Susan Bernofsky's Blog, page 32

Gregory Rabassa, Farewell

I was heartbroken to learn this evening of the death of Gregory Rabassa (1922 – 2016), the beloved elder statesman of the New York translation community whose impish presence and endlessly flowing wisecracks belied the decades of steadfast labor by means of which he filled all our bookshelves with dozens of great works by Spanish-language authors that became key inspirational texts in the English-language literary canon. He was 94 years old. Beginning with his very first translation, Julio Cortázar’s novel Hopscotch in 1966, and his second, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude in 1970, he staked out literary turf as a translator that soon became internationally renowned as the Latin American “Boom” – some of the greats he translated included Jorge Luis Borges, Mario Vargas Llosa, Machado de Assis, Clarice Lispector, José Lezama Lima, António Lobo Antunes, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Jorge Amado, and more. Rabassa taught for years in the City University of New York system, both at Queens College and the Graduate Center, where some incredibly lucky students got to take his translation classes. When I interviewed him three years ago for The Rumpus, he told me how he liked to assign his students playful exercises such as making them chain-translate texts via several successive languages so as to be able to analyze in the end what words remained intact after this telephone game and why. It must have been so much fun as well as instructive to take his classes. I’m just glad I was fortunate enough to hear him speak several times, to intersect with him at conferences (you could always tell where he was – it was always in the middle of a little group of people convulsed with laughter), and to interview him. I know that a great deal will be written about him over the next days and weeks, and I look forward to reading all these remembrances. Meanwhile a great way to learn about his fascinating life is to read his 2005 memoir If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Dyscontents, and you won’t want to miss the part about him serving as a cryptographer in WWII – surely outstanding preparation for a future translator – nor his really interesting thoughts about, for example, how the sounds of a language can influence the style of translations from that language. “He’s the godfather of us all,” Edith Grossman (herself one of the most revered translators alive) told the Associated Press earlier today. If there’s a translators’ heaven, you can be sure that Constance Garnett, Ralph Manheim, Michael Henry Heim, and William Weaver have saved a seat at the banquet table for him. I’m sure they’ll have a lot to talk about.

Meanwhile if you’d like to take a look at the interview I did with him, you can find it on the website of the The Rumpus. Always charming, always enlightening, and mindbogglingly prolific – he will be missed.

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2016 Dublin International Literary Award Announced

Akhil Sharma flanked by Dublin Fire Brigade & Dublin City’s Sword & Mace

It was a thrill to be shortlisted this spring for the 2016 Dublin International Literary Award together with Jenny Erpenbeck for my translation of her novel The End of Days (a really nice shortlist). Now I’m delighted to announce that the award – which was presented last night at a ceremony in Dublin featuring the city’s fire brigade (!), Sword & Mace (!!), and Lord Mayor/Ardmhéara, Críona Ni Dhálaigh – has gone to Akhil Sharma for his novel Family Life. This is a very special prize in that nominations are sent in from selected libraries from around the world, so presumably have a very direct link to what people actually like to read, and comes with a hefty £100,000 purse (one-quarter of which goes to the translator in the case of a translated book). Four of the 10 books on this year’s long-list were translations, which I was glad to see. Hope to see even more translations on the list next year, and you know I’ll be rooting for a translated book to win the prize again soon. The prize has gone to a translated book 8 out of the 21 times it’s been awarded, which factors out to 38% – not so bad, I suppose, but given all the attention foreign-language literature in English translation has been getting in recent years, surely we can see that figure improved on? Meanwhile, congratulations to Akhil Sharma on this splendid award!

 

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2016 French-American Foundation Translation Prize Winners Announced

In a ceremony on June 7, the French-American Foundation announced the winners of its 2016 Translation Prize in Fiction and Nonfiction. The winner in each category receives a $10,000 award courtesy of the Florence Gould Foundation. There were strong shortlists, and this year’s winners are:

In Fiction:

Christine Donougher for her translation of Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, Penguin Classics / Penguin Random House

In Nonfiction the prize was split between two contenders:

Malcolm DeBevoise for his translation of Birth of a Theoremby Cédric Villani, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Steven Rendall for his translation of Bonaparte: 1769-1802 by Patrice Gueniffy, Harvard University Press

Interviews with all the finalists and information about the books can be found on the website of the French-American Foundation.

Congratulations!

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Join the New Association for Translation Studies in Africa!

Just when you, I, and others were thinking it was about time for Translation World to be paying more attention to the literature of the African diaspora (not to mention Africa itself), this press release comes in:

New Organization: Association for Translation Studies in Africa (ATSA)

During the Third Summer School for Translation Studies in Africa in Lusaka in 2014, participants suggested the founding of an association for translation studies with an African agenda. After much deliberation, we are now at the point where we want to announce our intent to found such an association. We intend to have a founding meeting during the Fourth Summer School for Translation Studies in Nairobi between 29 August and 1 September 2016. In the meantime, the to-be-founded association will be run by a steering committee, with the official leadership being elected at the first meeting.

With this communication, we invite scholars, students and practitioners who want to associate themselves with translation studies in Africa to join this association. We conceptualise translation studies as wide as possible, including interpreting, intercultural communication, intersemiotic translation, multimodal communication, sociologies of translation and all other forms of rewriting and recreation.

Please visit our web site at https://atranslationstudiesafrica.wordpress.com/ where you will find application forms, the names of the steering committee, a suggested constitution and other relevant information.

If you’d like to know more, the contact person for queries is Kobus Marais.

I’m so delighted to see that this is happening, and hope that the new organization will successfully embrace literary translation practitioners as well as those who are theorizing and studying the translation and transmission of African and African diaspora literature. (Oftentimes the same people engage in both spheres of activity, anyhow.) I hope a journal results – on paper or online – and very much look forward to following the development of this project. I just signed up to become a member, and hope that many of you will do the same.

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Translation on Tap in NYC, June 1 – 30, 2016

This June I’m off to Germany to meet with Jenny Erpenbeck and 8 or 9 other translators of her new novel into various languages. I’m hoping we’ll go through it page by page. Should be interesting! But if you’re going to be around in NYC, you might want to go to a translation event or two. So far, I’ve just got a couple on the books, but will add more as I hear of them. If all else fails, maybe you’ll get some sunshine instead and take a nice translated book to Coney Island with you?

Tuesday, June 7

Prize ceremony, Translation Prize of the French-American Foundation (winner TBA), with a keynote address by Lydia Davis, reservations required, more information here. The Century Association, 7 W. 43rd St., 6:00 – 9:00 p.m.

Thursday, June 9:

Prize ceremony for the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translation Prize (to Daniel Bowles) and the Gutekunst Prize (to Laura Caton), reservations required, more information here. Goethe-Institut, 30 Irving Place, 7:00 p.m.

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2016 Shortlists Announced, French-American Foundation Translation Prize

The French-American Foundation has announced the 2016 shortlist for its Translation Prize in Fiction and Nonfiction. The winner in each category receives a  $10,000 cash prize, funded by the Florence Gould Foundation. Translations are judged by a jury comprised of Linda Asher, David Bellos, Linda Coverdale, Emmanuelle Ertel, and Lorin Stein.

Here are this year’s finalists in Fiction:

Emily Boyce for her translation of Nagasaki by Eric Faye, Gallic Books

John Cullen for his translation of The Meursault Investigation by Kamel Daoud, Other Press

Christine Donougher for her translation of Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, Penguin Classics / Penguin Random House

Julian Evans for his translation of The Foundling’s War by Michel Déon, Gallic Books

Frank Wynne for his translation of The Great Swindle by Pierre Lemaitre, Quercus / MacLehose Press

Here are this year’s finalists in Nonfiction:

David Broder and Catherine Romatowski for their translation of Good Neighbors: Gentrifying Diversity in Boston’s South End by Sylvie Tissot, Verso Books

Malcolm DeBevoise for his translation of Birth of a Theorem by Cédric Villani, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Bruce Fink for his translation of Transference: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book VIII by Jacques Lacan, Polity Press

François Raffoul and David Pettigrew for their translation of Heidegger in France by Dominique Janicaud, Indiana University Press

Steven Rendall for his translation of Bonaparte: 1769-1802 by Patrice Gueniffy, Harvard University Press

Interviews with all the finalists and information about the books can be found on the website of the French-American Foundation.

The winners in both categories will be announced at a ceremony on June 7, RSVP required, details here. Best of luck to all!

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2016 Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize and Gutekunst Prize Announced

Every year the Goethe Institut awards two prizes to translators from the German, one, the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize, a prestigious award with a $10,000 purse that honors a master translator, and one, the Gutekunst Prize for Emerging Translators, for a relative newcomer (applicants must be under 35) that is designed to pave the way to a promising career and comes with a $2500 purse. For the Gutekunst competition, all applicants submit a translation of the same work for easy comparison.

This year’s Wolff Prize has gone to Daniel Bowles for his translation of Christian Kracht’s Imperium published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2015.

This year’s Gutekunst Prize has gone to Laura Caton. The book used for the Gutekunst sample this year was Drohnenland (Drone State) by Tom Hillenbrand (Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2014).

Both prizes will be awarded at a ceremony at the Goethe-Institut at 30 Irving Place on Thursday, June 9 at 7:00 p.m., reservations required. For more information about these prizes and their recipients, visit the website of the Goethe-Institut.

Congratulations to both prizewinning translators!

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Apply Now for the 2017 Austrian Cultural Forum Translation Prize

The Austrian Cultural Forum New York is soliciting submissions for the 2017 ACFNY Translation Prize, a $5000 award for a translation into English of a book-length work of poetry or prose by an Austrian writer published in the original German after 1945. This is the second time the prize is being awarded (here’s who won it in 2015) after a hiatus of several years, suggesting that the competition is now settling into a once-every-two-years rhythm. Applications (including a sample translation of approximately 4000 words) are due by October 10, 2016. For more information and application instructions, see the website of the Austrian Cultural Forum New York.

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2016 Firecracker Award in Fiction Goes to a Translated Book

The Firecracker Awards honor independently published and self-published literature, so it’s no surprise that lots of translated books wound up on their shortlist this year, nor that one of last year’s winners, Marie NDiaye’s Self-Portrait in Green, translated by Jordan Stump (Two Lines Press) was a translation. This year, too, a translation has been honored among the newly announced 2016 honorees: The Things We Don’t Do by Andrés Neuman, translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor & Lorenza Garcia (Open Letter Books). So glad to see a representative of the robust translation sector of independent publishing honored. Congratulations!

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Apply Now for the 2016 Global Humanities Translation Prize

Given all the attention being paid recently to the fact that so much of the international literature that gets translated into English comes from a handful of “top” languages (French, German, Italian, and Spanish generally lead the pack), it’s always great to see initiatives focussed on supporting translations from less represented languages. The latest effort in that direction comes from Northwestern University Press, which has just established the Global Humanities Translation Prize, which comes with a $5000 award and publication of the manuscript in question. Here are the categories in which translators are invited to submit:

Underrepresented and experimental literary voices from marginalized communities
Humanistic scholarship in infrequently translated languages
Important classical texts in non-Western traditions and languages

Complete submission information will soon be made available on the website of Northwest’s Buffett Institute for Global Studies, meanwhile you can read the press release announcing the new prize. My first question when I saw the announcement was whether the $5000 award is meant to be in addition to whatever contract the translator is offered or rather (as I suspect) the full payment for a translation done as a work-for-hire, in which case, depending on the length of the book in question, this is a not particularly well-paid translation gig for anything but a quite short book. If it is indeed as I fear, then this opportunity will probably be of interest primarily to academics and others with better-paid day jobs who have the leisure to take on work they couldn’t pay the rent with, or to first-time translators looking to build their resumes. No doubt the submission information page will contain more details of the terms Northwestern is proposing. And certainly I’m thrilled to see a university press with good visibility taking on the challenge of giving us a broader swath of international writing. The deadline for submissions is Aug. 1, 2016.

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