Susan Bernofsky's Blog, page 4

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

Can it be the summer’s over? Noooooooo! Obviously we’ll need some consolation. So voila, have some translation events. Not the same as the beach, but also pretty good… Here’s what’s on tap:

Sunday, Sept. 1 – Tuesday, Sept. 3

The run of Miracle of the Little Prince continues at Film Forum. (See the Aug. 2019 Translation on Tap listings for details). Ticketed event, various times.

Wednesday, Sept. 4:

An Evening of Poetry: Translators Ian Dreiblatt and Anna Fridlis join Queens Poet Laureate Maria Lisella for a reading and conversation. More information here. Book Culture Long Island City, 26-09 Jackson Ave., Queens, 6:30 p.m.

Monday, Sept. 16:

On Natalia Ginzburg: Translator Minna Proctor joins Vivian Gornick to discuss and read from Ginzburg’s novels The Dry Heart and Happiness, As Such. More information here. 192 Books, 192 10th Ave., 7:00 p.m.

Tuesday, Sept. 17:

Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon: translators Philip Boehm and Michael Scammell present Boehm’s new translation of Koestler’s classic novel. More information here. McNally Jackson books – the new Seaport location! – 4 Fulton St., 7:00 p.m.

Wednesday, Sept. 18:

Four Way Books & Nightboat Books Reading: Translator Julia Guez is joined by Marwa Helal, Cyrée Jarelle Johnson, Fred Schmalz, and Maya Phillips. More information here. McNally Jackson Williamsburg, 76 N. 4th St., Brooklyn 7:00 p.m.

Sunday, Sept. 22:

Brooklyn Book Festival! As of this writing, the festival’s schedule hasn’t been posted yet, so keep an eye on the website for a plethora of events (inevitably including a few translation-themed ones) on the main festival date, as well “Bookend” events held between Sept. 16 -23.

Thursday, Sept. 26:

The Book of Disappearance: Launch event for the novel by Ibtisam Azem also featuring the book’s translator, Sinan Antoon, and Molly Crabapple. More information here. McNally Jackson, 52 Prince St., 7:00 p.m.

Also Thursday, Sept. 26:

Homesick: Launch event for the translator memoir by Man Booker International Prize-winning Jennifer Croft, in conversation with Lauren Goldenberg. More information here. McNally Jackson Books – the new Seaport location! – 4 Fulton St., 7:00 p.m.

Friday, Sept. 27:

Translating Girlhood: Translator Karen Van Dyck is joined by writer/filmmaker Xiaolu Guo to celebrate the publication of Van Dyck’s translation of Margarita Liberaki’s Three Summers. More information here. Book Culture, 536 W. 112th St., 7:00 p.m.

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Top 100 Books by Women Writers in Translation 2019

Women in Translation Month 2019 is drawing to a close, and @Biblibio (otherwise known as the inventor of Women in Translation Month) has just put the cherry on the sundae by releasing a list of the top 100 books by women writers in translation according to the readers of her blog who were invited to nominate their favorite titles via Twitter over the course of the summer. In the end, she reports, nearly 800 unique titles were nominated. Most got only a single vote apiece, but the top 100 are all distinguished by getting between 4 and 26 votes apiece. In case you’re wondering what book was chosen by 26 different followers of the #WomenInTranslation hashtag, it’s My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein – the first book in Ferrante’s Neapolitan tetralogy. I’m Team Ferrante all the way, so am energetically exulting over here. The runner-up (with 24 votes) was another book I’m a huge fan of, Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, translated by Deborah Smith, a book that rose precipitously to fame after being selected as the winner of the 2016 Man Booker International Prize. Han Kang’s book Human Acts (also translated by Smith) was tied for fourth place (along with Magda Szabó’s The Door, translated by Len Rix; Olga Tokarczuk’s 2018 Man Booker International winning Flights, translated by Jennifer Croft; and Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori). In third place was the lovely and spooky Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell. And if you’d like to see the rest of the books on the list, you’ll have to hop over to the Biblibio blog. I don’t want to hear anyone complaining you don’t have anything to read! Get thee to your neighborhood bookstore or library, and dig in!

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2019 Women in Translation Month Discounts

Happy Women in Translation Month 2019, everyone!

As you search for great books to help you celebrate this month, here are some suggestions (and discounts!) from some of the wonderful publishers who bring you great works by women writers in translation. I was excited to see a new novel by Wang Anyi (Fu Ping) on the list (translated by Howard Goldblatt and published by Columbia University Press), as I really loved her book The Song of Everlasting Sorrow that I read a few years ago. So that’s my cover image for this post. But really, would you just look at this delicious cornucopia of books to choose from? Let no one say this month: I don’t have anything to read! And if you want even more suggestions, head over to Twitter and search for #WITMonth for a whole slew of ideas.

This WITMonth Discounts post has become a yearly tradition: a roundup of all the discounts offered by publishers this month in honor of Women in Translation. Please check out their offerings! I’m listing them in the order they reached me and will continue to add new books and discounts to the bottom of this post as they come to my notice, so do check back periodically to keep your book-hungers fed.

Columbia University Press will be offering a 30% discount on featured titles for for Women in Translation Month. Use coupon code WIT2019 at checkout. The Columbia University Press blog will also be featuring articles celebrating translated books by women all month.

Deep Vellum Publishing will be offering a 20% discount off all their titles all month (no code needed). I hear they will also be hosting a giveaway on their website with three popular woman-authored titles, and will be running a WIT Month feature on their website and in their newsletters. They’re also in the middle of a website redesign, so whew! Keep an eye on their site for updates as well as WITMonth features.

New Vessel Press is offering a 40% discount on all their titles until Aug. 5 (act fast!). Use discount code womenintranslation at checkout.

Transit Books is offering 25% off all titles by women in translation all month with the code #WITMONTH. Since its founding in 2015, Transit has particularly excelled at publishing translated titles by women author, constituting a significant chunk of their backlist and recent offerings. Kudos!

Open Letter Books is offering a 40% discount all month on all its books by women authors (and they’re also throwing in all the books translated by women as lagniappe). Use discount code WITMonth at checkout. They’ve also posted links to some great facts and figures on the history of publishing women in translation.

Seven Stories Press is celebrating Women in Translation Month by giving away five bundles of a selection of their translated books by women authors (enter the raffle here). And starting on August 15, they’ll be offering free downloads of A Place to Live and Other Selected Essays of Natalia Ginzburg, translated into English by Lynne Sharon Schwartz.

Watch this space for additional Women in Translation Month offerings (I’ll keep updating this post over the next few days). And please do remember to check out the websites and bloggers giving love to Women in Translation all month and, most importantly, post your own reads with the hashtags #WIT_Month and #readingwomen. Happy reading!

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Women in Translation Month 2019

So it’s almost August, which means that Women in Translation Month will soon be upon us, and I hope you’re already cueing up your excellent reading lists and stuffing your beach bags with gorgeous women-authored translated books to keep your brains happily buzzing throughout the dog days of summer. Please share what you’re reading for the month in the comments below and/or tweet them at @translationista, @translatewomen, and @Read_WIT using the hashtags #womenintranslation and #WITmonth. And if you’d like some reading tips, here’s a great list of 20 recommended books for this year’s WIT Month (with short blurbs on each) from Helen Vassallo of the Translating Women project. I was also excited to discover Rachael Daum’s new blog Bookaccino with nicely caffeinated reviews of translated books by women. You’ll find great reading recommendations there as well. 

So I hope you’ll get reading and have a great time doing so! And if you happen to live in or near New York, you can attend some lovely Women in Translation Month events too (and also one being held on the last day of July, a.k.a. Women in Translation Month Eve). And thanks to the publicity team at Greenlight Books for the great WIT Month 2019 logo.

Wishing you all a lovely month of reading!

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

August is Women in Translation Month! It’s also a great month to go to the beach. But lucky you, if you do wind up spending the month in town, you’ll have some splendid #WIT Month celebrations to go to. Check them out & I’ll probably see you there! (And thanks to the publicity team at Greenlight Books for the great #WIT Month graphic!)

Tuesday, Aug. 6:

Women in Translation Month event #1 sponsored by the PEN America Translation Committee and featuring women translators of women writers: Larissa Kyzer, Nancy Naomi Carlson & Catherine Maigret Kellogg, Elina Alter, Jacqui Cornetta, and Kira Josefsson will read. More information here. Greenlight Books, Prospect Lefferts Gardens Store (632 Flatbush Ave.)‚ 7:30 p.m.

Thursday, Aug. 22:

Women in Translation Month event #2 sponsored by the PEN America Translation Committee and featuring women translators of women writers: Sevinç Türkkan (The Stone Building and Other Places, by Aslı Erdoğan); Ann Goldstein and Jenny McPhee (Neapolitan Chronicles, by Anna Maria Ortese); and Inea Bushnaq (Pearls on a Branch, by Najla Khoury). The event will be moderated by Jenny Wang Medina and Alex Zucker (translator of Czech literature). More information here. McNally-Jackson, 52 Prince St., 7:00 p.m.

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Saying Goodbye to Margot Bettauer Dembo (1928 – 2019)

Margot with Charley, ©Don Mee Choi

I first met Margot Dembo at a workshop for literary translators from the German at the Europäisches Übersetzer-Kollegium in Straelen, Germany early in the new millennium. She immediately drew me in with her kindness and open smile, and we soon discovered we were almost-neighbors; I was working at the time at Bard College, and she spent a lot of time at the farm her family owned (her older son was running things) in Ancramdale, New York. She invited me to visit, and the next thing I knew she was teaching me – a kid from New Orleans – how to cross-country ski. She was already over 70, not that you’d have known it from the vigorous way she conducted her life. I have so many warm memories of dinners with her (and sometimes also her husband Joe, who passed away in 2010) at her house or mine, walks with her irrepressible poodle Charley, and endless conversations about German literature. It was only a few weeks ago that she last called me up to talk through a translation problem – one of those ordinary, everyday German phrases that for no good reason lack a solid English equivalent. So when I got a call from her home number the weekend before last, I was fully expecting another such chat on our favorite topic, and was shocked to hear not her voice on the line but that of her daughter Wendy telling me that Margot had been in a car crash and passed away on July 10; a small family funeral had taken place on July 12. It’s hard to believe she’s gone. I will really miss being able to talk shop (and everything else) with her, and seeing her beautiful smile and warm eyes.

Margot with orchids, ©Dan Perlmutter

Besides being a friend, Margot was the prizewinning translator of over two dozen books, publishing under her full name Margot Bettauer Dembo. She won the 2003 Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize for her translation of Summerhouse, Later, the book of stories by Judith Hermann that kicked off the so-called Fräuleinwunder (“miracle of the young ladies”) in German literature, as a number of mostly young women writers rose to sudden prominence in a context that had been heavily tilted towards writing by men. In Margot’s translation, Hermann’s stories were gorgeous: quirky, nostalgia-tinged dispatches from the inner lives of women negotiating the end of a century and era. Before that, Margot had been awarded the 1994 Goethe-Institut/Berlin Translator’s Prize. Other of her translations include two more books by Judith Hermann, Zsuzsa Bánk’s The Swimmer, Vicki Baum’s Grand Hotel, and works by Robert Gernhardt, Joachim Fest, Ödön von Horvath, Feridun Zaimoglu, and Hermann Kant. She also translated a number of works of history, letters, and memoirs, e.g. for the Jewish Lives series at Northwestern University Press, but also including, for example, Shlomo Perel’s memoir Europa, Europa (for John Wiley & Sons) that was made into a film by Agnieszka Holland. Margot’s most recent gift to the literary world was her translations of the important East German author Anna Seghers for New York Review Books, including Seghers’s classic novels The Seventh Cross and Transit (which also became a quite good film last year, directed by Christian Petzold).

Margot was always one of my very favorite translation colleagues – one who had also become a treasured friend – and I’m really sad she’s gone. My heartfelt condolences to her family, and to all of us who knew and loved her.

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Apply Now for “Translation Check-Up” Course for Italian Translators with Tim Parks

For the second time, translator Tim Parks is offering his five-day intensive workshop for already-published translators from Italian. The course will take place at the Fenysia School in Florence, Italy, Sept. 16-20, 2019. For course fees and details, visit the Fenysia School website.

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Nominate Your Favorite Works by Women in Translation

Hey, folks, so Meytal Radzinski – of Women in Translation Month fame – has announced that she’s compiling a list of the top 100 translated works by women authors (living or dead) and she’s soliciting nominations now (and until August 25). Not sure how the final list will be decided on (I’m assuming there’s a little jury behind the scenes), but I look forward to seeing what’s on it. You can visit her on Twitter (or see above) for for instructions on nominating your favorite book(s). And yes, this is your reminder that Women in Translation Month is coming up in August! Time to start planning your reading lists, public events, parties, etc!

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Translation on Tap in NYC, July 1 – 31, 2019

Pride isn’t just for June, y’all! And you’ll be glad to find translation events to feel proud about continuing into July. Enjoy!

Tuesday, July 2:

The Queer Issue X: A Reading and Party with Words Without Borders. Lineup to include translators Amanda Lee Koe, John Keene, and Jeremy Tiang (moderator), joined by Rohan Kamicheril and Claudia Salazar Jiménez. More information here. Unnameable Books, 600 Vanderbilt Ave, Brooklyn, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.

Wednesday, July 10:

Delayed Rays of a Star: launch event. Translator Amanda Lee Koe is joined by translator Susan Bernofsky for a reading from and conversation about Amanda Lee Koe’s new novel. More information here. McNally Jackson Books, 52 Prince St., 7:00 p.m.

Friday, July 26:

Us & Them: The summer installment of this reading series (and its 4th anniversary celebration!) features Gregory Pardlo, Kaitlin Rees, Eric M.B Becker, and Esther Kim. More information here. Molasses Books, 770 Hart St., Brooklyn, 8:00 p.m.

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2019 Griffin Poetry Prize Announced

Don Mee Choi (left) and Kim Hyesoon

For only the third time in its nineteen-year history, the Griffin Poetry Prize has been awarded to a work in translation: Autobiography of Death by Kim Hyesoon, translated by Don Mee Choi and published by New Directions. This mammoth C$65,000 prize for poems written in English is awarded each year in two categories: to a Canadian poet and to one from anywhere else in the world (“International”). In the case of a translated book winning the award, the prize is split: 60% to the translator, and 40% to the author. As the prize rules explain, “Translations are assessed for their quality as poetry in English; the focus is on the achievement of the translator.” Indeed, the prize announcement describes the winning book as “Autobiography of Death by Don Mee Choi, translated from the Korean written by Kim Hyesoon.” What an excellent way of putting it .

Huge congratulations to Don Mee Choi on this extraordinary honor!

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