Marlies Bugmann's Blog: My Karl May translations / My Tasmaniana - Posts Tagged "translating"

This day a year ago, our neighbourhood erupted into what was to become the biggest bushfire disaster in Tasmania since many decades - by 5th January, we were nearly surrounded by a sky-high inferno. We evacuated - and did not know what we would come back to. My computer was in the back of the car, but my research, all of my books, and much more, remained with the house. We were cut off from the rest of the world, friends and family had no way of knowing what had become of us, as the disaster had made headlines around the world. Would I be able to continue with my translations? With the photography, the art, and reconnect with the creative mood needed to render complex works into another language?
Thankfully the flames skirted past us by some 900 metres; however, they destroyed two entire communities within minutes, along their race towards the Tasman Peninsula.
2013 was a year to recover from that shock - no new publications for the first time since 2000. Quietly I worked on several Karl May novels; three of them will be published towards the end of January 2014. The others will become available later in the year.
Two more translations are well underway, as are a couple of related projects ... January 2014 has started quietly, with a bit of rain, a bit of wind, and comfortable temperatures. But this blog is not about weather forecasts - it's about living in a wide, brown land downunder, with flooding plains and searing bushfires, and translating Karl May in the middle of it, and photographing it, and writing about it.