Happy 2015! This is the first roundup of 2015, but we’re already nine days in—have you broken your resolution yet? (I certainly haven’t been meditating every day). Even if your good intentions have been wavering now that we’re (over a) week in to the new year, do something good for yourself and for global literature by donating to Asymptote‘s Indiegogo campaign—every little bit counts and helps this blog and our big-brother journal publish the world’s best literature for free!
This year, we should have attained the absurd futurism predicted in the second Back to the Future film—except we didn’t. That doesn’t stop scientists from coming out with technology that is increasingly evocative of dyst/utopia. But the future is—yesterday. Here’s a look at the first computer capable of translating Russian into more than sixty other languages, albeit in limited capacity. And French writer Marguerite Duras made a few predictions for the 2000s: fifteen years in, how well do these predictions hold up? (Luckily, we still read.) And in response to a pervasive bout of nostalgia, n+1 examines the recent resurgence of seventies-era “throwback fiction.”
If you can handle the requisite level of cringe, here’s Lake Superior State University’s annual list of words to be abolished in 2015. Perhaps these words won’t be so injurious, but rather, a quaint reminder of speech past: the Wall Street Journal postulates what language will look like in one hundred years. French controversy-generator Michel Houellebecq has caused quite a stir with his latest novel, which postulates a France presidency helmed by a Muslim. Here, he tries to defend himself.
If you’re feeling competitive, the Morning News‘ annual Tournament of Books has launched, and even includes a book in translation—Italian phenom Elena Ferrante’s Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay. And NPR interviews Patty’s crush-writer-of-the-moment, the Spanish-language (but as multinational as it gets) author Valeria Luiselli, who wrote Sidewalks and Faces in the Crowd, both reviewed on the blog. Luiselli on not self-translating: “I write a lot in English, and I write a lot in Spanish. But I don’t usually self-translate because — well, basically because it’s a bit boring. I mean, you’ve already written a book.” Tell that to the translator agonizing over a reflexive pronoun!
A perfect example of how exciting translation can be (truly!) is the (nearly) simultaneous publication of two translations of Russian writer Leo Tolstoy’s oft-venerated tome, Anna Karenina. At the New York Times, writer Masha Gessen takes a side-by-side look at Marian Schwartz’s and Rosamund Bartlett’s recent translations, and says a few smart things about translation in general.