Susan Bernofsky's Blog, page 6

2019 Best Translated Book Award Shortlists Announced

It’s that time of year again: the in Fiction and Poetry have just been announced. Check out these lists!

Fiction 

Congo Inc.: Bismarck’s Testament by In Koli Jean Bofane, translated from the French by Marjolijn de Jager (Democratic Republic of Congo, Indiana University Press) 
The Hospital by Ahmed Bouanani, translated from the French by Lara Vergnaud (Morocco, New Directions)
Slave Old Man by Patrick Chamoiseau, translated from the French by Linda Coverdale (Martinique, New Press)
Pretty Things by Virginie Despentes, translated from the French by Emma Ramadan, (France, Feminist Press)
Moon Brow by Shahriar Mandanipour, translated from the Persian by Khalili Sara (Iran, Restless Books)
Bricks and Mortar by Clemens Meyer, translated from the German by Katy Derbyshire (Germany, Fitzcarraldo Editions)
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori (Japan, Grove)
The Governesses by Anne Serre, translated from the French by Mark Hutchinson (France, New Directions)
Öræfï by Ófeigur Sigurðsson, translated from the Icelandic by Lytton Smith (Iceland, Deep Vellum)
Fox by Dubravka Ugresic, translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursac and David Williams (Croatia, Open Letter)

Poetry

The Future Has an Appointment with the Dawn by Tenella Boni, translated from the French by Todd Fredson (Cote D’Ivoire, University of Nebraska)
Moss & Silver by Jure Detela, translated from the Slovenian by Raymond Miller and Tatjana Jamnik (Slovenia, Ugly Duckling)
Of Death. Minimal Odes by Hilda Hilst, translated from the Portuguese by Laura Cesarco Eglin (Brazil, co-im-press)
Autobiography of Death by Kim Hysesoon, translated from the Korean by Don Mee Choi(Korea, New Directions)
Negative Space by Luljeta Lleshanaku, translated from the Albanian by Ani Gjika (Albania, New Directions)

For more information on the award and the shortlisted books, visit . The winners will be announced on Wednesday, May 29 as part of the New York Rights Fair. Congratulations to all the shortlisted translators!

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2019 Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize Announced

The 2019 Helen and Kurt Wolff Translation Prize has gone to Damion Searls for his translation of Uwe Johnson’s 1700 page novel Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl, published by New York Review Books Classics. Congratulations!

More information about the prize and the translation can be found on the Goethe-Institut USA website. The prize will be awarded at a ceremony in New York on May 23.

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2019 NSW Premier’s Translation Prize Announced

The New South Wales Premier’s Translation Prize is awarded every two years to an Australian literary translator who has made a significant contribution to literary culture. This year’s $30,000 (AUD) prize has gone to Alison Entrekin, a translator from Portuguese whose works include novels by Chico Buarque, City of God by Paolo Lins, and Clarice Lispector’s Near to the Wild Heart. The judges comments and more information about the award can be found on the website of the New South Wales State Library. I, too, find her work quite gorgeous and couldn’t be more pleased to see this announcement. Congratulations, Alison!

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2019 Pushkin House Russian Book Prize Shortlist Announced

The Pushkin House Russian Book Prize honors works of nonfiction pertaining to Russia and published in English in either the UK and/or the U.S. The £5000 prize can be given to a work written in English or translated into English from another language (including Russian), and sometimes comes with a “subsidiary prize” of £2000 awarded to a translated work and shared between author and translator.

This year’s shortlist has just been announced and includes only a single translated work: the memoir Maybe Esther by Katja Petrowskaja, translated from German by Shelley Frisch (4th Estate).

For more information about the prize and to see all this year’s finalists as well as the winners and finalists of previous years, visit the Pushkin House website.

The winner of this year’s prize will be announced on June 12, 2019 at a ceremony in London. Of course, I’m rooting for the translated book to win!

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Translated Works Among 2019 Will Eisner Comic Industry Award Nominees

The Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards include prizes in two categories for works in translation, and translated works are eligible for consideration in other categories as well. The nominees for the 2019 awards have just been announced. I’ve listed the translated works among the nominees in each category below.

Nominees in the category Best U.S. Edition of International Material include:

About Betty’s Boob, by Vero Cazot and Julie Rocheleau, translated by Edward Gauvin (Archaia/BOOM!)
Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World, by Pénélope Bagieu [translator not credited] (First Second)
Herakles Book 1, by Edouard Cour, translated by Jeremy Melloul (Magnetic/Lion Forge)
Niourk, by Stefan Wul and Olivier Vatine, translated by Brandon Kander and Diana Schutz (Dark Horse)
A Sea of Love, by Wilfrid Lupano and Grégory Panaccione (Magnetic/Lion Forge)

Nominees in the category Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Asia include:

Abara: Complete Deluxe Edition, by Tsutomu Nihei, translated by Sheldon Drzka (VIZ Media)
Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction, by Inio Asano, translated by John Werry (VIZ Media)
Laid-Back Camp, by Afro, translated by Amber Tamosaitis (Yen Press)
My Beijing: Four Stories of Everyday Wonder, by Nie Jun, translated by Edward Gauvin (Graphic Universe/Lerner)
Tokyo Tarareba Girls, by Akiko Higashimura, [translator not credited] (Kodansha)

Nominees in the category Best Adaptation from Another Medium include:

“Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley, in Frankenstein: Junji Ito Story Collection, adapted by Junji Ito, translated by Jocelyne Allen (VIZ Media)
Out in the Open by Jesús Carraso, adapted by Javi Rey, translated by Lawrence Schimel (SelfMadeHero)

Nominees in the category Best Single Issue/One-Shot include:

The Terrible Elisabeth Dumn Against the Devils In Suits, by Arabson, translated by James Robinson (IHQ Studio/ Image)

Nominees in the category Best Publication for Teens (ages 13–17) include:

Watersnakes, by Tony Sandoval, translated by Lucas Marangon (Magnetic/Lion Forge)

Nominees in the category Best Comics-Related Book include:

Yoshitaka Amano: The Illustrated Biography—Beyond the Fantasy, by Florent Gorges, translated by Laure Dupont and Annie Gullion (Dark Horse)

For the complete listing of nominated works, see the announcement on Comics Beat.

The winners will be announced Friday, July 19 at the San Diego Comic-Con. First Second Books and Kodansha, you should be crediting your translators! To the uncredited and to all the other prize-nominated translators (esp. Edward Gauvin, who’s up for two separate projects) best of luck!

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

Mishima as movie star!

It’s a big month coming up in Translationland NYC, with a huge number of events in which translators will present their work or otherwise take part. The month’s big disappointment is that the PEN World Voices Festival, for the first time in its 15 years of existence (and remember that it was co-founded by a translator: Esther Allen!) will be presenting only a single translation-themed event as part of its programming. In previous years, there have been several events each year foregrounding literary translation. I very much hope that this will be corrected in the future, especially as literary translators represent the largest single group within the membership of PEN America. But at least the festival’s new director Chip Rolley didn’t cut the Translation Slam (see below). And – as usual – translators will be putting in appearances as conversation partners and moderators on a number of other panels (see below).

Thursday, May 2:

Launch party for Star by Yukio Mishima, featuring translator Sam Bett. More information here. Molasses Books, 770 Hart St., Brooklyn, 8:00 p.m. (see also May 10)

Friday, May 3:

Self-portrait of an Other: Translating for a Globalised World: I’m breaking Translationista’s rule of publishing only events featuring a translator because publisher Naveen Kishore (Seagull Books) will be town from Kolkata – a rare occurrence! – speaking about his work with Peter Hitchcock. CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave., Rm. 5414, 2:00 – 4:00 p.m.

Also Friday, May 3:

Intimate Ties: Launch event for this book of novellas by Robert Musil featuring the book’s translator, Peter Wortsman, joined by translator Tess Lewis, Fatima Naqvi, and Kathrin Holzermyer Rosenfield (who translated the book into Portuguese). More information here. NYU Deutsches Haus, 42 Washington Mews, 6:00 p.m.

Tuesday, May 7:

Oppression Rewritten: translator Valzhyna Mort joins Kwame Dawes for a conversation on their work as poets. PEN World Voices Festival, free event, RSVP required, more information here. Poet’s House, 10 River Terrace, 7:00 p.m.

Wednesday, May 8:

The Politics of Poetry: translator Valzhyna Mort joins Kirill Medvedev, Marianna Kiyanovska, and Simone White for a conversation on their work as poets. PEN World Voices Festival, free event, RSVP requested, more information here. The Old American Can Factory, 232 3rd St., 7:00 p.m.

Also Wednesday, May 8:

Reading by Raúl Zurita: translator William Rowe joins poet Raúl Zurita and Norma Cole for conversation after Zurita’s reading from his new book of poems (Inri), translated by Rowe. PEN World Voices Festival, tickets required, more information here. St. Marks Church, 131 E. 10th St., 8:00 p.m.

Thursday, May 9:

PEN World Voices Festival Translation Slam: For this popular event, two writers have a short work translated by two translators each, who then present their competing translations for a friendly literary showdown and conversation also including the author. Tickets for this one tend to sell out fast, so get yours now! This year’s contestants include Larissa Kyzer and Kara B. Thors translating Icelandic poet Gerður Kristný, and Terry Gallagher and Iyasu Nagata translating Japanese writer Kanako Nishi. Hosted by translator Allison Markin Powell and Björn Halldórsson. Tickets required, more information here. Nuyorican Poets Cafe, 236 E. 3rd St., 7:00 p.m.

Also Thursday, May 9:

Resonances: Translator Esther Allen moderates this conversation with Niviaq Korneliussen, Bridgett M. Davis, Gabrielle Bell, and Willivaldo Delgadillo. PEN World Voices Festival, free event, RSVP recommended, more information here. Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College, 135 E. 22nd St., 6:00 p.m.

Also Thursday, May 9:

Literary Quest: Westbeth Edition: Translators Jennifer Croft and Rowan Ricardo Phillips are among the lineup of readers (also including Felicity Castagna, Inês Pedrosa, Rodrigo Rey Rosa, Pajtim Statovci, Najat El Hachmi, Wu Ming-yi, Gabriela Wiener, Binnie Kirshenbaum, Helen Phillips, Jen Silverman, Darcey Steinke, and Dana Czapnik) for this perambulatory event. PEN World Voices Festival, ticketed event, more information here. Westbeth Artists Housing and Center for the Arts, 55 Bethune St., 6:30 – 10:00 p.m.

Friday, May 10:

Terrible Truths: Confronting History and Memory: Translator Uli Baer moderates this conversation with Daniel Blaufuks, Catherine Filloux, Tanisha Ford, and Domenico Starnone. PEN World Voices Festival, free event, RSVP recommended, more information here. NYU Maison Française, 16 Washington Mews, 6:00 p.m.

Also Friday, May 10:

Screening of Afraid to Die (1960), starring Yukio Mishima and directed by Yasuzo Masumura. Screening introduced by Sam Bett, translator of Yukio Mishima’s Star, based on his experience of performing in this film. Ticketed event, more information here. Japan Society, 333 E. 47th St., 7:00 p.m.

Saturday, May 11:

Voices of the Silenced: Translator Idra Novey participates in a conversation with Scholastique Mukasonga, and Marcia Tiburi, moderated by Karen M. Phillips. PEN World Voices Festival, free event, RSVP recommended, more information here. Albertine Books, 972 Fifth Ave., 4:00 p.m.

Monday, May 20:

Read Russia presents Olga Slavnikova: translators Marian Schwartz and Ian Dreiblatt join Slavnikova for a conversation. More information here. Grolier Club,47 E. 60th St., 6:30 p.m.

Wednesday, May 22:

All the Land: Launch event for this book translated by Katy Derbyshire, featuring translator Tess Lewis in conversation with author Jo Lendle. More information here. McNally Jackson, 76 N. 4th St., Brooklyn, 7:00 p.m.

Thursday, May 23:

Prize ceremony for the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize and the Gutekunst Prize of the Friends of Goethe New York. More information here. Goethe-Institut NY, 30 Irving Place, 7:00 p.m.

Friday, May 24:

Read Russia presents Olga Slavnikova and Guzel Yakhina: translators Lisa C. Hayden and Ian Dreiblatt join Slavnikova and  Yakhina for a conversation. More information here. Book Culture, 536 W. 112th St., 6:30 p.m.

Thursday, May 30

Book launch for Book of Minutes by Gemma Gorga featuring the book’s translator, Sharon Dolin, in conversation with Gorga. More information here. Book Culture, 536 W. 112th St., 7:00 p.m.

Friday, May 31:

An Evening of Catalan Poetry: Translator Sharon Dolin joins Gemma Gorga and Ernest Farrés for readings and conversation. More information here. Berl’s Poetry Shop, Brooklyn, 7:00 p.m.

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2019 French Voices Awards Announced

The French Voices Awards have been given out since 2006, supporting outstanding works translated from French that have not yet appeared in English translation. This year, for the first time, these $6000 works-in-progress awards presented by the French Cultural Services of the French embassy include two $10,000 Grand Prizes: one each in the categories Fiction and Non-Fiction. Each prize is split between the translator and the English-language publisher (with the translator receiving 1/3 of the purse, while the publisher receives 2/3). Some of these projects already have publishers; for those that don’t, a publisher must be found with one year, otherwise the translator forfeits their share of the award, unfortunately; that seems cruel to me, on top of all the labor the translator has probably already performed on spec.

The two works receiving Grand Prizes this year are:

Sciences de la vie by Joy Sorman (fiction), translated by Lara Vergnaud – available for publication.
The Unconstructable Earth: An Ecology of Separation by Frédéric Neyrat (non-fiction), translated by Drew S. Burk (Fordham University Press, 2018)

And here is a complete list of the books selected for French Voices Award support this year:

L’Economie à l’épreuve d’art. Art et capitalisme dans les années 1960 by Sophie Cras  (Les Presses du Réel, 2018)  | The Artist as Economist: Art and Capitalism in the 1960s, transl. Malcolm DeBevoise (Yale University Press, 2019)
Le Garçon by Marcus Malte (Zulma, 2012) | Boy,  transl. Emma Ramadan and Tom Roberge (Restless Books, 2019)
La Part Inconstructible de la terre : Critique du géoconstructivisme by Frédéric Neyrat (Seuil, 2016)  | The Unconstructable Earth: An Ecology of Separation,  transl. Drew S. Burk (Fordham University Press,  2018)
Sciences de la vie by Joy Sorman (Seuil, 2017) | transl. Lara Vergnaud (seeking an American publisher)
Enrichissement by Luc Boltanski and Arnaud Esquerre (Gallimard, 2017)  | transl. Catherine Porter (Polity Press, March 2020)
Médiarchie by Yves Citton (Seuil, 2017) | Mediarchy, transl. Andrew Brown (Polity Press, September 2019)
Le Don des philosophes : Repenser la reciprocité (Seuil, 2012) by Marcel Hénaff | The Philosophers’ Gift: Reexamining Reciprocity, transl. Jean-Louis Morhange (Fordham University Press, October 2019)
Toutes les familles heureuses (JC Lattès, 2017) by Hervé Le Tellier | All Happy Families: A Memoir,  transl. Adriana Hunter (Other Press, March 2019)
L’Afrique et ses fantômes : Écrire l’après (2015) by Seloua Luste Boulbina, transl. Lara Hengehold (Indiana University Press, 2019)
Bakhita (Albin Michel, 2017) by Véronique Olmi | Bakhita: A Novel of the Saint of Sudan, transl. Adriana Hunter (Other Press, April 2019)
Confessions d’un homosexual à Émile Zola (2017) by Michael Rosenfeld | transl. William A. Peniston and Nancy Erber, (Harrington Park Press, 2019)
Afrotopia (2016) by Felwine Sarr | Afrotopia, transl. Drew Burk and Sarah Jones-Boardman (University of Minnesota Press, October 2019)
Où en sommes-nous? by Emmanuel Todd (Seuil, 2017) | trans. Andrew Brown, (Polity Press, June 2019)

Congratulations to all the translators whose work was selected for support! With double congratulations to Drew Burk and Adriana Hunter, who are represented by more than one book on this list. It’s unusual for only a single book on this list to be up for grabs, so take note, U.S. publishers! For more information about the selected projects, see the announcement on the French Cultural Services website.

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Saying Goodbye to Donald Keene (1922 – 2019)

The legendary translator of Japanese literature Donald Keene passed away earlier this year. I asked Ginny Tapley Takemori – translator of, most recently, Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata and The Little House by Kyoko Nakajima – to share some thoughts on his life and career. Here is what she wrote:

In February, the world of Japanese literature mourned the loss of one of its foremost scholars, Donald Keene, who passed away at the age of 96. I never had a chance to meet him other than a brief handshake a couple of decades ago after a lecture he gave at Waseda University, but he was certainly a major influence on my studies of Japanese literature. It is impossible to overstate the importance of his contribution to Japanese studies and translation.

He originally studied French and Greek at Columbia University from the young age of sixteen. After graduating in 1942, he enlisted in the US Navy for their intensive Japanese language training, after which he served as an intelligence officer in the Pacific theater for the last years of WW2. After the war ended, he went on to further study the language and literature at Columbia, Harvard, Cambridge, and Kyoto, before taking up his professorship at his alma mater.

He was an extraordinarily prolific author publishing dozens of books in English and Japanese, with an astonishing breadth of scholarship. What student of Japanese literature hasn’t consulted his four-volume history of Japanese literature spanning  almost 4,000 pages and covering over a millennium of literature from early classical works all the way up to the modern era? His translations ranged from classical works of poetry and theater by authors such as haiku poet Matsuo Basho and the Bunraku playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon, to modern day novels by iconic authors like Junichiro Tanizaki, Yasunari Kawabata, and Yukio Mishima, many of whom he became friends with while studying at Kyoto University in the early 1950s. Among my personal favorites are his translations of a number of plays by Kobo Abe.

In 2008 the Japanese government awarded him the Order of Culture for his contributions to Japanese literature, and after the 2011 earthquake-tsunami-nuclear disaster he moved permanently to Japan, taking Japanese citizenship and formally adopting his friend the Shamisen player Saeki Uehara as his

With Keene’s passing, it feels like the end of an era. He was surely a man of his time, and like other prominent scholars who helped form the Japanese literary canon in English, such as the late Edward Seidensticker and Howard Hibbett (who passed just one month after Keene), he was perhaps more naturally drawn to male writers. In his Dawn to the West (vol. 3 of his History of Japanese Literature), for example, just a handful of modern Japanese women authors are treated in a separate chapter of their own. This imbalance is something for subsequent generations of scholars and translators to redress. Certainly, though, his deep love of Japan, literature, and humanity in general have left an extraordinary legacy that will be celebrated for many years to come. RIP Sensei.

Ginny Tapley Takemori

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Frankfurt International Translators Programme 2019: Apply Now

Translators from German (into any language) are invited to apply for the brand-new Frankfurt International Translators Programme. Up to thirty translators of literary fiction and nonfiction will be invited (including airfare and hotel) to attend the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2019. It sounds like a great opportunity to network with other translators as well as the many publishers, editors, and authors who attend the book fair every year and to learn about recent German-language publications. The application deadline is April 30, 2019. For more information and application instructions, visit the website of the Frankfurt Book Fair.

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2019 Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize Shortlist Announced

I’ve been reading a lot about Kurt Wolff lately in the context of working on my biography-in-progress of Robert Walser: as a young man, Wolff published Walser. As a middle-aged man, he emigrated to the U.S. in 1941 with his wife Helen, and the two of them went on to become legendary English-language publishers with their own imprint at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. The prize named in their honor celebrates an outstanding literary translation from German into English published in the U.S. and comes with a purse of $10,000 for the translator. The prize used to be administered by the Goethe-Institut Chicago, but since 2015 it’s been overseen by the Goethe-Institut New York. I don’t see the member’s of this year’s jury listed on the website, but they’ll surely be announced before the prize is awarded in June. Meanwhile, here are the translators on this year’s Wolff Prize shortlist:

W. C. Bamberger, for his translation of Oscar A. H. Schmitz’s Hashish (Wakefield Press)
Margot Bettauer Dembo, for her translation of Anna Seghers’ The Seventh Cross (New York Review Books)
Iain Galbraith, for his translation of Esther Kinsky’s River (Transit Books)
Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp, for her translation of Ulrich Raulff’s Farewell to the Horse: A Cultural History (W.W. Norton)
Tim Mohr, for his translation of Wolfgang Herrndorf’s Sand (New York Review Books)
Damion Searls, for his translation of Uwe Johnson’s Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl (New York Review Books)

For more information on the prize and the finalists, visit the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize page on the website of the Goethe Institut. Best of luck to all the shortlisted translators!

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