Susan Bernofsky's Blog, page 5

2019 Albertine Prize Announced

At a ceremony in New York, the winner of the 2019 Albertine Prize was announced this evening: Disoriental by Négar Djavadi, translated by Tina Kover. The Albertine Prize is unique in that the winner is chosen by the reading public (voting online) from a list of finalists selected by a panel of judges. Kover’s translation of Djavadi’s novel is a very worthy recipient of this honor. The prize comes with a $10,000 purse split (quite unevenly, alas: 80:20) between author and translator.

This year, the French Cultural Services gave out a second set of prizes too, the Prix Albertine Jeunesse in three categories, honoring the best Francophone kids’ books available in English translation. These readers choice awards were voted on by readers in three age categories:

3-6 years old: The Lonely Little Ghost by Bénédicte Guettier, translator not credited (ed. Casterman, 2008)
· 7-9 years old: The Tiger Prince by Chen Jiang Hong, translated by Alyson Waters (ed. École des loisirs, 2005)
·  10-11 years old: Cloud Chaser by Anne-Fleur Drillon and Eric Puybaret, translated by Lisa Rosinsky (ed. Margot, 2014)

Lamentably, the translators of these books are not credited in the announcement on LitHub, nor on Albertine’s website announcement of the shortlist. Please do better, Albertine! Sometimes children’s books are translated anonymously by members of the production team, but at least one of these winning translations was made by a respected translator of “adult” books, while the other is a YA author in her own right.

Congratulations to all the translators whose work was honored tonight!

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2019 Firecracker Award Shortlists Announced

It’s always wonderful to see translated books on the shortlist for the Firecracker Awards given out by CLMP (Community of Literary Magazines and Presses), especially since the award sometimes even goes to a translated book.

This year’s shortlists include translated works among the finalists in three separate categories. Here are the shortlisted works in translation:

Fiction:

Disoriental by Négar Djavadi, translated by Tina Kover, published by Europa Editions
Mina by Kim Sagwa, translated by Bruce Fulton and Ju-Chan Fulton, published by Two Lines Press
The Taiga Syndrome by Cristina Rivera Garza, translated by Suzanne Jill Levine and Aviva Kana, published by Dorothy, a publishing project
Trick by Domenico Starnone, translated by Jhumpa Lahiri, published by Europa Editions

With a special mention to All Roads Lead to Blood by Bonnie Chau, published by Santa Fe Writers Project, which isn’t a work in translation, but is a work written by a translator.

Creative Nonfiction:

False Calm: A Journey Through the Ghost Towns of Patagonia by María Sonia Cristoff, translated by Katherine Silver, published by Transit Books

Poetry:

You Will Always Be Someone From Somewhere Else by Dao Strom, translated by Ly Thuy Nguyen, published by AJAR Press

For the complete lists of finalists in all categories as well as more information about the awards and each of the shortlisted books, visit the CLMP website. Please note that a number of magazines that publish translations have been shortlisted for awards as well.

The prizes will be announced and awarded at a ceremony on June 5. Best of luck to all the shortlisted translators!

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2019 Best Translated Book Awards Announced

The 2019 Best Translated Book Awards in Poetry and Fiction were announced today at the New York Rights Fair. Translator and author of each winning book will receive a purse of $5000.

The winner of the prize in Fiction is Slave Old Man by Patrick Chamoiseau (Martinique), translated from the French by Linda Coverdale (New Press, and published by Sharmaine Lovegrove’s new imprint Dialogue Books in the UK under the title The Old Slave and the Mastiff.) The members of the Fiction jury this year were Pierce Alquist, Caitlin L. Baker, Kasia Bartoszyńska, Tara Cheesman, George Carroll, Adam Hetherington, Keaton Patterson, Sofia Samatar, and Ely Watson.

The winner of the prize in Poetry is Of Death. Minimal Odes (Brazil) by Hilda Hilst, translated from the Portuguese by Laura Cesarco Eglin (co-im-press). The members of this year’s Poetry jury were Jarrod Annis, Katrine Øgaard Jensen, Tess Lewis, Aditi Machado, and Laura Marris.

Congratulations to the winning translators!!

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A Memory of Gregory Rabassa (1922 – 2016)

Gregory Rabassa saluting his daughter in the early years of the 21st century ©Clara Rabassa

By Ezra E. Fitz

I always think of Greg Rabassa on Memorial Day, for not only was he one of the finest translators to ever draw a breath on this earth, but it’s also important to reminisce over his service during World War II, and how those two roles occasionally crossed paths in unique and surprising ways.

Greg often referred to GI’s like him as “dogfaces,” but in fact he held the rank of Staff Sergeant of Infantry with the U.S. Fifth Army, and was stationed first in North Africa and laterin Italy, which he helped to liberate: a point of great pride to him. His old Army jacket still fit him to his last days, and he wore it proudly every year on Veteran’s Day, though he always preferred the European version of the holiday, Armistice Day. He’d wear that jacket and stand outside his apartment building, and as people would walk by and thank him for his service, he would grin wryly and say, “Well, you oughta!”

He once told us a story of when he was bivouacked in North Africa, and during a lull in the fighting, he was trying to get in a quick shave. He’d found a piece of broken mirror to look into and proceeded to fill his helmet with water (cold water, he’d say, citing this as a real hardship). As he was shaving away, his thoughts drifted off to a famous scene in Part One of Don Quijote, where the befuddled knight mistakes a common barber’s basin for the helmet of the great hero Mambrino and puts it on his head, thus cementing, in his mind, the parallel between them. What amused (and delighted) Greg was how his real-life situation was the opposite of the Mambrino episode; while in Cervantes’s version, a fictional character mistook a shaving basin for a celebrated helmet, but here Greg was, using a very real helmet and letting it serve as a perfectly suitable shaving basin. Greg laughed and said that, right there in an army camp in North Africa, during World War II, life was imitating art, except in reverse. And although he never mentioned this part, we’ve always thought that Greg did not at all mind the other, more implicit parallel that this story also suggests, namely that Greg, as an American GI, was, like a true knight errant, seeking to right one of humankind’s most terrible wrongs.

I’ll end here with one last memory of mine: we’d often talk on the phone about movies, especially those starring Peter Sellers or the Marx Brothers, but one day the subject was Sam Peckinpah’s Cross of Iron. I was telling Greg about a scene in which a soldier on watch spotted a corps of Russian armored units in the distance, and warns his fellow soldiers by calling out, “Tanks! Tanks!” But in the French version of the film, his warning is erroneously yet hilariously subtitled, “Merci! Merci!” We laughed about that particular mistranslation, and then there was a pause. I could tell Greg was getting tired. “That was fun,” he said, bringing our conversation to a close. “Let’s talk again soon.”

That was the last time we ever spoke.

 

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Translation on Tap in NYC, June 1 – 30, 2019

Life goals: Hawaiian monk seal pup as glimpsed by Mark Sullivan

Look, I get it. May was an insanely busy month in Translationland NYC, and I can see why translators and translation enthusiasts might want to spend all of June recovering. Which is no doubt why there are (to my knowledge, at least) no translation events planned for this month. If you’re planning one I haven’t heard about, send me the details, and I’ll update this post. Otherwise, happy summer! and check back for more events (let’s hope) in July.

Hahaha. This isn’t the first time I’ve forgotten to list my own event. Please come!

Sunday, June 16:

How Did This Play Get Into English? As part of the second annual International Play Reading Festival at Columbia University, co-organized by David Henry Hwang and Carol Becker, I’ll be moderating a panel with theater translators Caridad Svich and Taylor Gaines about what it takes to translate for the stage. The entire three-day festival is open to the public free of charge (reservations recommended). More information here. The Lantern, Lenfest Center for the Arts, 615 W. 129th St., 4:00 p.m.

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Submit Now for Words Without Borders Poems in Translation Contest

You heard right, the great online journal of international literature Words Without Borders is sponsoring a translation contest for new poems (not yet translated into English) by living poets. Mónica de la Torre will be reading and judging the submissions, and there’ll be a $150 prize for the winning translator and poet (plus bragging rights). The deadline is June 28, but as you know, translating a poem takes a minute, so you’d best get started soon! I look forward to reading your beautiful poems in an upcoming issue of the journal. You’ll find full guidelines and submission info on WWOB’s submittable page.

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2019 Man Booker International Prize Announced

Last night at a ceremony in London, the winner of the 2019 Man Booker International Prize was announced. This year’s prizewinning book is Celestial Bodies by Omani author Jokha Alharthi, translated from Arabic by Marilyn Booth (Sandstone Press). Translator and author will be appearing together at the Hay Festival on Saturday. I am so thrilled to see this major prize go to a woman author for the second year in a row (and the third time in four years)! (This after a shortlist rich in books by women.) For more information about the prize and the winning book, please visit the Man Booker International Prize website. Big congratulations, Marilyn!

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2019 French-American Foundation Translation Prize Announced

The winners of the 2019 French-American Foundation Translation Prize were announced this week at a ceremony in New York. Each award comes with a prize of $10,000 for the translator of the winning book. In Fiction, the prize was split between two translators: Linda Coverdale, for her translation of Slave Old Man by Patrick Chamoiseau (The New Press), and Chris Clarke, for his translation of Imaginary Lives by Marcel Schwob (Wakefield Press). The prize in Nonfiction went to Malcolm Debevoise for his translation of Good Government by Pierre Rosanvallon (Harvard University Press). For more information about the prize and the winning books, along with photographs of the ceremony, visit the French-American Foundation website. Congratulations to the winning translators!

 

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Apply Now for a 2020 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant

The application cycle for the PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants (named for Michael Henry Heim, who founded these awards in 2003 with his wife Priscilla) has been shifted to spring, and the time to apply for a 2020 grant is now! These grants offer $2000 – $4000 of financial support and are one of the best ways out there for emerging translators to distinguish themselves early on in their careers. They can draw a publisher’s attention to a work for already established translators as well. I’ve written about the ins and outs of them before. These grants are explicitly open to those early in their careers – though everyone is welcome to apply. There’s a sidecar competition as well: the separately funded PEN Grant for the English Translation of Italian Literature (with a purse of $5000). All PEN/Heim applications for Italian-language projects will automatically be considered for it. So if you’re thinking about a book-length project and have a sample translation already in progress, time to sharpen your pencils. You’ll find more information and full application instructions on the PEN America website. Deadline for the receipt of applications is June 1, 2019.

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2019 Gutekunst Prize Announced

The 2019 Gutekunst Prize of the Friends of Goethe New York, awarded in a competition in which translators are invited to submit translations of the same predetermined text, always goes to a younger translator who has not yet published a book-length work of translation. This year’s sample text was taken from Jana Hensel’s novel Keinland [Noland]; this year’s jury was made up of Tess Lewis, Alta Price, and Jeremy Davies; and this year’s award has gone to Erin Palombi. Congratulations! The prize will be awarded at a ceremony in New York on May 23. For more information about the book, the award, and the prizewinner, visit the Gutekunst Prize page on the Goethe-Institut USA website.

 

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