Posts filed under 'multilingual feature'

Summer 2016: In-Between Times

How can we get past a feeling of being shipwrecked among the intensity of our selves?

After our first mention in The New York Times in June 2015 (which merely notes that there is a real-life counterpart to the journal by the name of “Asymptote” in Alena Smith’s drama), April 2016 sees our second mention and two key members stepping down. The departure of Senior Editor Florian—a friend from my time at The New School whose support has been a great source of strength for me, personally—is a great setback. But April 2016 also ushers in our first-ever monthly report, a two-page summary of each month’s activities which I’ll make available to the public for the first time here. Designed by Theophilus Kwek to be easily skimmed, this internal report not only records Asymptote‘s progress across the board each month, but also represents my commitment to transparency of the magazine’s financials. After all, as any serious dieter knows, tracking stats that matter is the way to go. A quick glance reveals that we spent $1,798 (all figures in USD) in total over April, while only $247 has come in through small donations and the sale of one publicity package. This means that over the month of April, Asymptote has bled $1,551 (which I cover either with funds previously raised or out of my own pocket). For the first three monthly reports (i.e., from April to June 2016), these figures do not yet include wages for Asymptote‘s only full-time team member (i.e., me). It is only in July 2016, exactly six years after I conceived the journal and opened a tab in my name that would add up to 70,000 USD while also foregoing a full-time salary all these years, that I begin to stipulate my own remuneration. This obviously doesn’t change the fact that monthly incoming funds are still a trickle compared to monthly outgoing funds, but at least it sets up a proper accounting as to how much I am being owed by my own organization. Here to introduce our Summer 2016 issue—possibly our most diverse ever, with 34 countries being represented and featuring additional translations into Albanian, Bengali, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, French, Greek, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Slovak, and Tamil—is Assistant Editor Andreea Scridon.

What are our human perceptions made of? Water. Our nervous systems, the machineries of feeling, float in a quiet, dark world of water. Our most dramatic moments—at least in terms of development—take place in amniotic fluid. This quasi-godlike and continuous source of life is a trope that never runs dry. Yet in addition to its undeniable positive qualities, it makes for an inevitable metaphor for inner turmoil: after all, doesn’t turbulence stem from an aquatic scenario? The idea of fluidity, increasingly present in a contemporary world with an unstable future, further complicates things.

On the subject of “in-between times”, after finishing university a friend described herself as feeling as though she’d been soaked and left out in the sun to dry. Yet for a good writer (the kind I’d like to be), anxieties of this sort can acquire a kaleidoscopic quality on the page. How do we anchor ourselves to the world? How can we get past a feeling of being shipwrecked among the intensity of our selves? Can we even psychologically approach that which seems beyond our conception and our control? Finding myself too drenched by such ruminations to draw any conclusions, I turned to the varied readings of Asymptote’s Summer 2016 Issue. READ MORE…

Blog Editors’ Highlights: Summer 2018

Our blog editors pick their favorite pieces from the Summer 2018 issue!

Here at the blog, we continue to be amazed by the breadth of the material featured every quarter at Asymptote. From our multilingual special feature to the urgent work of Lebanese artist Mounira Al Solh, who wanted to “recollect. . . Syria through the stories of the people,” and to “live its diversity,” our Summer 2018 issue again proves that incredibly groundbreaking material is being produced far from the centers of Anglo-American literary dominance. Gathering new work from thirty-one countries, this bountiful issue, also our milestone thirtieth, unfolds under the sign of the traveler “looking for [himself] in places [he doesn’t] recognize” (Antonin Artaud). Highlights include pioneer of modern Chinese poetry Duo Duo, Anita Raja on Christa Wolf, and rising Argentinian star Pablo Ottonello in a new translation by the great Jennifer Croft. Today, the blog editors share our favorite pieces from the new issue, highlighting the diversity of cultures, languages, and literary style represented. Happy reading! 

Perhaps because of my fascination with multilingual writing and the languages of mixed cultures, I was immediately drawn to the multilingual writing special feature in this issue of the journal. Shamma Al Bastaki’s “from House to House | بيت لبيت” in particular dazzles with its polyphonic quality.

Bastaki’s three poems (“House to House,” “Clay II,” and “Barjeel”) refuse singularity, whether in terms of form, language, or register. Different voices call out from the text of each poem and are brilliantly rendered alongside an audio clip of sounds from interviews conducted by Bastaki herself. (I would recommend listening to the clips before or during your reading of the piece!) The poems are inspired by and based on the oral narratives of the peoples of the Dubai Creek, but speak also to a modern global phenomenon of language mixing and syntax shifting that many around the world will relate to. I enjoyed what Bastaki terms “severe enjambments”—defamiliarizing what is otherwise standard English syntax, creating an instructive experience for native speakers.

Form and language aside, “from House to House” in particular reminded me of the communal nature of colloquial language—the speech that we are most familiar with in our daily lives, and that which we use with our families. To present them in poetry is an attempt to memorialize what is so near and dear to us. The context of Eid is especially well suited to this project, and to the issue’s timing as a whole, in celebration of Eid just past in June. “Barjeel” on the other hand, reminds me of poetry looking back on childhood (Thomas Hood’s “I Remember, I Remember” comes to mind) and on the things that seemed so big then. The Emirati influences and polyphony of “Barjeel” take that idea and renew it—demonstrating how reflection often is not a solipsistic affair, but very often one that takes place with family, parents telling children of their childhood pasts.

—Chloe Lim

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Announcing the Summer 2018 Issue of Asymptote

Introducing our thirtieth issue, which gathers never-before-published work from 31 countries!

We interrupt our regular programming to announce the launch of Asymptote’s Summer 2018 issue!

Step into our bountiful Summer edition to “look for [yourself] in places [you] don’t recognize” (Antonin Artaud). Hailing from thirty-one countries and speaking twenty-nine languages, this season’s rich pickings blend the familiar with the foreign: Sarah Manguso and Jennifer Croft (co-winner, with Olga Tokarczuk, of this year’s Man Booker International Prize) join us for our thirtieth issue alongside Anita Raja, Duo Duo, and Intizar Husain, and our first work from the Igbo in the return of our Multilingual Writing Feature.

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5 Must-Reads from Our October Issue!

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…

Translation Tuesday: “Mal Paso” by Hugo López Araiza Bravo

Spanish/French/English—a multilingual Translation Tuesday, translated by criticism editor Ellen Jones



Select translation:

“But why do you want to go to Haiti?” they asked her in Santo Domingo. “You crazy?”

She only smiled like a naïve foreigner, mumbled something about a sociolinguistic interest in the borderlands, and went out of the department with her Lotman under her arm. While she waited for the bus to the coach station she looked over the timetable that her classmates had reluctantly given her. It was going to take the whole day. The first thing she had to do was leave the city by the Carretera Sánchez.

“I’m only going as far as Barahona,” the driver warned her when he heard where she was going. “From there, you’re on your own.”

She didn’t mind. She sat on the left hand side so she could say goodbye to the sea; she fixed her eyes on the waves while the vehicle moved over the concrete. The blue was giving way little by little to green. When nothing but mountains was visible, she fell asleep. She woke up just in time to see the Arco del Triunfo.

She had a hard time finding someone to take her the rest of the way. Finally she ended up with a lorry driver whose job was to supply sugar cane to the city’s sugar factory. He was loading his vehicle with big water bottles.

“There’s not enough water over there,” he explained. “I’m going to make more on this trip than I make in a month going back and forth like crazy.”

They set off when the driver was sure that he’d made use of every cubic metre of his hold. They left the city behind and went into the sugar plantations. The lorry’s cabin shook with a wave of vituperation against the sugar industry. How they were worked from sun up to sun down. How bateyes still existed. How people were dying from machete wounds. How even after everything slavery still persisted, it’s just that now they called it minimum wage. Then the Laguna del Rincón appeared, and the criticism was directed towards uncontrolled fishing and the loss of heritage as a result of greed.

“They extract gypsum from that mountain,” he concluded signaling towards the other side. “Don’t get me started on the mines.”

She didn’t. She wasn’t about to get involved in ethical debates with a man who was trying to sell water at the price of mercury to the victims of an earthquake. Besides, enough people had confided in her their misfortunes for her to know that all of Latin America was singing from the same song sheet: each country had its own versions of the same general ills.

They stopped in Duvergé for something to eat: rice and pigeon peas. As soon as their plates were clean her companion stood up.

“We’ve got to get to Jimaní before nightfall: it’ll be hard to find somewhere to spend the night.”

They could barely make out the city when it became clear that something was out of the ordinairy. It was seething. For the second biggest cité in the municipalité, there were too many people. And people in the streets. They had to réduice their speed to avoid running someone over. They soon understood that they were principalment refugees. They stopped in front of a house d’aspect humble.

“They’re distant relatives” her guide excused himself. “Tomorrow you can go to the border. It’s only two kilometres away.”

She passéd the nuit on a pallet in the cuisine.

She sortied early, with only a piece of manioc in her estomac. She calculated that she’d have to marche for three quarts of an hour. The streets were as full as the précéding nuit. The soldats from the Fortaleza looked suspicieusely at the people going past. She commenced to move between the multitudes, parfaitly aware that she was swimming à countercurrent. Quand she left the last houses behind, the route became more sauvage. Elle décida to walk on one side so it would be more facile to mouve. Those who were coming in the opposée direction looked like they hadn’t eaten in days. They came with almost zéro, with seulely the robes they were wearing quand tout had se passé. On her right était the Étang Saumâtre, et elle imagina that if the dominicain gouvernment had not permetted the réfugiés to entrer, these waters would now be full de illegaux swimming pour their survie.

Elle could déjà see Mal Paso. Le nom was apt: négliged constructions that spat out misérables, infernal portes. She made her way à travers the réfugiés et entréed a totalement chaótique square. There were pleine de gens en the mouve, here et là camions could be seen, still trying to continuer with their commerce. Among them were the improviséd campements for those who still pensaient que they pourraient retourn. Elle parcrossed le perimetre lentement, completely submergéed. Vraiment Mallepasse. Elle vint more proche à la frontière. Un point de contrôle de Casques Bleus garded le passage.

“Eh! La fille!”, lui hurla l’un des soldats. “Tu peux pas passer! Rien que de l’aide internationale y peut traverser! C’est pas du tourisme, une catastrophe pareille!”

Elle resta immobile. De l’autre côté, elle vit l’Ayiti. Tout te sanble diferan de lót bò a.

 

–¿Pero por qué tú quieres ir a Haití? –le preguntaron en Santo Domingo–. ¿Estarás tú loca?

Ella sólo sonrió cual extranjera ingenua, balbució algo sobre el interés sociolingüístico de la frontera y salió de la facultad con su Lotman bajo el brazo. Mientras esperaba la guagua hacia la central de autobuses repasó el itinerario que a regañadientes le habían dado sus compañeros. Le iba a ocupar todo el día. Lo primero que tenía que hacer era salir de la ciudad por la Carretera Sánchez.

–Yo voy sólo hasta Barahona –le advirtió el conductor cuando se enteró de su destino–. A partir de ahí, se ampara sola.

No le importó. Se sentó del lado izquierdo para poder despedirse del mar; clavó los ojos en las olas mientras la máquina avanzaba por el concreto. El azul fue cediendo poco a poco al verde. Cuando no se distinguía más que monte, cayó dormida. Despertó justo a tiempo para ver el Arco del Triunfo.

Le costó trabajo encontrar quién la llevara el resto del camino. Finalmente dio con un camionero encargado de abastecer de caña al ingenio de la ciudad. Estaba cargando su vehículo con garrafones.

–Allá hace falta el agua –explicó–. Voy a hacer más con este viaje de lo que gano en un mes dando vueltas como loco.

Partieron cuando el conductor estuvo seguro de que cada metro cúbico de su caja estaba aprovechado. Dejaron detrás la ciudad y se adentraron en los cañaverales. La cabina del camión se removió con un vendaval de vituperios al sistema azucarero. Que se trabajaba de sol a sol. Que seguía existiendo la raya. Que la gente moría de una herida de machete. Que después de todo se mantenía la esclavitud, aunque ahora le dijeran salario mínimo. Entonces emergió la Laguna del Rincón, y la queja se dirigió hacia la pesca indiscriminada y la pérdida del patrimonio por culpa de la avaricia.

–De ese monte sacan yeso –concluyó señalando hacia el otro lado–. No me haga comenzar con las minas.

No lo hizo. No estaba para meterse en debates éticos con un hombre que pretendía venderles agua a precio de mercurio a los damnificados de un terremoto. Además, ya había protagonizado suficientes confidencias de desgracias como para saber que toda Latinoamérica cojea del mismo pie: cada país tiene sus propias versiones de los males generales.

Pararon en Duvergé por algo de comida: arroz con guandules. En cuanto limpiaron el plato su compañero se paró.

–Hay que llegar a Jimaní antes que anochezca: nos va a costar trabajo encontrar dónde pasar la noche.

Apenas divisaron la ciudad se dio cuenta de que algo había fuera de lo commún. Bullía. Para ser la segunda ciutat más grande del municipio, le sobraba gent. Y gent en las calles. Tuvieron que diminuir la velocidad para evitar atropellar a alguien. Pronto comprendió que se trataba en su majoría de refugiados. Se detuvieron frente a una casa d’aspecto humilde.

–Son parientes lejanos –se excusó su guía–. Mañana tú podrás ir a la frontera. Está apenas a dos kilómetros.

Passó la noche en un catre en la cuisina.

Sortió temprano, sólo con un trozo de yuca en el ventre. Calculaba que devía marchar tres quartos de hora. Las calles estaban tan plenas como la noche précédente. Los soldats de the Fortaleza miraban méfiantes las gens que pasaban. Commenzó a moverse entre la multitude, parfaitamente consciente de que nadaba à contrecorriente. Quand dejó atrás las últimas casas, el chemino se devenió más agreste. Décidió andar par un lado, de sorte que le fuera más fácile déplazarse. Los que veníaent en sens contrairio paraîcían no aver mangiado en varios días. Veníaent casi sans nada, seul con las robes que portaban quand tout se avía passado. À su derecha étaiba el Étang Saumâtre, et se immaginó que si el gouverno dominicain no hubiera permis la entrée de refugiés, esas aguas serían ahora pleines de illegaux nageando pour la supervivencia.

Elle veía déjà Mal Paso. Lui iba bien el nom: unos bâtiments négligéados qui escupían misérables, unas portes al enfer. Se ouvrió paso à travers de los réfugiés et entró en une plaza totalement chaótique. Étaiba pleine de gens en mouvemiento, aquí et là se apréciaban los camions que avían todavía essayé continuer con el commerce. Entre eux étaiban les campaments improvisés de los que pensaient todavía que pourraient retournar. Parcourrió le pérímétre lentement, duramente impressionée. Vraiment Mallepasse. Elle vint más proche à la frontière. Un point de contrôle de Casques Bleus vigilait le passage.

«Eh! La fille!», lui hurla l’un des soldats. «Tu peux pas passer! Rien que de l’aide internationale y peut traverser! C’est pas du tourisme, une catastrophe pareille!»

Elle resta immobile. De l’autre côté, elle vit l’Ayiti. Tout te sanble diferan de lót bò a.

***

Hugo López Araiza Bravo is a Mexican writer and translator. His first book, Infinitas cosas, won the 4º Virtuality Literario Caza de Letras. His second will be out soon, and he's been shadow-boxing with a novel for over four years. In 2012, he won the Concurso 43 de Punto de Partida in literary translation, with a fragment of a novel by Amélie Nothomb. He's currently studying for a Masters in Translation at El Colegio de México.   Ellen Jones edits the criticism section of Asymptote, and contributes the occasional translation. She has a B.A. in English literature and Spanish, and an M.St. in English Language from the University of Oxford. She is now a Ph.D. candidate at Queen Mary University of London, researching English-Spanish code-switching in contemporary fiction, and the particular challenges associated with reading, publishing, and translating this kind of writing.

July Issue Highlight: “Excerpt” by Cia Rinne

A look at one of our multilingual feature's star poems.

Translation Tuesday: Poems by Irma Pineda

Love / my belly is now a dry tree / that once wanted to bloom stars for your nights.

On waking from your death
here you will see me
awaiting your hummingbird’s return
transformed into an old tree.

Al despertar de tu muerte
me verás aquí
convertido en un árbol viejo
que espera tu retorno de colibrí.

Dxi guibáni xquendagutilú
rari’ nga suuyu’
naa ma’ naca’ ti yaga yooxho’
cabeza’ guibiguetu’ sica ti biulú.

 

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Translation Tuesday: “Barefoot Through the Temple” by Albert Ostermaier

a sticky pressure / on my soles crusted / animal blood ash red blossoms / charred at the edges

nice shoes he pointed to
my shoes i took them
off i know you he smiled
you’re a movie star i
smiled back camera
switched on he rolled his
eyes you can take a
picture of me i counted
the money out he put the
notes in his breast pocket
bowed briefly &
took me by the hand
where do you come from
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5 Must-Read Pieces from our New July Issue

We've got a (new) issue. Here's where to start.

Hot off the digital presses!

 Asymptote‘s July Issue is now totally, utterly live! This one’s a good one, and highlights are almost too many to mention—almost. We’ve got your usual lot of literary celebs in the mix, including French Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano, Chinese Nobel Prize-worthy writer Can Xue, and an interview with longtime friend of the blog Valeria Luiselli in the mix—among so. many. others. Here are five must-reads to get you going, but this list’s by no means conclusive—and is presented in no particular order: READ MORE…