Susan Bernofsky's Blog, page 35

Apply Now to Become a 2016 ALTA Fellow

Heads-up, emerging translators! It’s time to send in your application for one of the coveted $1000 travel fellowships to attend the American Literary Translators Association conference, one of the best things you can do to jump-start your career. Typically 4-5 fellowships are granted each year, and this year an additional one has been added, the Peter K. Jansen Memorial Travel Fellowship (earmarked for an emerging translator of color and/or a translator working from a diaspora or stateless language), so the odds just went up. Want to read about past fellows? Click here. This year’s conference, ALTA39: Translation & Crossings, will be held in Oakland, CA from Oct. 6-9, 2016.

The deadline to apply to become a 2016 ALTA Fellow is coming right up: April 15, 2015, so check out the guidelines and get your applications in!

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CLMP Shortlists Four Translated Books for 2016 Firecracker Awards

The Firecracker Awards for Independent Literary Publishing (formerly known as the Firecracker Alternative Book Award) are given out by the Community of Literary Magazine and Presses to celebrate excellence in literature published by independents of various stripes, including self-published books. Since these guys know excellence when they see it, I’m not surprised to see translated works of literature included in their lists – this year their fiction list contains 40% translated literature, a cheering percentage that certainly supports my belief that foreign-language literature in strong translations are an important part of the literary landscape in this country.

Here are the four books that made the 10-book shortlist:

Home by Leila S. Chudori, translated from the Indonesian by John McGlynn (Deep Vellum Publishing)

The Sleep of the Righteous by Wolfgang Hilbig, translated from the German by Isabel Fargo Cole (Two Lines Press)

The Things We Don’t Do by Andrés Neuman, translated from the the Spanish by Nick Caistor & Lorenza Garcia (Open Letter Books)

Tram 83 by Fiston Mwanza Mujila translated from the French by Roland Glasser (Deep Vellum Publishing)

Congratulations to translators John McGlynn, Isabel Fargo Cole, Nick Caistor, Lorenza Garcia, and Roland Glasser! Glad to see Deep Vellum represented with two books, as the most recently founded of these presses, all of which specialize in literature in translation.

You’ll find the complete Fiction shortlist as well as the finalists in all the other Firecracker categories on the CLMP website.

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Best Translated Book Award 2016 Poetry Longlist

And here’s the longlist for the 2016 BTBA in Poetry:

A Science Not for the Earth: Selected Poems and Letters by Yevgeny Baratynsky, translated from the Russian by Rawley Grau (Russia, Ugly Duckling)

Minute-Operas by Frédéric Forte, translated from the French by Daniel Levin Becker, Ian Monk, Michelle Noteboom, and Jean-Jacques Poucel (France, Burning Deck)

Rilke Shake by Angélica Freitas, translated from the Portuguese by Hilary Kaplan (Brazil, Phoneme Media)

Wild Words: Four Tamil Poets, edited and translated from the Tamil by Lakshmi Holmström (India, HarperCollins India)

Empty Chairs: Selected Poems by Liu Xia, translated from the Chinese by Ming Di and Jennifer Stern (China, Graywolf)

Load Poems Like Guns: Women’s Poetry from Herat, Afghanistan, edited and translated from the Persian by Farzana Marie (Afghanistan, Holy Cow! Press)

Silvina Ocampo by Silvina Ocampo, translated from the Spanish by Jason Weiss (Argentina, NYRB)

The Black Flower and Other Zapotec Poems by Natalia Toledo, translated from the Spanish and Isthmus Zapotec by Clare Sullivan (Mexico, Phoneme Media)

The Nomads, My Brothers, Go Out to Drink from the Big Dipper by Abdourahman A. Waberi, translated from the French by Nancy Naomi Carlson (Djibouti, Seagull Books)

Sea Summit by Yi Lu, translated from the Chinese by Fiona Sze-Lorrain (China, Milkweed)

The jury for this one includes Jarrod Annis, Katrine Øgaard Jensen, Tess Lewis, Becka McKay, and Deborah Smith. As with the BTBA in Fiction, the shortlist will be published on April 19, and the winner will be announced on May 4.

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Best Translated Book Award 2016 Fiction Longlist

 It’s longlist time! The Best Translated Book Award team has just announced this year’s fiction longlist, i.e. 25 recommended titles for your reading pleasure. Serving on this year’s jury are Amanda Bullock, Heather Cleary, Kevin Elliott, Kate Garber, Jason Grunebaum, Mark Haber, Stacey Knecht, and P.T. Smith.

Here are this year’s longlisted books:

A General Theory of Oblivion by José Eduardo Agualusa, translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn (Angola, Archipelago Books)

Arvida by Samuel Archibald, translated from the French by Donald Winkler (Canada, Biblioasis)

Nowhere to Be Found by Bae Suah, translated from the Korean by Sora Kim-Russell (South Korea, AmazonCrossing)

The Meursault Investigation by Kamel Daoud, translated from the French by John Cullen (Algeria, Other Press)

French Perfume by Amir Tag Elsir, translated from the Arabic by William M. Hutchins (Sudan, Antibookclub)

The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein (Italy, Europa Editions)

Sphinx by Anne Garréta, translated from the French by Emma Ramadan (France, Deep Vellum)

The Physics of Sorrow by Georgi Gospodinov, translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel (Bulgaria, Open Letter)

Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera, translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman (Mexico, And Other Stories)

The Sleep of the Righteous by Wolfgang Hilbig, translated from the German by Isabel Fargo Cole (Germany, Two Lines Press)

Moods by Yoel Hoffmann, translated from the Hebrew by Peter Cole (Israel, New Directions)

Beauty Is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan, translated from the Indonesian by Annie Tucker (Indonesia, New Directions)

The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector, translated from the Portuguese by Katrina Dodson (Brazil, New Directions)

The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli, translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney (Mexico, Coffee House Press)

Tram 83 by Fiston Mwanza Mujila, translated from the French by Roland Glasser (Democratic Republic of the Congo, Deep Vellum)

The Body Where I Was Born by Guadalupe Nettel, translated from the Spanish by J. T. Lichtenstein (Mexico, Seven Stories Press)

The Things We Don’t Do by Andrés Neuman, translated from the Spanish by Nick Caistor and Lorenza Garcia (Argentina, Open Letter)

I Refuse by Per Petterson, translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett (Norway, Graywolf Press)

War, So Much War by Mercè Rodoreda, translated from the Catalan by Maruxa Relaño and Martha Tennent (Spain, Open Letter)

One Out of Two by Daniel Sada, translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver (Mexico, Graywolf Press)

Berlin by Aleš Šteger, translated from the Slovene by Brian Henry, Forrest Gander, and Aljaž Kovac (Slovenia, Counterpath)

The Big Green Tent by Ludmila Ulitskaya, translated from the Russian by Polly Gannon (Russia, FSG)

Murder Most Serene by Gabrielle Wittkop, translated from the French by Louise Rogers Lalaurie (France, Wakefield Press)

The Four Books by Yan Lianke, translated from the Chinese by Carlos Rojas (China, Grove Press)

Mirages of the Mind by Mushtaq Ahmed Yousufi, translated from the Urdu by Matt Reeck and Aftab Ahmad (India, New Directions)

Watch for a shortlist on April 19. The winners of both BTBA prizes (fiction and poetry) will be announced on May 4.

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Translation Panels at AWP 2016

As readers of this blog surely know, the American Literary Translators Association is now a literary partner of Associated Writing Programs and is sponsoring several translation-themed events at this year’s AWP conference in Los Angeles next weekend as well as hosting the 2nd annual ALTA Bookfair Bingo – pick up a bingo sheet at the ALTA booth in the publishers exhibit area and you might go home the lucky winner of a bag of 24 great new translated books. In between playing, you might want to attend some panels. If you’re looking for translation panels in particular, you’re in luck – there are 39 (thirty-nine!) of them to choose from this year, and for your convenience, they’ve all been collected on the ALTA blog. You might easily go to AWP this year and attend only panels in which questions of translation are centrally featured. Click here for your handy list of AWP translation panels for 2016.

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Translation on Tap in NYC, April 1 – 15, 2016

No fooling, here’s what April has in store:

Tuesday, April 5:

Cervantes 400: A Celebration, featuring Edith Grossman, the esteemed translator of (among many other things) Cervantes’s Don Quixote and the forthcoming Novelas ejemplares, talking about Cervantes along with a handful of other experts, and Translationista will be participating as well (with a brief talk on the 18th century German translations of the Quixote), as will Juan José Herrera, the Consul of Spain,  Jesús R. Velasco, Julie Crawford, Seth Kimmel, and others. More information here. Columbia University, Casa Hispánica, Rm. 201, 612 W. 112th St., 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

 

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Translation on Tap in NYC, March 16 – 31, 2016

And here’s what the second half of March has to offer:

Thursday, March 17:

A gathering of translators celebrating the appearance of two new works by Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano: Chris Clark, Mark Polizzotti, and Damion Searls comparing notes about their translations of his work. More information here. Community Bookstore, 143 7th Ave., Brooklyn, 7:00 p.m.

Monday, March 21:

Translator Emma Ramadan, who just edited Words without Borders’s new issue on Moroccan writing (after spending a year in Morocco on a Fulbright) will be talking literature with one of those authors, Fouad Laroui, moderated by Adam Shatz. More information here. CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave., Skylight Room (Rm. 9100), 6:30 p.m.

Thursday, March 24:

Launch event for Scattering the Dark, a collection of work by 31 female Polish poets, featuring translator Karen Kovacik, who edited the collection and translated most of it, joined by poets Ewa Chrusciel, Krystyna Dabrowska, Julia Fiedorczuk, Agnieszka Mirahina and Izabela Morska. More information here. The Landing at Industry City, 220 36th St., Bldg. 2, Brooklyn, 7:00 p.m.

Wednesday, March 30:

City Lights Pocket Poets: Translators Jonathan Cohen and Ammiel Alcalay will be among the robust lineup of readers celebrating the 60th anniversary of City Lights, founded by Lawrence Ferlinghetti in 1955. More information here. The Poetry Project, St. Mark’s Church, 131 E. 10th St., 8:00 p.m.

Also Wednesday, March 30:

Launch event for Lullaby for a Hanged Man: Translator Julia Sherwood speaks with author Hubert Klimko-Dobrzaniecki, moderated by translator Sean Bye of the Polish Cultural Institute. More information here. Word Books, 126 Franklin St., Brooklyn, 7:00 p.m.

Thursday, March 31:

The Lengevitch of Uljana Wolf: Literature and Migration: Translator/poet Uljana Wolf reads and discusses with her translator into English, translator/poet Sophie Seita. More information here. Goethe-Institut New York, 30 Irving Place, 6:30 p.m.

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Apply Now for a Peter K. Jansen Memorial Travel Fellowship to Attend ALTA

I used to see Peter Jansen every so often at Goethe Institut events at the University of Chicago and sometimes also at ALTA – a kind and incredibly knowledgable professor emeritus who translated from German (scholarly books, but also various works by Thomas Bernhard that he co-translated with Kenneth J. Northcott, such as the three plays collected in Histrionics, and Three Novellas). He taught until his retirement at the University of Chicago and passed away suddenly in 2007. Now a $1000 yearly travel fellowship has been established in his name to help an emerging translator of color or a translator working from a diaspora or stateless language to attend the ALTA conference. It’s a fitting tribute. The next conference, ALTA39: Translation & Crossings, will be held in Oakland, CA from Oct. 6-9, 2016. For more information and to submit an application, visit the ALTA website. All applications must be received by April 8, 2016. Spread the word!

 

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2016 Man Booker International Longlist Announced

The new International Man Booker International Prize is a big deal for literary translators, with the enormous £50,000 purse equally split between author and translator of the winning book. With the huge publicity inevitably surrounding such a major award, it is certain to bring welcome attention to literature in translation, a great boon to us and support of our work. Many of us have been thinking and writing these days about the lack of gender balance among translated authors – most recently Elisabeth Jaquette, who discovered an even worse-than-average gender disparity in translated works of Arabic literature. So it’s hard not to notice that the Man Booker International longlist announced today disappointedly perpetuates the gender imbalance so often observed: only 4 of the 13 authors on it are women. As Katy Derbyshire puts it in this morning’s Guardian, “Translated novels by female writers are the palomino unicorns of the publishing world.” So I was disappointed by this longlist. At the same time, I was thrilled to see the geographical diversity represented in it (that’s also been an issue historically, with European books dominating the field), and to see books on it brought to us by translators whose work I deeply admire.

So here it is, the 2016 Man Booker International longlist:

A General Theory of Oblivion by José Eduardo Agualusa (Angola), translated by Daniel Hahn and published by Harvill Secker.

The Story of the Lost Child by Elena Ferrante (Italy), translated by Ann Goldstein and published by Europa Editions.

The Vegetarian by Han Kang (South Korea), translated by Deborah Smith and published by Portobello Books.

Mend the Living by Maylis de Kerangal (France), translated by Jessica Moore and published by Maclehose Press.

Man Tiger by Eka Kurniawan (Indonesia), translated by Labodalih Sembiring and published by Verso Books.

The Four Books by Yan Lianke (China), translated by Carlos Rojas and published by Chatto & Windus.

Tram 83 by Fiston Mwanza Mujila (Democratic Republic of Congo/Austria), translated by Roland Glasser and published by Jacaranda.

A Cup of Rage by Raduan Nassar (Brazil), translated by Stefan Tobler and published by Penguin Modern Classics

Ladivine by Marie NDiaye (France), translated by Jordan Stump and published Maclehose Press.

Death by Water by Kenzaburō Ōe (Japan), translated by Deborah Boliner Boem (Atlantic Books)

White Hunger by Aki Ollikainen (Finland), translated by Emily Jeremiah & Fleur Jeremiah and published by Peirene Press.

A Strangeness in My Mind by Orhan Pamuk (Turkey), translated by Ekin Oklap and published by Faber & Faber

A Whole Life by Robert Seethaler (Austria), translated by Charlotte Collins and published by Picador.

For details about the longlisted books, see the Man Booker International website.

The Man Booker International is exceptional in that authors and translators who make the cut for the shortlist are also financially rewarded – to the tune of £1,000, a very nice consolation prize for the runners-up. That six-book list (let’s hope it has some women on it!) will be announced on April 14, with the grand announcement of the prize itself on May 16.

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2016 PEN Translation Awards Announced

PEN America (which appears to be the new name of the PEN American Center, not to be confused with the California-based PEN USA) has just announced the winners of its 2016 translation awards.

I’m delighted to see that the PEN Translation Prize ($3,000, for a book-length translation of prose into English published in 2015) has gone to a newcomer on the scene whose first book just happened to be the enormous and difficult The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector (translated from the Portuguese and published by New Directions). Big congratulations, Katrina Dodson! The judges for this year’s prize were Elisabeth Jaquette, Aviya Kushner, Ronald Meyer, Sara Nović, & Jeffrey Zuckerman. You can read an excerpt online here.

The PEN Award for Poetry in Translation ($3,000, for a book-length translation of poetry into English published in 2015), judged this year by Urayoán Noel, has gone to Sawako Nakayasu for The Collected Poems of Chika Sagawa, translated from the Japanese and published by Canarium Books. I’ve been hearing great things about this book too. Excerpt here.

Finally, the PEN/Edward and Lily Tuck Award for Paraguayan Literature. This is a $3000 award that goes one year to a living author of a major work of Paraguayan literature, and to a translator the next. This year it’s the author’s turn, and the prize, judged by Ezra E. Fitz, Amalia Gladhart, and Mark Weiss, goes to Doce Lunas Llenas for Poesias sobre la Divina Energia Femenina. Next year it’ll be a translator’s turn for this one again.

For a complete list of PEN’s 2016 literary awards, visit the PEN website.

Big congratulations to this year’s honorees!

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