In Review: “The Librarian” by Mikhail Elizarov

April 28, 2015  |  in Reviews  |  by Isabel Lower

By turns absurdist, satirical, and downright funny: "The Librarian" takes a page from every book

 For the most part, The Librarian is a novel about a young man in quarter-life crisis named Alexei, who is thrust into the role of the fearless leader of a secret society that revolves around a collection of “magical” books.

Borrowing from many science fiction or fantasy novels, Mikhail Elizarov’s story, translated by Andrew Bromfield, begins with some world-building. In the tone of a dry, literary historian, the narrator relates the life of a fictional Soviet writer named Gromov. To the uninitiated reader, Gromov’s books are merely badly-penned propagandist fiction, in which “Good triumphed with excruciating regularity.” Under the right conditions, however, they cause readers to become enraptured, band together, and carry out alarming acts of violence. READ MORE…

Swedish Camels

April 27, 2015  |  in Essays  |  by André Naffis-Sahely

An ignoble literary translator’s journal by André Naffis-Sahely

We were driving along the Sheikh Zayed Road from Abu Dhabi to Dubai, a hundred and fifty kilometres of desert back then unmarked by a single building or feature from one city limit to the next. It was the mid-1990s, and my father, an architect, had just relocated the family to the United Arab Emirates, where we joined the tribe of impermanent aliens that constitute over eighty-five percent of the country’s population and workforce. At the top of this pyramid: the Emaratis themselves, former Bedouins who shuffled back and forth between town houses and their farms in distant oases in their 4x4s, safely ensconced behind blackened glass. The couple of decades since the oil crisis in 1973 had seen the establishment of one of the world’s most lavish welfare states, whereby Emaratis were being gradually etherized with “sit-down money”—an expensive version of what has also befallen Australia’s Aborigines, among others—meaning that if your grandfather had once lived in a tent and dined on dates, bread, and salted fish, attuning his life to the rhythm of the sea and the sands, you would instead have gone to Yale on a scholarship and found a managerial post at some state-owned corporation waiting for you on your return; you might never go to the office, but that wouldn’t get in the way of your salary, your house, your satellite television. It all happened in the space of a single generation.

It was either our second or third weekend excursion to Dubai, but this one was special. My father had promised me a rare sight: a Swedish camel. They were blonde and had blue eyes, but you couldn’t inspect their irises up close, as they were even grumpier than your average camel and would probably tear away a finger or two. My father’s warning left a vivid impression. I spent the two-hour trip with my nose glued to the window as my father pointed out three or four of the beasts, barely visible in the blurry distance. “Are they really blonde?”—“Yes!”—“And blue-eyed?”—“Yes!”—“Why did they leave Sweden?”—“Because it was cold!”

*

READ MORE…

Weekly News Roundup, 24th April 2015: Don’t Do This Title

April 24, 2015  |  in News  |  by Patty Nash

This week's literary highlights from across the world

Happy Friday, Asymptote readers! We say this every week, but perhaps some new vocabulary might spice up your reading experience. We can certainly say that for short stories—steer clear from these overused titles (I’ve certainly read at least five pieces titled “Hunger”).

So many of us battle with the canon—or struggle against it. At the Millions, a piece about reading (and not-exactly re-reading) Russian behemoth’s epic literary tome, War and Peace (wonder what translation she was using?). In present tense, Joseph Brodsky is still making waves: here’s a look at his bestselling biography. And finally, if contemporary Russian literature’s more your thing, be sure to check out this bloggin’ run-down of recent Russian book prizes. READ MORE…

London Translation Marathon

April 23, 2015  |  in Dispatches  |  by Julia Sherwood

A dispatch from the 2015 London Book Fair from Slovak literary translator Julia Sherwood

I’m still recovering from last week, chockablock with translation-related events all over London, mostly connected to the 2015 London Book Fair. This huge book marketplace can be overwhelming, and the constant talk of books as commodities rather depressing, but 3 days of panel discussions at the Literary Translation Centre provided a safe haven from the hustle and bustle, as well as a great opportunity to meet fellow translators and publishers. All the panel discussions were recorded and the videos will be available on the LBF website.

The UK Translators Association kicked off the marathon on 13 April, before the book fair even began, with Translating Around the World, a day-long seminar covering a range of topics, including a comparison of translator organisation models and translation rates in the UK, US, France, and the Netherlands; opportunities for translator training; advice on contracts, working with literary agencies, and networking with other translators (through organizations such as the Emerging Translators Network in the UK, Emerging Literary Translators Network America and—particularly interesting for those who, like Asymptote staff, are scattered around the world—the Translators Association Diaspora). “Arseholes, douchebags and wankers” made an appearance in the last, highly entertaining session entitled “Bloody aubergine or goddam eggplant?”, which compared and contrasted British and U.S. English versions of three texts from Spanish, French, and Polish.

READ MORE…

New in Translation: 33 Days by Léon Werth

April 22, 2015  |  in Reviews  |  by Yardenne Greenspan

“I recount the lowly; I tell, in the immensity of this war, the stories of insects.“

Every year, as Holocaust Memorial Day approaches, my husband and I begin looking for a film, a book, or an article with which to commemorate the day. Each year this tradition becomes more challenging and more exciting, as we move away from Hollywood epics and into the realm of small-scale, private stories. As I grow older and my mind expands, I become more interested in the minutia of this enormous tragedy: what people talked about, what mundane things preoccupied their minds, what made them laugh.

In his memoir 33 Days, Léon Werth chronicles the time he and his wife spent on the road fleeing Paris during the Fall of France in 1940. They move between farmhouses and through blockaded roads. They worry for their teenage son, who has left earlier with friends. They pilfer whatever remains in empty homes and abandoned vehicles, and sleep on hay bales. They are at war, but not in the Holocaust. They are Jews who do not yet know what their identity will come to mean.

READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: Four Poems by Abraham Sutzkever

April 21, 2015  |  in Translations  |  by Maia Evrona

Translated from the Yiddish by Maia Evrona

An Acorn Gives Birth to a Tree, the Tree Gives Birth to a Fiddle

 

An acorn gives birth to tree, the tree gives birth to a fiddle

and you give birth to my star, so the night will be true.

You give birth to it far from here, its light belongs to me and to you,

you give birth to it where no leaf fades, nor anyone’s smile.

 

We haven’t been of this world for a score of silences now,

a heroic cosmos will not allow our joint death.

The earthly, the real, is real as earth and valid

and death no longer has any power over our breath.

 

His kingdom does not extend to the green Tree of Life,

what is past has not passed, time is not yet ripe.

Escaped from the clamor, our silence is love,

new images stream from the weeping eye of the soul.

 

The paired twitch of two silences in one

approaches perfection on a rung of its own.

This wonder-without-a-name tells of its deeds,

the language of atoms has a folksong’s simplicity.

*****

READ MORE…

Women, Cooking

April 20, 2015  |  in Essays, Food and Literature  |  by Nina Sparling

On women, place, and nourishment

I have never been able to cook from Madeline Kamman’s When French Women Cook. I read the recipes and my mouth waters: noisettes de porc au pruneaux from Claire in Touraine and tarte à l’orange from Magaly in Provence. Yet I cannot convince myself to cook them. The lists of ingredients appear too systematic for food that has more to do with familiarity and wisdom than measurement.

The herbs in my fridge have spent too long away from the earth, the red ocean perch far too many hours out-of-water. The stage is wrong: a railroad apartment in West Harlem with dusty windowsills and dreamed-of copper pots could never measure up to a grandmother’s worn-in kitchen. I dream of meeting these women, listening to them, absorbing their habits and tricks. More than their food, I want their knowledge. READ MORE…

Weekly News Roundup, 17th April 2015: International Excellence!

April 17, 2015  |  in News  |  by Patty Nash

This week's literary highlights from across the world

Happy Friday, Asymptote friends! We’ve announced it on the blog already, but still can’t stop celebrating at Asymptote having won the London Book Fair’s International Excellence Award for International Literary Translation Achievement. After Indiegogo campaigns, calls for submissions, and projects spanning the entire globe in words, it feels good to be honored.

The prize—and big-time book event in London—couldn’t come at a better time, especially with the slightly disheartening release of translation statistics in the United Kingdom via Literature Across Frontiers. And at the NYBlog, Tim Parks asks if there simply is too much published fiction nowadays—one thing is certain: there isn’t enough translated literature in the English-speaking biblioglobe (not in the slightest!). And if we’re going to data-analyze the literary scene, why not the literature itself? Here’s how computer-driven literary analysis is changing (and how it’s still limited). READ MORE…

Working Title: The Importance of Being Titled

April 16, 2015  |  in Essays  |  by Anna Aslanyan

A new column on titling things in translation

“What do I call it though?” My friend was quick with her response: “What about Déjà Vu?” “Yeah, that would make a great title,” I sighed, “but it’s already been used for an Italian edition. That would be plagiarism.” The book we were trying to christen was Remainder, by Tom McCarthy. Having translated the novel into Russian on spec, I had just heard from Ad Marginem, a Moscow-based publisher: they liked it and wanted to publish it; I went over the text and was happy with it; the only thing missing was a decent title. “Остаток”, the Russian word for “remainder”, wouldn’t do: although it captured the main meaning—what remains, is left over or still to come—it sounded feebler than the original, didn’t have the same ring to it.

When you are about to start translating a piece of writing, even a straightforward one, like a bus timetable, you may be excused for not having a working title in mind, but when you get to the end you are reasonably expected to have come up with some idea. You should know by then what the original title is meant to reflect: the contents of the book, the zeitgeist, practicalities of publishing, the author’s stance or something else. As a translator, you should also realise that your task is not to translate the title into a different language, but into a different culture that, apart from its linguistic aspect, has many other dimensions. This applies not just to the title, of course, but also to the entire work, be it an avant-garde novel or a pudding recipe, a love poem or a price list. READ MORE…

Asymptote Honored at London Book Fair 2015

April 15, 2015  |  in News  |  by Rosie Clarke

Spoiler alert: we won the International Translation Initiative Award!

Greetings from sunny London!

This week is shaping up to be very exciting for Asymptote, as yesterday evening we were honoured with the 2015 London Book Fair’s International Literary Translation Initiative Award. This is undoubtedly a very momentous occasion for us, both personally and professionally, as this prestigious prize recognizes excellence in the field of literary translation, awarded to an organisation that has  “succeeded in raising the profile of literature in translation, promoting literary translators, and encouraging new translators and translated works.” Not only is this the first time a Singaporean organization has been honored at the London Book Fair, but also the first time Singapore has been represented altogether. READ MORE…

An Interview With Epigram Books

April 15, 2015  |  in Interviews  |  by Pooja Makhijani

Children's literature takes on translation, too

Epigram Books is a Singaporean independent publisher best known for the middle-grade series The Diary of Amos Lee, translations of Singapore’s Cultural Medallion winners, and new editions of out-of-print classic Singaporean novels. Epigram Books also publishes children’s picture books, plays, graphic novels and cookbooks. 

Nearly fifteen percent of Epigram Books’ list is works in translation and its list of picture books, the Stories from Around The World series, features contemporary titles handpicked by Publisher and CEO Edmund Wee. Most recently, Epigram Books translated The Little Kangaroo by Guido van Genechten (from Dutch) and Hurry Up, Slow Down by Isabel Minhós Martins and illustrated by Bernardo Carvalho (from Portuguese) to English.

I spoke to Wee in Epigram Books’ Toa Payoh office.

How did Epigram Books’ Stories from Around the World series start?

Epigram Books wanted to introduce English-language books that were not books from the U.S. or the U.K. to Singaporean readers. 

Once I started looking at books published in other languages, I discovered so many good ones! Obviously, I couldn’t bring them all to this market, so I selected a few, found translators in Singapore, and released our first titles. READ MORE…

Translation Tuesday: “The Seafarer,” from the Book of Exodus

April 14, 2015  |  in Translations  |  by Spenser Santos

Translated from the Old English by Spenser Santos

The Seafarer 

 

May I utter truth for myself,

to say of trials, how in the times of toil

I often withstood wearisome times,

bitter breastcare, how I have bided,

come to know on a ship, abode of much care,

the terrible seawave’s rolling often held me there,

anxious nightwatch at the boat’s prow,

when it pitched against cliffs. Pinched by cold

were my feet, frostbound

with cold fetters, there the sighs of care

were hot around the heart; hunger tore from within

the mereweary mood. That the man,

to whom the most pleasant on earth befalls, knows not

how I, wretched and sorrowful, on the ice-cold sea

dwelled in winter in the paths of an exile,

bereft of beloved kinsmen and

hung with icicles; hail flew in showers.

There I heard naught but the sea to roar,

the frigid wave. Sometimes the swan’s song

did I take for entertainment, the gannet’s cry

and curlew’s sound for men’s laughter,

the seagull’s singing for mead.

Storms there beat the stony cliffs, where

the tern, the icy-feathered one, answers him,

very often the eagle screamed round about,

the dewy-feathered one; not any protecting kinsmen

could comfort the wretched spirit. READ MORE…

Weekly News Roundup, 10th April 2015: BTBA vs. VIDA vs. IFFP?

April 10, 2015  |  in News  |  by Patty Nash

This week's literary highlights from across the world

Happy Friday! The time has finally arrived for the Best Translated Book Award longlist… After weeks of blog- and social-media hype, both the fiction and poetry longlists have been announced, and we can’t say we aren’t impressed! The lineup includes, among others, several Asymptote friends, like Faces in the Crowd author and blog contributor, Mexican writer Valeria Luiselli, blog interviewee and Translation Tuesday featurette Danish author Naja Marie Aidt, deceased Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal (featured in another Translation Tuesday dedication), Chinese interviewee and Nobel-deserving Can Xue, and many, many more. It’s definitely worth taking a peek through the list—I’ve no idea how the judges managed to narrow it down (at Three Percent, Chad Post laments the books he thought would make it—but didn’t), nor how they’ll be able to pick a winner from such a strong group.  READ MORE…

Saudade and the Untranslatable

April 9, 2015  |  in Essays  |  by Emily Wolfteich

Emily Wolfteich asks: Does untranslatable mean unattainable?

It began with a tattoo—or, rather, the idea for one. Small, I thought, with narrow script like the scratch of an EKG, on the back of my neck or perhaps my shoulder blade. Beauty in simplicity. It was the first tattoo I had ever considered; I needed something that had meaning to me, and this word in particular—this untranslatable word meant to evoke rather than merely name, to be felt rather than read—was as familiar to me as if I’d always known it.

The definition of saudade is as varied as its definers, and the latter span miles and centuries. Most understand it as a sense of sweet nostalgia for someone, or something, that one has lost and may never find again. Manuel de Melo called it “a pleasure you suffer, an ailment you enjoy.” Saudade describes the lingering losses from the past, whether they be people left behind or times of our lives that we are loath to forget, and the bittersweet pleasure of those memories. It describes a thousand nuances of the same state of being. More than nostalgia; less than yearning. And very, very Portuguese. Maybe, in fact, too Portuguese for me to own it.

What do we mean when we say that a word is untranslatable? Do we mean that it’s inaccessible? The idea of translation is that we can convey meaning from one language to another, but that’s of course not always so simple. Many languages have their own words that lack direct translations—the French have retrouvailles, the idea of finding someone again after a long time, and the Germans amusingly have verschlimmbessern, a verb that means to make something worse while trying to improve it. It’s not that we can’t explain these words—only that it will take us a bit more time.

READ MORE…