Submissions call: Alchemy

Alchemy, a new journal of translation out of the UCSD Literature Department, is now accepting student submissions for its first issue. The editors are looking for work that engages translation in both traditional and innovative ways.To submit, you must currently be a student, and are asked to include the name of your school and, if applicable, your program of study. When submitting, send the source text along with your translations -- up to five pages of poetry or ten pages of prose -- to alchemythejournal@gmail.com with a subject line indicating the genre: Poetry, Fiction, Cover Art, etc. Submissions received by December 5, 2011 will receive priority for the first issue and any submissions thereafter will be accepted on a rolling basis.

Submissions: Ozone Park

The literary journal Ozone Park is looking for submissions in translation, to be reviewed up to the end of the reading period, December 8. The editors accept electronic submissions in the categories of fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, short plays and play excerpts, literary translation, and comics. All submissions to Ozone Park must be original, previously unpublished work in English, should include a cover letter, and should consist of up to three poems, one ten-page short play or play excerpt, or no more than 7500 words. Manuscripts should be sent as a single .doc or .rtf file. Send comics as .jpg, .gif, .tif, or .png image files, and should be submitted electronically to translation@ozoneparkjournal.org. For all other inquiries, please send an email to editor@ozoneparkjournal.org. Translated work should include both an English translation and a copy of the work in the original language. Although Ozone Park Journal is responsible for securing foreign rights for translations, translators should determine that rights ar available.

McCrum on the surge

The dream of a true universal language is in the end dependent on perfect translation. Aside from the lessons of Babel, the history of the Bible istelf [sic] offers other cautionary tales, particularly this year – the 400th anniversary of that great cathedral of language, the King James Bible. The anniversary has proved to be both a cause for celebration and for reflection on whether there can ever be an ideal or final version of such a work. Isn't every new rendering bound to reflect the social and cultural context in which its translator works?

-- Emphasis added. To answer his question -- well, yes; though for "bound to" read "privileged to", with all the implications thereof. This quote is taken from Robert McCrum's essay reflecting on the "worldwide upsurge in demand for English versions of foreign bestsellers" in The Guardian. The word "surge" in my ear has a distinctly liquid register, as in the . Maybe this is a proscriptive metaphor, since I'd much rather see the flow of literature be cyclical -- as in the hydrological cycle, where the medium (here, letters) is by rounds gathered and distributed, homogenized and partitioned, made liquid and made vapor -- rather than linear, with texts flowing only ever down from their sources (in the different mountains of various homelands) into the ocean, sinking, until the source peters out. Pardon the flight of fancy; this contributor was reading The Agony and the Ecstasy all this holiday weekend, and he is now sodden with sentimentality.