are indispensable means of cross-cultural understanding and peaceful co-existence. Writers, translators and interpreters would be vulnerable to the far-reaching consequences of the travel ban; these professionals are crucial to the advancement of cross-cultural cooperation, and their efforts would be harmed by the corrosive effects of distrust and exclusion. If national security is our priority, we should recognize that we are safer with the knowledge translators provide about the culture, values, and humanity of other countries. At a time in history when people feel so divided, we believe that our stories—and the people who make it possible to hear them told—are critical to sustaining our coexistence. We voice our support for the refugees fleeing wars—for whom the U.S. has always been a place of refuge, and whose spirit of creativity and innovation has made our cultural and artistic life all the richer and infinitely more diverse. Turning away today’s refugees may amount to turning down immeasurable human potential. We therefore urge the President to rescind the travel ban immediately.

American Literary Translators Association

Center for the Art of Translation

PEN America Translation Committee & Subcommittee on Freedom of Expression

Red T

Translationista

Words Without Borders

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Translation on Tap in NYC, Feb. 1 – 15, 2017

Dear friends, as it is a proven fact that attending translation events lowers your blood pressure and helps you stop thinking about politics for at least one hour, it is my pleasure to recommend the following to you:

Thursday, Feb. 2, 2017:

Three Translators of Genius Translating Genius [sorry, I didn’t pick the title, Tr.]: Susan Bernofsky reading/chatting about Yoko Tawada, and Gini Ahladeff and Minna Proctor presenting Fleur Jaeggy. More information here. Fort Gansevoort, 5 Ninth Ave., 6:30 p.m.

Friday, Feb. 17, 2017:

A Celebration of Contemporary Uruguayan Poetry / Una noche de celebración de la poesía contemporánea uruguaya: Bilingual event featuring translator Jesse Lee Kercheval reading and conversing with Uruguayan poets Laura Cesarco Eglin, Javier Etchevarren, and Virginia Lucas. More information here. McNally Jackson Books, 52 Prince St., 7:00 p.m.

 

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Submit Now for Asymptote’s 2017 Close Approximations Translation Prize

It’s another year, and the deadline for this year’s Close Approximations Translation Prize is coming right up. This is the third year Asymptote Journal is running the prize, and the judges this year will be the illustrious David Bellos (fiction) and Sawako Nakayusu (poetry), winner of the 2016 PEN Poetry in Translation Prize and the 2016 Lucien Stryk Prize for her translation of The Collected Poems of Sagawa Chika. The prize comes with a $1000 purse for each winner ($250 for runners-up). You’ll find more information about the prize and complete submission guidelines on the Asymptote website. The deadline for submissions is Feb. 1, 2017.

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Finalists Announced for 2017 PEN Translation Prizes

Today PEN America announced the lists of finalists for its translation prizes in poetry and prose, each of which come with a $3000 purse. The winners will be announced on Feb. 22, 2017. With no further ado, behold the lists:

Finalists for the PEN Translation Prize (for a book-length translation of prose into English published in 2016)

Confessions by Rabee Jaber (New Directions), translated from the Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid

Between Life and Death by Yoram Kaniuk (Restless Books), translated from the Hebrew by Barbara Harshav

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

Justine by Iben Mondrup (Open Letter Books), translated from the Danish by Kerri A. Pierce

The Vegetarian by Han Kang (Hogarth/Crown Publishing), translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith

Finalists for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation (for a book-length translation of poetry into English published in 2016):

Pearl: A New Verse Translation by The Pearl Poet (Liveright/W. W. Norton & Company), translated from the Middle English by Simon Ermitage

Abyss by Ya Hsien (Zephyr Press), translated from the Chinese by John Balcom

Preludes and Fugues by Emmanuel Moses (Oberlin College Press), translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker

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

Absolute Solitude: Selected Poems by Dulce Maria Loynaz (Archipelago Books), translated from the Spanish by James O’Connor

You can find more information about all the shortlisted books in prose and poetry on the PEN website. Congratulations to all the finalists!

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Translation on Tap in NYC, Jan. 16 – 31, 2017

This will be my last events posting during the presidency of Barack Obama. Lots of fear and uncertainty lie ahead of us. Look out for each other and stay safe out there! And since literature remains a good space of resistance and consolation in troubled times, please keep reading. Here’s the translation events news coming up over the next two weeks.

Tuesday, Jan. 17:

Cervantes: The Man Who Invented Fiction: An event star-studded with star translators Edith Grossman and Natasha Wimmer, joining William Egginton in a conversation about his new Cervantes book along with author Alvaro Enrigue. More information here, reservations highly recommended. The Center for Fiction, 17 E. 47th St., 7:00 p.m.

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Apply Now for 2017 Gutekunst Prize

The competition is now open for the 2017 Gutekunst Prize, a contest for “young” (defined as under 35 and unpublished-in-book-form) translators that invites them to prove their mettle by all translating the same sample text. The Goethe-Institut administers this prize, which comes with a $2500 purse and some nice professional recognition for the winning translator. The submission deadline for this year is March 17, 2017. That date may seem far away to you now, but the sample isn’t that short (18 pages), and if you don’t leave yourself ample time to revise your work, your chances of producing a translation that’s a contender will be dramatically reduced, and what’s the point of applying if you’re not going for the gold? To start the application process and receive a copy of this year’s text, write to Walter Schlect at the Goethe-Institut. You’ll find all the rules and info here. May the translation gods smile upon you!

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Apply Now for German-English Translation Workshop at Ledig House

The ViceVersa program of the German Translation Fund and the Robert Bosch Foundation are sponsoring a translation workshop at Ledig House (part of the OMI International Arts Center) this coming April 23-30 in upstate New York. The ten selected participants (five each G>E and E>G) will spend the week going over their translations-in-progress in a workshop led by Karen Nölle and Shelley Frisch. The workshop is open to translators in any genre who have published the equivalent of two books in translation. More details and complete application instructions are available here. For those of you who don’t know Ledig House, it’s located in the countryside near Ghent, NY with views of the Catskill Mountains and Hudson River Valley, woods, and a huge sculpture park in the surrounding fields – a pretty gorgeous place to spend a week, especially in the company of a gaggle of translators, including a pair of expert workshop leaders. If that sounds good to you, hurry up and apply! The application deadline is Jan. 20, 2017.

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2017 German Nonfiction Translation Competition Award Announced

Emma Rault

As I’m sure you read here a few months ago, the German Nonfiction Translation Competition Award, affectionately known as GINT (Geisteswissenschaften International Nonfiction Translation Prize), challenges emerging translators to compete with one another in the translation of the same passage (or choice of one of two passages) of a non-fiction text. This makes it easier for the judges to compare apples with apples (reading all the application blind, of course) in distinguishing the most effective translation. So this is a competition designed to encouraged emerging translators from the German while also drawing attention to all the wonderful nonfiction writing that still awaits translation. This year’s participants were asked to pick between excerpts from Ulrich Herbert’s (The History of Germany in the 20th Century) and Jakob Zollmann’s Koloniale Herrschaft und ihre Grenzen. Die Kolonialpolizei in Deutsch-Südwestafrika 1894-1915 (Colonial Rule and Its Limits: The Colonial Police in German South-West Africa, 1894-1915). And the winners are…

1st prize ($1,500): Emma Rault; 2nd prize ($1,000): Isabelle Chaize; and 3rd prize ($500): Sharon Howe.

All three translations have been posted for your consideration, along with more detailed information about the prize and its history, on the GINT website.

By the way, juror Shelley Frisch remarks: “As I’ve noted elsewhere in connection with the judging of this prize, every time such competitions are read blindly, women greatly outdo men in garnering the prizes. Of the three we awarded this time, and the three the last time we held this competition, every prize went to a woman. Similarly, the Gutekunst prize goes to women nearly every time. This pattern doesn’t hold when the translators are identified from the get-go.” Definitely something to keep in mind, especially given the much-talked-about gender disparity in the awarding of translation (and other literary) prizes.

And by the way number two: if you’re a publisher reading this and would like to publish a recent work of German nonfiction in English translation, you can apply for a grant to offset the translation costs through the “Geisteswissenschaften International” program (application information available in English, deadline for this year Jan. 31, 2017).

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2016 Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation

The Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, administered by the Society of Authors in the U.K., has been around since 2006 and honors a new translation of a recent (post-1967) work of Arabic-language literature. The goal of the prize is “to raise the profile of contemporary Arabic literature as well as honouring the important work of individual translators in bringing the work of established and emerging Arab writers to the attention of the wider world. It was established by Banipal, the magazine of modern Arab literature in English translation, and the Banipal Trust for Arab Literature.”

The 2016 Banipal Prize was awarded to Jonathan Wright for his translation of The Bamboo Stalk by Kuwaiti author Saud Alsanousi. See the Banipal Trust website for details about the book and the judges’s statement, as well as for an archive of past winners. Wright was already a joint winner of the prize in 2013 for his translation of Azazeel by Youssef Ziedan.

As of this past year, the Banipal Trust also sponsors an annual lecture on literary translation, the first of which was held on Oct. 14, 2016 by Palestinian author and translator (and University of Michigan professor) Anton Shammas at the British Library Conference Center in London (a summary of the lecture is available on the website).

The deadline for submitting entries for next year’s prize is March 31, 2017.

 

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