The Tiff: How Should We Review Translations?

October 21, 2015  |  in Essays  |  by Maia Evrona and Sue Burke

Sue Burke and Maia Evrona on the ideal review for a translation—and the tendency to forget the translator entirely.

Sue Burke: The book review said that Angelica Gorodischer “writes poetic, vigorous prose.” Yes, she does. And she doesn’t – that is, I wrote the poetic, vigorous prose.

I’m the translator for Gorodischer’s novel Prodigies, published this year by Small Beer Press. The review was in Kirkus. At least it listed me as the translator and it was favorable, even if it wasn’t ideal.

What would be an ideal review for a translation? While any book review has to cover a lot of ground, at some point I think it ought to explicitly acknowledge that the work being reviewed is a translation and mention its apparent approach, since a translation in some way rewrites the original. If possible, it might compare a passage of the original to the translation and note whether the translation wrestles successfully (or not) with linguistic and cultural challenges, captures its literary quality like elegance or immediacy or wit, and accurately conveys both the meaning and subtext.

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Translation Tuesday: “Breaking Through the Drum” by Bohumil Hrabal

October 20, 2015  |  in Translations  |  by Paul Wilson

"and everything suddenly seemed so bizarre I thought my ticket-taker’s demon must have come back to play with my mind."

I never felt better than when I was tearing the stubs off people’s tickets and showing them to their seats. In primary school, I loved to make seating plans for the teacher. Then during the war, a weird thing happened to me. A kind of ticket-taker’s demon lit on my back and right in the middle of the newsreel, when the voice announced that eighty-eight enemy aircrafts had been shot down over Dortmund and only one German plane had gone missing, the perverse little imp whispered something in my ear, and I said in a loud voice: “Aw shucks, it’s bound to turn up again.” My voice sounded like it belonged to somebody else, so I turned up the house lights and ordered the person who’d said it to come forward. The other ushers and I walked through the audience, but no one confessed and so, invoking our official powers—we actually had such powers—I declared that the entire program, including the feature film, was hereby cancelled, the tickets were null and void and, as punishment, everyone had to go home without a refund. READ MORE…

Translator’s Profile: Yardenne Greenspan

October 19, 2015  |  in Interviews, Translator's Profile  |  by Patty Nash

"I also sometimes fantasize about acting or opening a bakery."

Yardenne Greenspan has an MFA in Fiction and Translation from Columbia University. In 2011, she received the American Literary Translators’ Association Fellowship. Her translation of Some Day, by Shemi Zarhin (New Vessel Press), was chosen for World Literature Today’s 2013 list of notable translations. Her full-length translations also include Tel Aviv Noir, edited by Etgar Keret and Assaf Gavron (Akashic Books), and Alexandrian Summer by Yitzhak Gormezano Goren (New Vessel Press). Yardenne’s writing and translations can be found in The New Yorker, Haaretz, Guernica, Ploughshares, The Massachusetts Review, and Words Without Borders, among other publications.

*****

Who are you and what do you translate?

My name is Yardenne Greenspan, I’m a writer of fiction and essays, a translator of Hebrew fiction, and an aspiring good friend. I mostly translate novels, but also short prose, plays, and even some poetry.

Describe your current/most recent project. Why is it cool? What should we know about it?

I just finished translating a biblical-fiction novel by Israeli author Yochi Brandes, which is forthcoming from St. Martin’s Press next summer. The novel offers a subversive reading of the biblical books of Kings and undermines what we know about Kings Saul, David, Solomon, and their families. It was especially exciting for me, having grown up in Israel, where Bible lessons are taught at every school, forming a very specific narrative of “good” and “wicked” kings. This books really turns it around.

What author would you like to see more popular/translated in the first place?

Sayed Kashua, a Palestinian citizen of Israel who currently lives and works in Illinois, writes in Hebrew about the experience of living on both sides, trying to pass as Israeli while remaining faithful to his Palestinian roots, and the entrapment that ensues. Sadly, Kashua recently decided his attempt to bridge the conflict through his writing has failed, but his writing still offers incredible insight into the complicated and heartbreaking way of living that is Israel. His books have been translated by Miriam Shlesinger and Mitch Ginsburg, and I think they should be read by anyone who is interested in a fresh take on the subject that is both touching and hilarious. READ MORE…

Weekly News Roundup, 16 October 2015: Extra! Extra Money!

October 16, 2015  |  in News  |  by Patty Nash

This week's literary highlights from across the world.

First things first: our brand-spankin’ new October issue is hot from the digital presses, and it’s more than worthy of your weekend perusal. With heavyweights like Yves Bonnefoy, Sjòn, and Yasutaka Tsutsui (among so many others!) you can’t go wrong, but in case you’re feeling overwhelmed, we featured five of our favorite pieces on the blog yesterday—check it out!

This week also marked the announcement of this year’s Man Booker Prize—and for the very first time, the award went to a Jamaican writer. Marlon James snagged top honors for his novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings. Often poised as an “imitation-Man-Booker,” the prestigious German Book Prize was awarded to Frank Witzel’s Die Erfindung der Roten Armee Fraktion durch einen manisch-depressiven Teenager im Sommer 1969 (deep breath). The award was a surprise, but deserved—and we’re crossing our fingers for a quick and successful translation to hit English markets soon. 

But while American National Book Awards have announced its shortlisted finalists, we’re altogether more interested in the American Translation Award shortlist, posted this week over at ALTA, and the list includes several friends of the blog and journal! 

READ MORE…

5 Must-Reads from Our October Issue!

October 15, 2015  |  in Essays, News  |  by Allegra Rosenbaum, Katrine Øgaard Jensen, Patty Nash, and Vera Carothers

The October issue is live—and with so much good content, you might be overwhelmed. Take a deep breath, and dive in:

Hot off the digital presses! Asymptote‘s new October issue is live—and completely, utterly alive and alight with literary voices from around the world. This season’s issue is especially star-studded—featuring star writers like Yves Bonnefoy, Sjón, and Thomas Stangl—but it’s equally stuffed with brilliant, lucid literary voices you simply haven’t heard of . . . yet. That’s where translation (and Asymptote) comes in.

But with so many gems of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, we get it—you might be overwhelmed at the prospect of so. much. reading. So if you’re sneaking a read at work (psst—we won’t tell), here are five quick reads sure to make the time pass more quickly:

1. Roland Glasser on translating Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s Tram 83, by Roland Glasser

The difficulty of translating is something not only every budding translator but every writer can relate to all too well. The struggle of finding the right word, regardless of the language, is something that Robert Glasser iterates very clearly in the essay. Whether it’s a thin, overworked, minor-miner (known as a biscotte in French slang) or a slim-jim, as Glasser translates it—the right word at the right time can mean a world of difference.

Glasser understands this endeavor, and succeeds at illuminating the translation quagmires in Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s Tram 83. The scenes of “melting-pot” Parisian people, food, and culture flow throughout the piece, juxtaposing the worlds people have left behind with the world of the novel being translated. Reading this piece is a surefire way to get excited, not only about Glasser’s writing, but also his translation of Tram 83, released on September 8th, 2015, by Deep Vellum. —Allegra Rosenbaum, asssistant blog editor READ MORE…

Translating the Literatures of Smaller European Nations

October 14, 2015  |  in Dispatches  |  by Julia Sherwood

Translators and scholars discuss stereotyping, globalization, and small sales in English-language literary markets.

Last September, three British universities—Bristol, Cardiff and UCL London—launched a two-year-long project on “Translating the Literatures of Smaller European Nations” in partnership with Literature Across Frontiers. The purpose was to “understand better the ways in which, through translation, these literatures endeavour to reach the cultural mainstream.” In addition to scholarly research, the project involves three public workshops and a conference.

The first of these workshops, held in February 2015 in Bath, explored the question of “Who Reads the Literatures of Small Nations and Why?”.  I had the pleasure of attending the second workshop, “Choreography of Translation,” which took place at the British Library in London as part of the European Literature Night in April 2015 (a third and final workshop, on promoting literature in translation, is planned for early 2016). Featuring publishers Vladislav Bajac of Geopoetika in Belgrade, Susan Curtis-Kojakovic, founder of Istros Books, translator (and Asymptote Close Approximations nonfiction judge!) Margaret Jull Costa, and Nicole Witt of the Frankfurt Literary Agency Mertin, the BL event ended up being more panel discussion than workshop, partly because the venue was not particularly conducive to the workshop format.

By contrast, a conference at Bristol University on September 9-10 provided many opportunities for lively discussions. The participants were a perfect mix of literature and translation studies scholars and practising translators from across Europe, covering a range of smaller European literatures from Catalan to Turkish. I’ll try to highlight some of the major issues covered, divided into often overlapping categories.

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Translation Tuesday: “We Are Trouble’s Obedient Children” by Lut Ming

October 13, 2015  |  in Translations  |  by Hedy Bok

"The army is the dreams we share / Our tent is the sky (we have nothing to hide) / Take a deep breath."

There are no city gates here

No city walls, no army, no tanks

There are the people, there are things they care about, there are tents

There is the night sky with no wind, an empty, empty sky

You can watch the TV, the one and only CCTV,

To learn about the world and

Watch live-edits of people hurting people,

The Tape Recorder looks stuck up

In his suit and tie. He’s getting ready to lie

But his eyes are flickering (tape’s stuck, won’t play)

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Translating Indigenous Mexican Writers: An Interview with Translator David Shook

October 12, 2015  |  in Interviews, Translations  |  by Ryan Mihaly

"I suspect many casual bookstore readers might not know how many languages are still spoken in Mexico. The sheer diversity is astounding."

David Shook is a poet, translator, and filmmaker in Los Angeles, where he serves as Editorial Director of Phoneme Media, a non-profit publishing house that exclusively publishes literature in translation. Their newest book is Like a New Sun, a collection of contemporary indigenous Mexican poetry, which Shook co-edited along with Víctor Terán.

Seven translators in total—Shook, Adam W. Coon, Jonathan Harrington, Jerome Rothenberg, Clare Sullivan, Jacob Surpin, and Eliot Weinberger—translated poets from six different languages: Juan Gregorio Regino (from the Mazatec), Mikeas Sánchez (Zoque),  Juan Hernández Ramírez (Huasteca Nahuatl), Enriqueta Lunez (Tsotsil), Víctor Terán (Isthmus Zapotec), and Briceida Cuevas Cob (Yucatec Maya). I corresponded with Shook over gchat to speak with him about the project.

Today is Columbus Day, a controversial holiday in the United States. Several cities have recently adopted Indigenous Peoples’ Day over Columbus Day, clearly a victory for recognizing indigenous cultures in the United States. Which leaves me wondering: how are the indigenous Mexican writers recognized today in the Mexican literary landscape?

As someone who regularly visits Mexican literary festivals and also translates from the Spanish, I’ve observed the under-appreciation of indigenous writers firsthand. Mexico’s indigenous communities make up 10 to 14% of its total population, and you certainly don’t find anywhere near that percentage of literature being published in Mexico today. READ MORE…

Weekly News Roundup, 9th October 2015: Noble Nobel!

October 9, 2015  |  in News  |  by Patty Nash

This week's literary highlights from across the world.

Happy Friday, Asymptote pals! Unless your habitation is rock-like, you’ve probably heard this week’s biggest, most high-stakes literary news: the Nobel Prize in Literature has been announced, and this year’s honors go to Belarusian Svetlana Alexievich, journalist and prose writer recognized for her meticulous, “polyphonic literature of witness.” Alexievich was at the top of the betting pools, but for those not in-the-know, the Nobel Prize is again an excellent opportunity to discover another author (often through translation!). Voices from Chernobyl, translated by Keith Gessen, is of particular interest. But much of her work—which voices the unvoiced—remains as-of-yet untranslated. Here’s a helpful primer to her work. READ MORE…

What’s New in Translation? October 2015

October 8, 2015  |  in New in Translation, Reviews  |  by Alice Inggs, Beau Lowenstern, and Yardenne Greenspan

So many new translations this month! Here's what you need to know—from Asymptote's own.

Eugene Vodolazkin, Laurus (Oneworld Publishers, October 2015). Translated by Lisa C. Hayden—review by Beau Lowenstern, Editor-at-Large Australia

laurus

Laurus, the second novel by Russian writer Eugene Vodolazkin (after Solovyov and Larionov, due to appear in English in 2016), is in one breath, a timeless epic, trekking the well-trodden fields of faith, love, and the infinite depth of loss and search for meaning. In another, it is pointed, touching, and at times humorous, unpredictably straying from the path and leading readers along a wild chase through time, language, and medieval Europe. Winner of both the National Big Book Prize (Russia) and the Yasnaya Polyana Award, Vodolazkin’s experimental style envelopes the reader, drawing them into a world far from their own, yet indescribably intimate.

Spanning late fifteenth-century Russia to early twentieth-century Italy, the novel recounts the multiple lives (or stages of life) of a saint and the story of his becoming. Born Arseny in 1440, he is raised by his grandfather after his parents die from the plague that torments much of Russia and Europe. Recognising the boy’s gift for healing, his grandfather instills in him knowledge of healing and herbalism. Arseny aids the pestilence-stricken villagers, yet his powers of healing are overshadowed by his helplessness in preventing his grandfather’s death, as well as the passing of his beloved Ustina. Abandoning his village, past and namesake, Arseny begins a voyage that will transcend country and identity. Kaleidoscopic in his language and reach, Vodolazkin takes us on a journey of discovery and absolution, threaded together through the various, often mystical lives of Arseny as a healer, husband, holy fool, pilgrim and hermit. READ MORE…

What’s New with the Asymptote Team?

October 7, 2015  |  in News  |  by Katrine Øgaard Jensen

See what our team has been up to, outside of Asymptote!

Contributing editor Adrian West’s translation of Marianne Fritz’s The Weight of Things, which you might remember from the January 2014 issue of Asymptote, is now out from Dorothy. Adrian also recently wrote an essay about Marianne Fritz for the Paris Review blog, and a review of Michel Houellebecq’s Submission for the Quarterly Conversation. Furthermore, he had a story of his own published in gorse.

Drama editor Caridad Svich’s new play, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, has been featured in Broadway World. The play is based on the novel by Mario Vargas Llosa and directed by Jose Zayas. It premieres on October 10.

Contributing editor Ellen Elias-Bursac has been awarded The Mary Zirin Prize by the Association for Women in Slavic Studies. According to the judges’ citation, Ellen “serves a model for the important work, scholarly and socially, that committed independent scholars can achieve.” READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: from Godhavn by Iben Mondrup

October 6, 2015  |  in Translations  |  by Kerri Pierce

"I think we’ve got the origin of the world here. I have it in the cup.”

Knut stalks along the mountain. René should be here by now. Since his father had to work, his family stayed in Godhavn instead of going on vacation. Didn’t he see that Knut was back? He would’ve heard the helicopter, at any rate, as it flew over town.

They’d written to each other throughout the summer; a vacation is interminable without one’s friend around. Every day Knut ran to check the mailbox his father had installed next to the road when they reached the summer house in Denmark. Three letters, that was it. Thick envelopes, three or four pages each. Both boys used unruled paper, competing to see who could write the straightest lines. They’d never acknowledged it. Nonetheless, they both knew what was happening. René always won. READ MORE…

In Review: Ebola ’76 by Amir Tag Elsir

October 5, 2015  |  in Reviews  |  by Sawad Hussain

Sawad Hussain reviews a book with a spooky streak of prescience.

Ebola ’76, by Sudanese novelist Amir Tag Elsir (and exquisitely translated by Charis Bredin and Emily Danby) is a fictionalized account of the first historically documented Ebola virus outbreak that took place in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Sudan. Published in April of this year, it was undeniably a shrewd choice by Darf Publishers to release it now: the original Arabic edition was sent to the presses back in 2012, prior to the major West African outbreak. As such, one would be hard-pressed to argue that they were not immediately drawn to it by the title. READ MORE…

Weekly News Roundup, 2 October 2015: Genius, Granted

October 2, 2015  |  in News  |  by Patty Nash

This week's literary highlights from across the world.

Happy Friday, joyous Asymptote-rs! You’ve probably already heard of some of this year’s MacArthur Fellows (or “geniuses,” as we like to call them)—like the Atlantic‘s Ta-Nehisi Coates (most recently the author of Between the World and Me), or 10:04’s Ben Lerner (will he write his next book about the award?)—but the full list, which includes classicists, poets, chemists, and puppetry artists, is certainly worth a look.  READ MORE…