Posts filed under 'alta'

Sponsored Post: Register for the American Literary Translators Association’s Virtual Programming, ALTA45!

ALTA is hosting an exciting series of virtual programming exploring literary translation. View the full schedule of events and register today!

Dates: April – November 2022

For aspiring, to mid-career, to seasoned translators, the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) has something for you!

Now through November 2022, ALTA is hosting an exciting series of virtual programming exploring literary translation. View the full schedule of events and register today!

At ALTA45, you can:

  • Learn from twice-monthly panels and roundtables on literary translation, such as:
    • Overthrowing the Idea of the Mother Tongue
    • Words that Get Off the Page: Translating for the Stage and the Page
    • Translating Children’s Literature: Values, Norms, and Ethics
    • …and many others!
  • Listen to monthly Bilingual Readings, where translators present new and exciting work in translation
  • See a staged reading of a play in translation held in Tucson, AZ in the fall
  •  …and much more!

How to register: Purchase an All-Access Registration which includes access to all 2022 events. All-Access Registration is $75 at the standard rate, and $150 at the Pay-it-Forward Rate, while single event tickets are $10 per event. Either purchase your All-Access Registration here, or browse all the events and purchase a single event ticket for each panel, roundtable, or reading.

ALTA is excited to welcome attendees from all over the world to take part in these events for ALTA45! What are you waiting for? Check out the full schedule and register today!

The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) supports the work of literary translators, advances the art of literary translation, and serves translators, and the students, teachers, publishers, and readers of literature in translation. Find out how to become a member here.

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Sponsored Post: Join ALTA for a German-English Translation Slam on September 30!

Take a peek inside the translation process—and the fact that different translations can be equally valid!

This International Translation Day, come join the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) for a lively, interactive event, where translators and non-translators alike get a peek inside the translation process—and the fact that different translations can be equally valid. 

Two translators, Didem Uca and Jon Cho-Polizzi, will arrive having independently completed an English translation of the same German poem by Keça Filankes. They’ll read their translations, and then describe their choices, as well as cultural and linguistic aspects of the original poem. Which parts of each version will you prefer? Are there other possible translations that you might suggest? During the reading and conversation moderated by David Gramling, you’ll be invited to offer your own suggestions in the chat, and the event will conclude with a live Q&A.

Thursday, September 30  ⧫  10-11am Pacific Time

Register here

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This free, virtual event kicks off the 44th annual ALTA conference, ALTA44: Inflection Points. To watch and take part in the Translation Slam, register at InEvent, our online conference platform, where you can select a “Free – Special Event Access” ticket to watch this event for free. Or, join us for the entire conference, which is taking place online on October 15-17 and in-person in Tucson, Arizona on November 11-13, by purchasing a paid ticket.

This event is a collaboration between ALTA and SAND journal and is sponsored by Wunderbar Together. It is part of the Arizona Translates! series and is affiliated with the Tucson Humanities Festival at the University of Arizona.

Asymptote Podcast: International Blacknesses

Poet and comparatist Aaron Coleman on translation as a tool for making vivid the relationships between Afro-descendants around the world

“I felt myself in translation all the time.”

Podcast Editor Layla Benitez-James sits down via Google Hangouts with poet and translator Aaron Coleman in this third and final installment of interviews inspired by John Keene’s essay Translating Poetry, Translating Blackness. In October’s conversation with Keene and our previous podcast with Lawrence Schimel, we explored the more radical social possibilities of translation. Our discussion continues with Coleman, a Fulbright Scholar and recipient of the 2017 Philip K. Jansen Memorial Fellowship, awarded to outstanding translators of color. He joins us to talk about his studies in international Blacknesses, interpreting on the red carpet at the MTV Music Awards in Madrid, and playing basketball in Extremadura. Tune in for this and much, much more!

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What’s New with the Crew? A Monthly Update

Delve into the latest literary news from our ever-industrious Asymptote crew!

Apart from working hard on the Fall 2018 Issue, Asymptote staff have also been busy making waves in the literary world. Join us in celebrating their achievements!

Poetry Editor Aditi Machado published a chapbook, Prologue Emporium, with Garden-Door Press. She also discussed her editorial work at Asymptote and her translation of Farid Tali’s Prosopopoeia with the Wash U Translators Collective.

Communications Manager Alexander Dickow reviewed From the Files of the Immanent Foundation by Norman Finkelstein for Rain Taxi.

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Mid-autumn News from the Asymptote Team

From poetry to graph theory to dance, we've been keeping busy.

Poetry Editor Aditi Machado‘s poem ‘Route: Desert’ was recently published in Poor Claudia.

Drama Editor Caridad Svich‘s new play, Archipelagopremieres in the UK on 24th November at the Lighthouse in Poole, directed by Stephen Wrentmore. Her essay, ‘Six Hundred and Ninety-Two Million: On Art, Ethics and Activism’ recently appeared on Howlround.

Romania and Moldova Editor-at-Large Chris Tanasescu, aka MARGENTO, co-authored an academic article on artificial intelligence with Bryan Paget and Diana Inkpen that has recently been published in the Journal of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. This is part of an ongoing research project, The Graph Poem, led by MARGENTO that applies graph theory to poetry computational analysis and poetry composition or generation.

Contributing Editor Ellen Elias-Bursac‘s translation of Hotel Tito by Ivana Bodrožić will be published by Seven Stories Press. Read an exclusive excerpt in Asymptote‘s Spring Issue! She has also just been elected Vice-President of the American Literary Translators’ Association.

Assistant Editor K.T. Billey, who also edited Asymptote‘s recent Special Feature on Canadian Poetry, has three new poems in the latest issue of the Denver Quarterly

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What’s New With the Asymptote Team

We've been keeping busy!

Contributing Editor Anthony Shugaar has been shortlisted for the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA)’s Italian Prose in Translation Award 2016. The winner will be announced at ALTA’s annual conference in Oakland from October 6 to October 9.

Contributing Editor Ellen Elias-Bursac’s new co-translation of Noemi Jaffe’s novel from the Portuguese, What Are The Blind Men Dreaming?, was published on September 20 by Deep Vellum and featured in Words Without Borders’ watch list for the month.

Criticism Editor Ellen Jones spoke at the British Library’s annual International Translation Day event. She and fellow panellists Simon Coffey, Elin Jones, and Fiona Sampson responded to the question, ‘What does multilingual creativity mean for translators?’ and Ellen discussed her experiences editing Asymptote’s Special Features on Multilingual Writing in 2015 and 2016, as well as her own research.

Commissioning Editor J.S. Tennant was interviewed for The Guardian’s recent feature on Fiction in Translation, on the state of world literature and translated book sales in the UK.

Editor-at-Large for Slovakia Julia Sherwood’s new co-translation of Uršuľa Kovalyk’s novel The Equestrienne will be launched on October 6 at Waterstones Piccadilly in London.

Editor-at-Large for the UK Megan Bradshaw, who organized Asymptote’s International Translation Day celebration in London last week, will be chairing a conversation with the prolific Japanese author and translator Mitsuyo Kakuta on October 26 at the Japan Foundation in London.

Assistant Managing Editor Sam Carter’s new translation of the Spanish poet Benito del Pliego’s collection Fábula/Fable (bilingual edition, Díaz Grey Editores) launched at a McNally Jackson event in New York on September 16.

Finally, Chief Executive Assistant Theophilus Kwek’s essay on writing about history and difference in poetry was published by The Lonely Crowd on September 25. Some of his poems were published in the latest issues of The London Magazine and The North.

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Weekly News Roundup, 6 November 2015: Top Notch, Middle Notch

Highlights, lowlights, and mid-lights in literary news from around the world.

Happy Friday, Asymptote. Hard to believe a week has already passed since the American Literary Translators Association conference in Tucson, Arizona—but it has, and the National Translation Award-winners have been announced: prose honors went to William M. Hutchins’s translation from the Arabic of The New Waw: Saharan Oasis, and Pierre Joris’s iteration of the later poems of famed German poet Paul Celan—collected in an edition titled Breathturn into Timestead—won the poetry bid.

Meanwhile, the Lucien Stryk Prize, which focuses on Asian-language translations, went to Eleanor Goldman, who snagged top prose honors for her translation of Something Crosses my Mind by Wang Xiaoni, translated from the Chinese (be sure to read some of Goodman’s Wang Xiaoni translations in our July 2014 issue here!). And the Italian Prose in Translation Award went to Anne Milano Appel, for her translation of Blindly, by Claudio Magris. Congrats to all!

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Weekly News Roundup, 30th October 2015: New City, Neustadt

This week's literary highlights from across the world

Hi Friday! Greetings from Tucson, Arizona, which is hosting this year’s American Literary Translators Association conference. Both blog editors Katrine and Patty are in attendance, and happy to tan, talk translation, eat tacos, meet Asymptote‘s long list of contributors and staff, and fangirl about all things lit-related. How exciting that the winners of the National Translation Awards are being announced right as this blog post is being written—stay tuned on this page if you’d like on-the-minute updates, or poke around this corner of the web next week! We’ll be sure to give a full report.

Although the American translation world has stopped for ALTA, translation never sleeps in the other corners of the world. And new issues in translation, globalization, and migration also make room for new terminology: here’s how the concept of “fourth-world” literature can provide opportunities for translating the voicelessREAD MORE…

What’s up with ALTA?

A dispatch from one of literary translation's biggest gatherings

I came back from the American Literary Translators Association conference with plenty of memories and anecdotes. This was my first visit to Milwaukee, and I hardly saw any of the city: that’s how appealing the panels, readings, and after-hours activities were.

I got to know the interior of the Hilton City Center pretty well as I moved from readings to panels to award ceremonies to never-ending discussions over delicious local beer. I was moved by the different styles and languages of ALTA fellows, including our former assistant editor Megan Berkobien (Catalan). I was deeply inspired by the innovation of the ongoing bilingual reading sessions, where I envisioned Scandinavian hospital scenes translated by Roger Greenwald, a Russian animal revolution translated by Tanya Paperny, and a Sophocles play by Kayne Cheshire reimagined in the American West.

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Weekly News Roundup, 14th November 2014: Finish Your Books, Discover New Things

This week's literary highlights from across the world

If you’re reading this, chances are you’re Internet-savvy (or at least Internet-literate, which is an appealing almost-rhyme—so you’re a poet, too). And those who use the Internet know what “clickbait” is, or think they do—but it may be time to rethink what that coinage actually means. (Speaking of regrettable words: Time Magazine has a poll asking readers what words/phrases they’d like to ban from the English language—and the word “feminist” is in the list. Seriously?!). While the Internet allows us to look back and cringe at photos, messages, and comments of yesteryear and today, prolific authors are rarely asked to do the same. Here are six authors (including Philip Roth, Asymptote friend Lydia Davis, and Junot Díaz) on some of their earliest work.

Famed French OULIPO member Georges Perec may no longer be living, but a recently discovered manuscript lets readers uncover more of his infuriatingly clever work: A Portrait of a Man was found inside a closet and hits the English-language market this week, thanks to a translation by none other than David Bellos. Yet more literature resurfaces: from famed American writer John Steinbeck, a story read by Orson Welles on radio never reached print—until now. And fans of tragic Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (including yours truly), rejoice: nineteen new poems of his have been uncovered. Now you might understand his tragedy! Finally, Holocaust survivor and Polish memoirist Mary Berg’s archival scrapbooks and journals have surfaced, shedding new light on a lifetime marked by trauma.

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