Susan Bernofsky's Blog, page 3

2019 ALTA Translation Prizes Announced

I couldn’t make it to the American Literary Translators Association conference in Rochester, NY this year, but the winners of the ALTA translation prizes were just announced there last night, including the two 2019 National Translation Awards in Poetry and Prose, the Lucien Stryk Prize for a translation from an Asian language, and the Italian Prose in Translation Award. (The Cliff Becker Prize is on hiatus this year.) If you’re wondering who won these prizes, read on!

The National Translation Award in Prose has gone to Karen Emmerich for her translation from Modern Greek of What’s Left of the Night by Ersi Sotiropoulos (New Vessel Press)

The National Translation Award in Poetry has gone to Bill Johnston for his translation from Polish of Pan Tadeusz: The Last Foray in Lithuania by Adam Mickiewicz (Archipelago Books).

The Lucien Stryk Prize has gone to Don Mee Choi for her translation from the Korean of Autobiography of Death by Kim Hyesoon (New Directions)

The Italian Prose in Translation Award has gone to Simon Carnell and Erica Segre for their translation from the Italian of The Eight Mountains by Paolo Cognetti (Atria Publishing Group & Harvill Secker)

For more information about all these prizes and their winners, visit the ALTA blog.

Congratulations to all this year’s ALTA prize winners!

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Translation on Tap in NYC, Nov. 1 – 30, 2019

Daylight savings time is almost here, and you’ll want some consolation for all that darkness. See below. You’re welcome.

Friday, Nov. 1:

Li Er and Lu Xun: Translators Jeremy Tiang and Matt Turner read and discuss their recent work. China Institute, 40 Rector St., 7:00 p.m.

Saturday, Nov. 2:

Passwords: The Ballad: Love, Lyricism & Social Protest, with translator Sarah Arvio, joined by flamenco guitarist and Lorcaphile Sergio Sánchez-Monge Escardó. Ticketed event, more information here. Poet’s House, 10 River Terrace, 6:30 p.m.

Tuesday, Nov. 5:

Art and Politics of Translation: Behind the Scenes, with translator Sora Kim-Russell, moderated by Jae Won Edward Chung. RSVP strongly recommended, more information here. Asian American Writers’ Workshop, 112 W. 27th St., 6th Fl., 7:00 p.m.

Thursday, Nov. 7:

Writing Lost and Found: A NYRB Classics 20th Anniversary event featuring translators Robyn Creswell, Jenny McPhee, and Daniel Mendelsohn, joined by Joan Acocella and Edwin Frank. More information here. NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, 7th Fl. Commons, 20 Cooper Sq., 6:00 p.m.

Tuesday, Nov. 12:

Mauritian Francophone Literature: launch event for two books by translator Jeffrey Zuckerman, who’ll present Silence of the Chagos by Shenaz Patel and The Living Days by Ananda Devi in conversation with translator Carina del Valle Schorske. More information here. Community Bookstore, 143 7th Ave., Brooklyn, 7:00 p.m.

Wednesday, Nov. 13:

John Keene on Translation: translator/writer (and MacArthur fellow) John Keene will speak on translation. More information here. Columbia University School of the Arts, 501 Dodge Hall, 7:30 p.m.

Thursday, Nov. 14:

New Plays from Taiwan: What’s Next After Marriage Equality? Staged readings of three short plays by Chao Chi-Yun, Lin Meng-Huan, and Liu Chien-Kuo followed by a panel discussion featuring translator Jeremy Tiang. More information here. Segal Theatre, CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave., 6:30 p.m.

Monday, Nov. 25:

The Book of Disappearance: translator Sinan Antoon speaks with Ibtisam Azem about his translation of her novel, together with Ella Shohat. More information here. NYU, Richard Ettinghausen Library, 255 Sullivan St., 6:00 p.m.

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2019 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation Shortlist Announced

It’s Warwick shortlist time! The third annual slate of finalists for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation has just been announced, and it’s a beautiful list, check it out!

Disoriental by Négar Djavadi, translated from French by Tina Kover (Europa Editions, 2018)
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tocarczuk, translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2018)
Katalin Street by Magda Szabó, translated from Hungarian by Len Rix (Maclehose Press, 2019)
Negative of a Group Photograph by Azita Ghahreman, translated from Farsi by Maura Dooley with Elhum Shakerifar (Bloodaxe and The Poetry Translation Centre, 2018)
People in the Room by Norah Lange, translated from Spanish by Charlotte Whittle (And Other Stories, 2018)
The Years by Annie Ernaux, translated from French by Alison L. Strayer (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2018)

The winner of the 2019 prize will be announced at a ceremony in London on Nov. 20. For more information, visit the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation website. Congratulations and best of luck to all the shortlisted translators!

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2019 National Book Award for Translated Literature Shortlist Announced

It’s October, which means it’s National Book Award Shortlist announcement time, and here’s the second annual list of finalists for the two-year-old National Book Award for Translated Literature! You’ll recall the longlist published last month. Now feast your eyes on the shortlist!

Khaled Khalifa, Death Is Hard Work

Translated from the Arabic by Leri Price

Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers

László Krasznahorkai, Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming

Translated from the Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet

New Directions

Scholastique Mukasonga, The Barefoot Woman

Translated from the French by Jordan Stump

Archipelago Books

Yoko Ogawa, The Memory Police

Translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder

Pantheon Books / Penguin Random House

Pajtim Statovci, Crossing

Translated from the Finnish by David Hackston

Pantheon Books / Penguin Random House

The winners will be announced in a ceremony in New York on Nov. 20. Congratulations and best of luck to all the shortlisted translators!

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2019 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation Longlist Announced

Happy third year of the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation! Once again, the Warwick team has provided us a stellar longlist of translated books by women authors published in the UK or Ireland. Check out the just-announced semi-finalists!

Brother In Ice by Alicia Kopf, translated from Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem (And Other Stories, 2018)
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, translated from Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori (Granta, 2018)
Disoriental by Négar Djavadi, translated from French by Tina Kover (Europa Editions, 2018)
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tocarczuk, translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2018)
Katalin Street by Magda Szabó, translated from Hungarian by Len Rix (Maclehose Press, 2019)
Negative of a Dual Photograph by Azita Ghahremann, translated from Farsi by Maura Dooley with Elhum Shakerifar (Bloodaxe, 2018)
People in the Room by Norah Lange, translated from Spanish by Charlotte Whittle (And Other Stories, 2018)
Picnic in the Storm by Yukiko Motoya, translated from Japanese by Asa Yoneda (Little, Brown Book Group (Corsair), 2018)
Season of the Shadow by Léonora Miano, translated from French by Gila Walker (Seagull Books, 2018)
Shadows on the Tundra by Dalia Grinkevičiūtė, translated from Lithuanian by Delija Valiukenas (Peirene, 2018)
The Years by Annie Ernaux, translated from French by Alison L. Strayer (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2018)
Thick of It by Ulrike Almut Sandig, translated from German by Karen Leeder (Seagull Books, 2018)
Zuleikha by Guzel Yakhina, translated from Russian by Lisa C. Hayden (Oneworld, 2019)

The shortlist will be announced in early November, and the prize itself will be awarded at a ceremony at The Shard in London on Nov. 20. For more information, please visit the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation website. Congratulations to all the longlisted translators!

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

Happy October, everyone! Here’s what’s coming up on the translation scene:

Tuesday, Oct. 1:

Homesick: translator Jennifer Croft presents her new memoir in conversation with Rajesh Parameswaran. More information here. Community Bookstore, 143 7th Ave., 7:00 p.m.

Also Tuesday, Oct. 1:

Fear of Description: translator Mónica de la Torre joins Dan Poppick, Anaïs Duplan, and Christian Schlegel for the launch of Poppick’s book. More information here. Greenlight Bookstore, 686 Fulton St., 7:30 p.m.

Wednesday, Oct. 2:

The 33 1/3 B-Sides: translator Mark Polizzotti joins Will Fulton, Patrick Rivers, Rebecca Wallwork for this book launch. More information here. McNally Jackson Seaport, 4 Fulton St., 7:00 p.m.

Friday, Oct. 4:

Comemadre: translator Heather Cleary is joined by Roque Larraquy to present their new book. More information here. Community Bookstore, 143 7th Ave., 7:00 p.m.

Thursday, Oct. 10 – Saturday Oct. 12:

HERZ SCHMERZ: Translationista makes her stage debut in a dance-play tribute to Robert Walser, a collaboration between John Heginbotham and Maira Kalman, also featuring Maile Okamura, Daniel Pettrow, and David Barlow with live music by Caitlin Sullivan and Pedja Muzijevic. Ticketed event, more information here. Baryshnikov Arts Center, 450 W. 37th St., 7:30 p.m.

Friday, Oct. 11:

The Milk Hours: translator Julia Guez joins John James for the launch of his book, also featuring Joseph Fasano and Monica Ferrell. More information here. Book Culture, 536 W. 112th St., 7:00 p.m.

Sunday, Oct. 13:

A Life Replaced: Launch event for A Life Replaced: Poems with Translations from Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Gandelsman by Olga Livshin, featuring Livshin joined by translators Val Vinokur, Johnny Lorenz, and Ahmad Al-Ashqar. More information here. KGB Bar, 85 E. 4th St., 7:00 p.m.

Monday, Oct. 14:

Native Voices: translator Magda Bogin joins CMarie Furman for the launch of Furman’s anthology Native Voices: Indigenous American Craft, Poetry and Conversations. More information here. McNally Jackson, 52 Prince St., 7:00 p.m.

Thursday, Oct. 17:

Fantasy Island: Launch event for Fantasy Island: Colonialism, Exploitation, and the Betrayal of Puerto Rico featuring translator Carina del Valle Schorske in conversation with the book’s author, Ed Morales. More information here. Book Culture, 536 W. 112th St., 7:00 p.m.

Friday, Oct. 18:

Missing Persons, Animals, and Artists: translator Daniel Shapiro joins Roberto Ransom for the launch of their book. More information here. McNally Jackson, 52 Prince St., 7:00 p.m.

Saturday, Oct. 19:

Us & Them: the autumn 2019 installment of this reading series of translators reading translations along with their own writing will feature Carina del Valle Schorske reading translations of Xavier Valcárcel (Puerto Rico), Olena Jennings reading translations of Iryna Shuvalova (Ukraine), Pablo Ingberg, who will be visiting from Argentina, reading English to Spanish translations of limericks by James Joyce (Ireland), and Aiko Masubuchi, who will be screening excerpts from her work with Japanese to English Subtitles for film. More information here. Molasses Books, 70 Hart St, Brooklyn, 8:00 p.m.

Wednesday, Oct. 23:

The Scent of Buenos Aires: translator Maureen Shaughnessy joins Lina Meruane for the launch of the new novel by Hebe Uhart translated by Shaughnessy. More information here. McNally Jackson, 52 Prince St., 7:00 p.m.

 

 

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2019 National Book Award for Translated Literature Longlist Announced

This is the second year of the new National Book Award for Translated Literature, and the semi-finalists have just been announced! I’m delighted to see such a strong list of books I immediately want to read my way through. This year’s panel of judges include Keith Gessen, Elisabeth Jaquette, Katie Kitamura, Idra Novey (Chair), and Shuchi Saraswat. The $10,000 purse for this prestigious award is evenly split between author and translator.

Here’s the 2019 longlist:

Naja Marie Aidt, When Death Takes Something from You Give It Back: Carl’s Book

Translated from Danish by Denise Newman

Coffee House Press

Eliane Brum, The Collector of Leftover Souls: Field Notes on Brazil’s Everyday Insurrections

Translated from Portuguese by Diane Grosklaus Whitty

Graywolf Press

Nona Fernández, Space Invaders

Translated from Spanish by Natasha Wimmer

Graywolf Press

Vigdis Hjorth, Will and Testament

Translated from Norwegian by Charlotte Barslund

Verso Fiction / Verso Books

Khaled Khalifa, Death is Hard Work

Translated from Arabic by Leri Price

Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers

László Krasznahorkai, Baron Wenckheim’s Homecoming

Translated from Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet

New Directions

Scholastique Mukasonga, The Barefoot Woman

Translated from French by Jordan Stump

Archipelago Books

Yoko Ogawa, The Memory Police

Translated from Japanese by Stephen Snyder

Pantheon Books / Penguin Random House

Pajtim Statovci, Crossing

Translated from Finnish by David Hackston

Pantheon Books / Penguin Random House

Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

Riverhead Books / Penguin Random House

More information on the books can be found on the National Book Foundation website. The finalists will be announced on Oct. 8. Congratulations to all the longlisted translators!

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2019 Ottaway Award Announced

Edith Grossman photographed by
Sarah Timmer Harvey in June 2019 for an interview in Asymptote

I couldn’t be more delighted to hear that the 2019 James H. Ottaway, Jr. Award for the Promotion of International Literature will go to translation luminary Edith Grossman. The news was announced this morning by Words Without Borders, which presents the annual award. 2019 marks the first year the prize will go to a translator and not an editor/publisher, and what a splendid choice of a translator to honor! Edith Grossman, who is also the author of the important book Why Translation Matters, is probably best known for her widely celebrated translation of Cervantes’s Don Quixote. But she has translated many many other writers and books as well, including (not a complete list) Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Sor Juana, Julián Ríos, and Álvaro Mutis. She has been a pathbreaker in so many ways. Among her many other awards, in 2006 she became the first woman translator to receive the prestigious Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation awarded by PEN America. She will be presented with the Ottaway Award at the Words Without Borders annual gala on Oct. 29, 2019. Big congratulations, Edie!

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Climbing the Mountain

So today I started working on my new translation of Thomas Mann’s classic novel The Magic Mountain (Der Zauberberg) as a fellow at the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, where I feel very lucky to be able to spend the year. This book is certainly going to be a challenge. Here’s my first draft of the opening sentence, which I worked on for a while today in between the various phases of getting settled into the new workspace. Now I see that I left out a “so to speak” in this draft (always crucial to triple-check one’s work!), but I’ll post it uncorrected, since it’s a snapshot of a very early moment in this project. What’s the difference between “encrust” and “incrust”? The Oxford English Dictionary seems to like both equally; the current Webster’s flags “encrust” as the more common usage, but according to my Webster’s New International Dictionary 2nd edition (my copy was printed in 1951, but the edition dates from 1934), it’s the other way around, with “encrust” the slightly less common variant.

Today I also learned from Michael Neumann, who’s written an extensive commentary to Mann’s novel, that the composition of MM was far less straightforward than I’d realized. Mann, who’d published his first magnum opus (Buddenbrooks) at age 25, in 1901, was having a hard time writing something else of comparable weight to follow it up with. He kept starting projects with high hopes that invariably turned out to be slighter than he’d expected, or picking things up and putting them down again. In 1912, at the age of 37 (still with no second great novel, gah!), he interrupted his work on the novella Death in Venice (an ambitious work, if short) because his wife had been stricken with a pulmonary infection and had to spend time at the spa in Davos to recuperate. (U.S. readers, please be advised that a spa in Europe isn’t where you get a pedicure and facial, it’s a serious health resort where you go for some medicinal R&R, sometimes drinking and/or soaking in pungent mineral waters from a local spring, and sometimes receiving light medical care. Spas can be tony.) Soaking up this atmosphere gave Mann the idea for a sort of companion-piece to Death in Venice, one that would be comical and grotesque where the former was solemn (“a Satyr play to accompany the novelistic tragedy of debasement,” in which the “fascination with death, the triumph of the utmost disorder over a life based on and dedicated to order” would be “reduced to the comical”). But first he had to hurry up and finish DOV, the first part of which was already being typeset (gah!). Oh, and he was also procrastinating working on a book about a confidence-man named Felix Krull that had been seriously in progress since 1910. Maybe you’re getting the idea why Mann would later say, “A writer is a person who has a particularly hard time writing.”

By July 1913 (still procrastinating Krull), he had sat down to quickly write the funny little story set in Davos. Guess how that went. Please please please let my translation of the novel go more quickly!

Since I can imagine that I’ll want to post a few more things about this 1000-page (at least in German) project before it’s done, I’m going to begin a practice I should have started for this blog nine years ago: tagging my posts. So if, in the future, you want to search for more recent posts about my attempt to Climb This Mountain, look for the tags MM and Magic Mountain.

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2019 National Translation Award Longlists Announced

It’s longlist time for the National Translation Awards (NTA) given out each year by the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA). Awards are given in two categories: poetry and prose. The NTA is a storied award with a long history – it’s now legally old enough to drink. And it’s certainly an honor to be a semifinalist for a prize judged by one’s translator peers (including at least one who’ll take a look at the original text as well). Each winning translator receives a $2,500 purse.

This year’s judges are Bonnie Huie, Charlotte Mandell, and Jeffrey Zuckerman (prose) and Anna Deeny Morales, Cole Heinowitz, and Sholeh Wolpe (poetry). Shortlists are due out in late September, with the prize itself announced at the ALTA conference in Rochester, NY Nov. 7-10, 2019.

And here are the lists:

The 2019 NTA Longlist in Prose (in alphabetical order by title):



Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl

by Uwe Johnson

translated from the German by Damion Searls

(New York Review Books)

Berlin Alexanderplatz

by Alfred Döblin

translated from the German by Michael Hofmann

(New York Review Books)

Brother in Ice

by Alicia Kopf

translated from the Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem

(And Other Stories)

Collected Stories

by Bruno Schulz

translated from the Polish by Madeline G. Levine

(Northwestern University Press)

Comemadre

by Roque Larraquy

translated from the Spanish by Heather Cleary

(Coffee House Press)

The Houseguest 

by Amparo Davila

translated from the Spanish by Audrey Harris and Matthew Gleeson

(New Directions)

In Black and White

by Jun’ichiro Tanizaki

translated from the Japanese by Phyllis I. Lyons

(Columbia University Press)

Lost Time

by Józef Czapski

translated from the French by Eric Karpeles

(New York Review Books)

The Naked Woman

by Armonía Somers

translated from the Spanish by Kit Maude

(The Feminist Press)

Öraefi: The Wasteland

by Ófeigur Sigurdsson

translated from the Icelandic by Lytton Smith

(Deep Vellum Publishing)

The Taiga Syndrome

by Cristina Rivera Garza

translated from the Spanish by Suzanne Jill Levine and Aviva Kana

(Dorothy, a publishing project & And Other Stories, forthcoming)

What’s Left of the Night

by Ersi Sotiropoulos

translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich

(New Vessel Press)

 

The 2019 NTA Longlist in Poetry (in alphabetical order by title):

Architecture of Dispersed Life: Selected Poems

by Pablo de Rokha

translated from the Spanish by Urayoán Noel

(Shearsman Books)

The Color of Rivers

by Juana Castro

translated from the Spanish by Ana Valverde Osan

(Diálogos)

The Complete Cold Mountain: Poems of the Legendary Hermit Hanshan

by Hanshan

translated from the Chinese by Kazuaki Tanahashi and Peter Levitt

(Shambhala Publications)

Countersong to Walt Whitman

by Pedro Mir

translated from the Spanish by Jonathan Cohen and Donald D. Walsh

(Peepal Tree Press)

Decals

by Oliverio Girondo

translated from the Spanish by Rachel Galvin and Harris Feinsod

(Open Letter Books)

The Future Has an Appointment with the Dawn

by Tanella Boni

translated from the French by Todd Fredeson

(University of Nebraska Press)

Negative Space

by Luljeta Lleshanaku

translated from the Albanian by Ani Gjika

(New Directions)

Pan Tadeusz: The Last Foray in Lithuania

by Adam Mickiewicz

translated from the Polish by Bill Johnston

(Archipelago Books)

The Popul Vuh

by Anonymous

translated from the K’iche’ by Michael Bazzett

(Milkweed Editions)

Robert the Devil

by Anonymous

translated from the French by Samuel N. Rosenberg

(Penn State University Press)

Through Naked Branches: Selected Poems of Tarjei Vesaas

by Tarjei Vesaas

translated from the Norwegian by Roger Greenwald

(Black Widow Press)

War Songs

by Antarah ibn Shaddad

translated from the Arabic by James E. Montgomery with Richard Sieburth

(Library of Arabic Literature/NYU Press)

 

Congratulations to all the semifinalists! More information about each of the books, authors, and translators, as well as the ALTA Conference, can be found on the ALTA blog.

 

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