Apply for Translation Lab at Ledig House

I blogged Ledig House's Translation Lab last year, and am delighted to blog it again, especially as this year's program - which allows translators and their authors to work together on the beautiful grounds of Art Omi - has been expanded from a week to ten days, allowing for an even more intense collaboration. This year's Lab, scheduled for Nov. 6 - 15 2013, will involve four writer-translator teams (translating into English), in all sorts of genres. DW Gibson, Director of Writers Omi writes:

All residencies are fully funded, including airfare and local transport from New York City to the Omi International Arts Center in Ghent, NY. Please note: accepted applicants must be available for the duration of the Translation Lab (November 6-15, 2013). Late arrivals and early departures are not possible. Please do not submit a proposal unless both parties involved (translator and writer) are available for all dates. Writers Omi will be accepting proposals for participation until July 15, 2013. Translators, writers, editors, or agents can submit proposals. Each proposal should be no more than three pages in length and provide the following information:

• Brief biographical sketches for the translator and writer associated with each project
• Publishing status for proposed projects (projects that do not yet have a publisher are still eligible)
• A description of the proposed project
• Contact information (physical address, email, and phone)

All proposals and inquires should be sent by e-mail to DW Gibson at Ledig House.

French-American Translation Prize Winners 2013

Since I announced the awards ceremony for the French-American Translation Prizes a few days ago, I thought I ought to let you know the winners. Alyson Waters took home the prize for her translation of Prehistoric Times by Eric Chevillard (published by Archipelago Books), and the non-fiction translation prize went to Nora Scott for The Metamorphoses of Kinship by Maurice Godelier (Verso Books). For further details about the books and their translators, see the announcement on the website of the French-American Foundation.

New Bridge = German Quartet

This month's Bridge Series event, coming up one week from today, presents four translators from the German: Ross Benjamin, Isabel Fargo Cole, Tess Lewis and Tim Mohr, quadrupling your chances of finding a translator to your taste. They'll be gathering to discuss the publication of two new books, The Jew Car (Seagull Books, June 2013), by Franz Fühmann, translated by Isabel Fargo Cole and Wrecked (Grove, May 2013), by Charlotte Roche, translated by Tim Mohr. Fühmann is a very great East German writer who has hitherto been ridiculously neglected in English - so glad to see this book come out. I did a translation of his fairy tale "Anna, genannt die Humpelhexe" (Anna the Hobbledy-Witch) twenty years ago that got turned down by every kids' magazine I sent it to ("No stories about witches!", "No stories about disabilities!") even though it was a story about a girl's self-discovery and triumphant adventures. Maybe I should try again. And Roche is the author of Wetlands, also translated by Mohr, which made quite a splash (sorry) when it came out a few years ago. See, plenty to talk about already! There'll be readings by all four translators, there'll be translation talk, there'll no doubt be a glass of vino before the evening is done. Hope to see you there.

There = the Goethe Institut, 72 Spring St., 11th Floor., Thursday, June 13, 6:30 p.m.

Reminder: Launch for In Translation Tomorrow

Please come and help Esther Allen and me toast the arrival of our beloved new child: the anthology In Translation: Translators on Their Work and What It Means, containing many of our all-time favorite essays about translation by some of the best translators in the world. It was just published last week by Columbia University Press. We're excited to be launching it as part of a joint event at the Goethe Institut: We'll present the anthology and tell you about some of our favorite bits and some of the things we learned about translation while editing it; and then we'll all clap for the 2013 winner of the Gutekunst Prize for young translators - a prize connected to a contest in which all the competitors translate the very same short prose work, a great way to see what kind of chops everyone has and how many different responses can be found to a particular translation challenge. This year's talented winner is Alta Price, and we'll hear Tess Lewis from the Gutekunst Prize jury praising her before we all raise our glasses. There'll be copies of the anthology offered for sale at a discount, plus excellent views of Lower Manhattan from the windows of the Goethe Institut. Event details here. The Goethe Institut's at 72 Spring St., 11th Floor, and the event starts at 6:00, so you can come right from work to celebrate with us on your way home.

French-American Translation Prize Ceremony Tomorrow

Tomorrow is a big day for translators of French fiction and non-fiction alike: The French-American Foundation will be announcing the winners of its 26th annual translation awards at a festive ceremony featuring a small panel discussion entitled "Literature Without Borders: Why Translation Matters." Speakers will include Edwin Frank (a wonderful editor who is also the editorial director of the NYRB Classics series), Laurence Marie (head of the book department at the French embassy), and Gregary Racz (current president of the American Literary Translators Association) - is that enough sparkle for you? If not, I'm sure the wine will be excellent, and the awards each carry a $10,000 purse as well as honor and glory, so there'll be hearts pounding. Check out the list of excellent finalists below, and if you're in NYC, come out for the ceremony itself starting at 6:00 p.m. tomorrow, June 5, at the Century Association, 7 W. 43rd St. at Fifth Ave. An RSVP is required (RSVP via the French-American Foundation website).

Fiction Finalists

• HHhH by Laurent Binet and translated by Sam Taylor, Farrar, Straus and Giroux A seemingly effortlessly blend of historical truth, personal memory, and Laurent Binet's remarkable imagination, HHhH-a winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman-is a work at once thrilling and intellectually engrossing, a fast-paced novel of the Second World War.

• With the Animals by Noëlle Revaz and translated by W. Donald Wilson, Dalkey Archive Press With the Animals, Noëlle Revaz's schoking debut, is a novel of mud and blood whose linguistic audaciousness is matched only by its brutality, misanthropy, and gallows humor.

• Prehistoric Times by Eric Chevillard and translated by Alyson Waters, Archipelago Books The characters in Prehistoric Times remind us of the inhabitants of Samuel Beckett's world: dreamers who in their savage and deductive folly try to modify reality.

• We Monks and Soldiers by Lutz Bassmann and translated by Jordan Stump, University of Nebraska Press While humanity seems to be fading around them, the members of a shadowy organization are doing their inadequate best to assist those experiencing their last moments. This remarkable work offers readers a thrilling entry into Bassmann's numinous world.

• No One by Gwenaëlle Aubry and translated by Trista Selous, Tin House Books No One is a fictional memoir in dictionary form that investigates the unstable identity of the author's father, a lawyer affected by a disabling bipolar disorder. Letter by letter, Aubry gives shape and meaning to the father who had long disappeared from her view.



Non-Fiction Finalists

• The Patagonian Hare by Claude Lanzmann and translated by Frank Wynne, Farrar, Straus and Giroux These memoirs capture the intensity of the experiences of Claude Lanzmann, a man whose acts have always been a negation of resignation: a member of the Resistance at sixteen, a friend to Jean-Paul Sartre and a lover to Simone de Beauvoir, and the director of one of the most important films in the history of cinema, Shoah.

• Manhunts: A Philosophical History by Grégoire Chamayou and translated by Steven Rendall, Princeton University Press Touching on issues of power, authority, and domination, Manhunts takes an in-depth look at the hunting of humans in the West, from ancient Sparta, through the Middle Ages, to the modern practices of chasing undocumented migrants.

• The Color of Power: Racial Coalitions and Political Power in Oakland by Frédérick Douzet and translated by George Holoch, University of Virginia Press The Color of Power is a fascinating examination of the changing politics of race in Oakland, California. The city, once governed by a succession of black mayors and majority black city councils, must now accommodate rapidly growing Asian and Latino communities.

• In Defense of the Terror: Liberty or Death in the French Revolution by Sophie Wahnich and translated by David Fernbach, Verso Books Sophie Wahnich offers us with this succinct essay a provocative reassessment of the Great Terror. She explains how, contrary to prevailing interpretations, the institution of Terror sought to put a brake on legitimate popular violence and was subsequently subsumed in a logic of war.

• The Metamorphoses of Kinship by Maurice Godelier and translated by Nora Scott, Verso Books A masterwork of the anthropology of kinship by the heir to Levi-Strauss. Godelier argues that the changes of the last thirty years do not herald the disappearance or death agony of kinship, but rather its remarkable metamorphosis-one that, ironically, is bringing us closer to the "traditional" societies studied by ethnologists.

Talking Translation at Book Expo America

This year was my first time at Book Expo America, and it was interesting to see, especially after having visited the London Book Fair just a few months ago. BEA is much smaller, and it's not as much a marketplace for permissions and rights as the other big fairs (esp. London and Frankfurt), so it feels more intimate, and also somehow trashier, because most of the important literary publishers don't bother to show up. This is because even the smallest booth there costs $4000 rent, and anything smaller than a $10,000 booth is going to look pretty dinky, so participating is a considerable investment, especially since NYC-based publishers can easily enough invite any international or out-of-town publishing professionals who come to town for BEA to drop by their offices for meetings. There are publishers who throw BEA parties every year without actually attending the expo. So what is BEA good for? It seems to be quite important e.g. for American booksellers not located in NYC looking for stock for the upcoming year. Unfortunately my quick spin around the expo floor revealed an alarmingly high percentage of junque and silly novelty swag. By far the biggest crowd I saw all day was waiting in line to get Grumpy Cat's autograph. It was refreshing, after fighting my way through this crowd to get where I was going, to be asked at the stand of the Polish Cultural Institute, "What is Grumpy Cat?" Wish I didn't know. On the other hand, I also happened upon the stand for the legendary publishing house David R. Godine - amazingly being manned by Godine himself, who has just published The African, a short and powerful-sounding childhood memoir by Nobel laureate J.M.G. Le Clézio, in a translation by C. Dickson - whom Godine unfortunately neglects to credit on his website or in the data transmitted to booksellers, though Dickson's name does appear on the book's cover. (Amazon generally lists translator names when provided; only Barnes and Noble, bless their hearts, sleuthed it out on their own; and Indiebound couldn't even spell the author's name, somebody help them!)

Anyhow, the occasion of my visit to BEA was a panel discussion entitled "The Translator and the Editor: A Fraught Relationship," organized by David Goldfarb of the aforementioned institute and featuring Polish crime novelist Marek Krajewski along with editors Chad Post of Open Letter and Victoria Wilson of Knopf (neither of which had stands at BEA), the illustrious Mary Ann Caws, and me. We had only 50 minutes for the panel, so the mud got slung around pretty fast, even though Mary Ann and I both sang the praises of editors we have worked with. Marek, on the other hand, pointed out that he had worked both with beneficial, helpful editors and mad "narcissists" who make changes to his manuscripts just for the sake of putting their mark on a book. Poor Marek. We had an interesting side discussion of the translation of the Polish word "rynek" into German - his translator Doreen Daume was hesitating between "Marktplatz" (marketplace, market square) and "Ring." This surprised me because I think of "Ring" in German as "Ringstraße" (the circular road usually built where the old city walls once stood), but now that I have consulted German Wikipedia, I see that the word "Ring" is used differently in Bohemia and Silesia, where it means, for some reason, "marketplace" - Ring and rynek are cognates. Prague, Opole and Wrocław all have squares that are/were called "Ring" in German. The latter is the setting of a series of Marek's books, including the latest, Death in Breslau (transl. Danusia Stok), and he provocatively calls the city by its German name even in Polish, since the book is set in 1933.

The panel did also include some talk about translation. Mary Ann told a juicy horror story of having her translations "dumbed down" by a publishing house whose name remained shrouded in tactful silence, and I spoke about the differences in editing practices between the U.S. and Europe: most editors in the German-language world are pretty hands-off compared to their American counterparts, and some European authors actually want to have a U.S. editor work over their books (an extreme example is Gregor von Rezzori, who gave star editor Elisabeth Sifton license to do whatever she wanted with his manuscripts, and she did in fact often make significant changes, smart ones). Vicky and Chad had interesting things to say about the commercialization of literary publishing and the shift in the publishing of translations to smaller presses, though she disputed his claim that the larger publishing houses are no longer interested in translations. There was also a discussion of when U.S. publishing went corporate. Was it with the purchase of many NYC publishing houses by the international conglomerates Holtzbrinck and Bertelsmann? Vicky pointed out that before Knopf was bought by Holtzbrinck it had belonged to R.C.A., and that C.B.S. owned publishing houses too. So there's a long history there. In any case, the panel flew by too quickly for me to jot everything down, so if you want to know for sure everything that got talked about, check out the podcast of the event that the Polish Cultural Institute is planning to post to their website next week. I'll add the link here when I get it. Meanwhile, today is your last chance (until 4:00 p.m.) to head over to the Javits Center for your own Book Expo America experience. If you manage to snag a cup of the "For Dummies" wine, let me know how it was.

Untranslatables

This past week marked the appearance of the new anthology In Translation: Translators On Their Work And What It Means that Esther Allen and I co-edited. We were delighted to see Publisher's Weekly include it on its list of the top eight books published last week. And now PW has just published a little essay that Esther wrote about things that can be said in some languages but not others, and what translators can do about it. In fact, one might say that nothing offers a greater opportunity to practice the art of translation than encountering one of these so-called "untranslatables." Here's what Esther has to say on the subject:

Part of the allure of learning a new language is discovering words for things you wouldn’t have known existed or thought of in the same way before. When I lived in Paris, I learned that a vinaigrette is something very different from the “salad dressing” I grew up with (and not something you’d ever buy in a bottle at the supermarket, despite the now-ubiquitous availability of a product masquerading under that name on our supermarket shelves). The perpetual fascination of attempting to translate between two languages lies in the gap that always exists, even between very closely related words. The Spanish olvido describes something we don’t quite have a word for: not an act of forgetting or moment of forgetfulness or total oblivion, but a mental compartment that sits opposite memory, just as blindness is the opposite of sight. You can’t hold or put something in your forgetting in English, but in Spanish you can tener or poner algo en olvido.

For the rest of her essay, click over to the PW website, and for a link to order the book with a 30% discount, see my initial post on the book from last week. Oh, and here's a little live interview I did this week on the radio show The Monocle Daily, which featured the book and pitched me a quick handful of questions about all things translation; you'll find the brief segment at the 25 minute mark.