McWhorter on the world's dwindling stock of languages

... the going idea among linguists and anthropologists is that we must keep as many languages alive as possible, and that the death of each one is another step on a treadmill toward humankind’s cultural oblivion. This accounted for the melancholy tone, for example, of the obituaries for the Eyak language of southern Alaska last year when its last speaker died.

That death did mean, to be sure, that no one will again use the word demexch, which refers to a soft spot in the ice where it is good to fish. Never again will we hear the word 'ał for an evergreen branch, a word whose final sound is a whistling past the sides of the tongue that sounds like wind passing through just such a branch. And behind this small death is a larger context. Linguistic death is proceeding more rapidly even than species attrition. According to one estimate, a hundred years from now the 6,000 languages in use today will likely dwindle to 600. The question, though, is whether this is a problem.

On behalf of the editors of Pusteblume, with whom I've long discussed this issue, I can answer McWhorter's question affirmatively: the loss of languages is a problem. Whether this loss amounts to a problem depends upon the values of the person considering the loss. Some are untroubled by the destruction of texts, the attrition of cultural practices, and the homogenization that accompanies globalization. Even as we welcome improvements in, say, economic equality, we mourn the loss of what we consider to be irreplaceable. If languages were ready substitutes for one another -- if they were in practice replaceable -- the work of the translator would not be quite as subtle, demanding, and improbable as it is.

"Preservation [...] is what we do to berries in jam jars and salmon in cans. [...] Books and recordings can preserve languages, but only people and communities can keep them alive.” -- Nora Marks Dauenhauer and Richard Dauenhauer, Tlingit oral historians

Luisa Maffi writes, "it is a human right for language communities to keep or reclaim their languages, and that this right is in no way dependent on the evidence from these research questions." I'd say that the concept of human rights entails human responsibilities. If we want to live in a world of diverse traditions and experiences, where human rights are respected, we have to accept the responsibility to support the exercise of those rights. With regard to language, our responsibility is to show value for and provide support to the living use of endangered languages. In other words -- conversation, cultural engagement, classroom use and academic study, publication and translation. Every word in a language, and every grammatical tricks employed by that language to use that word, represents the solution to some problem of expression. We are all better off having access to more solutions, rather than fewer; and as such solutions are only the product of many generations of language evolution, we can most efficiently maintain the stock of linguistic solutions by preserving the living communities in which those languages are spoken.

In The Tree of Meaning, Robert Bringhurst reflects often on the value of languages and oral literature, and on the significance of their loss. In an essay from the collection, ""Oral Literature and the Unity of the Humanities", Bringhurst writes:

Every normal, healthy human being, once past the stage of infancy, speaks and contributes to a languages. And every normal, healthy human language -- no exceptions -- speaks and nourishes a literature. It is harder, most of the time, for human beings to restrain themselves from telling stories than it is for them to keep from shedding tears. Perhaps that is why human beings keep on going, even when anyone can see they ought to stop and weep."

This insight captures something of my feeling of the value lost when a language is lost.

Read more:

• Attrition of Native American languages
• MIT Indigenous Language Initiative
• Index of Linguistic Diversity at TerraLingua organization for biocultural diversity
• Michael Walsh, "Will Indigenous Languages Survive?"
• Alaska Native Language Center

Contest Announcement for Translators of Japanese

First Annual Jeremy Ingalls Poetry in Translation Award. A prize of $1,000.00 and publication of a single poem in Japanese and English by a woman, awarded to a woman translator. Judge: Sawako Nakayasu. Deadline: NOVEMBER 15, 2009. Winner will be announced in early 2010. For more information, please visit the website of Kore Press.

Two Lines seeks submissions

Information provided by Two Lines below:

DEADLINE: NOVEMBER 25, 2009


two lines World Writing in Translation publishes original translations into English of writing from any literary genre. Translations from any language will be considered, and works from outside Europe are especially sought.

· Previously unpublished work only.

· The translator cannot also be the author of the piece unless it is a co-translation.

· We generally publish one to four poems from a single submission, but we will read up to a maximum of ten pages.

· The average prose submission is about 2500 words, but we do publish shorter and longer pieces (1000–4000 words). Short stories are preferable to novel excerpts. However, novel excerpts will be considered if thoughtfully excerpted to stand as independent pieces (to the extent possible).

· In order to be considered, submissions must include a brief introduction (400–500 words) with information about the original author, the background of the piece, and unique issues that the translation process presented.

· All submissions must include a copy of the original text.



Translators are expected to acquire copyright permission for all work not in the public domain.



For electronic submissions, please save your documents as RTF (Rich Text Format) and send to submissions@ catranslation. org. For hard copy submissions, please mail to the postal address below. If you would like your materials returned, please send an appropriately- sized SASE.



two lines
35 Stillman Street, Suite 201
San Francisco, CA 94107

We highly encourage everyone who submits to two lines to read a copy before submitting. Translators will be notified of editorial decisions by February 2010. We offer a complimentary copy of two lines as well as a nominal honorarium to translators whose work is chosen for publication.

Conference: ALTA 2009, "Continental Drift"

November 11 - 14, 2009

The 2009 ALTA Conference Committee invites you to join us in Pasadena for a celebration of the confluence of cultures and languages that characterizes Southern California. Greater Los Angeles is the home of the world’s second largest Mexican population (after Mexico City), the most populous Korean community outside of Korea, and a center of Arab, Armenian, Central American, Chinese, Iranian, Jewish, Russian, Vietnamese, and countless other ethnic groups. LA is a place where continents truly do collide, even when our infamous seismic activity is at a lull! And who facilitates this metaphorical continental drift more effectively than literary translators?

This year’s ALTA conference will feature the intersection of translation and the entertainment industry, including film, legitimate theater, and music. Additionally, we will take a close look at the pedagogy of translation and the increasing visibility of literary translation in academia.

Of course, you can expect the usual complement of provocative panel discussions, as well as an exciting selection of bilingual readings, expertly coordinated, as always, by Alexis Levitin. We’re happy to report that Barbara Paschke will once again be in charge of Friday night’s ever-popular Declamación. And we’ve invited three prominent keynote speakers associated with Latin American, Asian, and European literature in translation, respectively.

But look for a few unusual twists this year. For example, you won’t want to miss the pre-conference reception, co-sponsored by Red Hen Press, on Wednesday evening, from 7-9, at the beautiful Pacific Asia Museum. The museum is located just steps from the Hilton. All galleries will remain open for our enjoyment. John Balaban will read his exquisite translations of Ho Xuan Huong's poems from his book, Spring Essence: The Poetry of Ho Xuan Huong and the talented Le Pham Le will recite the Vietnamese originals in this unique setting. As a tribute to Los Angeles’ rich theatrical traditions, we have a special event in store – a production of Jaime Salom’s Behind the Scenes in Eden, directed by Chris Kidder of Commedia Beauregard.

Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Near East, and Far East

Those of you based in Cambridge, MA, may be interested in a reading coming up this Sunday. As part of the Longfellow Summer Reading Series at the Longfellow National Historic Site, Michael Archer, the editor of Guernica: Magazine of Art and Politics, will be interviewing Nathalie Handal, one of the editors of the new anthology Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Near East, and Far East.

This 784-page anthology, published by Norton last year, features work by hundreds of poets based in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and America. Poems are translated into English from more than 40 different langauges. Publishers Weekly and Booklist have lauded the scope, ambition, and range of the project, the former describing the book, with its sections featuring whimsical titles like Bowl of Air and Shivers as "more an esoteric journey than a systematic reference."

On Sunday, in addition to the interview with Nathalie Handal, Boston- and Cambridge-based poets Martha Collins, Diana Der-Havonessian, Fred Marchant, and Afaa Michael Weaver will read from the anthology on the East Lawn of the Longfellow National Historic Site. The event is free and open to the public, and -- assuming the weather holds -- it should be a pleasant day to spend out on the green and leafy lawn.



Sunday, August 23rd, 4:00 p.m.

East Lawn, Longfellow National Historic Site, 105 Brattle Street, Cambridge

*Free and open to the public* 617-876-4492

George Szirtes' Blog

I highly, highly recommend that you skip right over to poet & translator George Szirtes' blog now. I could spend all day reading up on the back posts. From today's:

"I am doing a lot of Márai posting at the moment because I am deeply immersed in translating him, that is in between others, like Krasznahorkai and various poets. I do far too much of this sort of thing and I wake in the morning, saying to myself: Stop it and write your own grands oeuvres! and I think I will, I actually will stop it, once I have cleared the decks, taking on nothing more for two or three years. [Carries on talking to himself...]

Ah, Márai on poverty. The fascination of Márai is the sheer intensity and articulacy of his intellect. He feels everything and tries to describe it the way an explorer might describe a voyage. It's what makes him a thrilling read. I don't mean that his mind is a 100% original mind. In many ways he is a man of his time, a self-confessed bourgeois-cum-citoyen, but there is all this substructure and superstructure that is perfectly heroic in scale."

Cheesecake and Translation Tonight

Dear Boston-based translators, tonight a few stalwart members of the Boston Poetry Union are gathering for a pleasant evening of translation and tasty treats at the Cheesecake Factory in Boston's Prudential Center at 6:30 pm tonight. Feel free to RSVP here if you wish to join us and share your own original translation of another author's work, to read some of your favorite translations by others, or simply to talk about poetry in translation while eating mountains of food. I, for one, may bring in a few translations of sonnets by French Canadian sonneteer Pamphile LeMay.

We will be meeting in the lobby of the Cheesecake Factory at 6:30 sharply to determine numbers and get a table.

Introduction to Translation E>S, new online

The University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Translation Program is offering a course in Introduction to Translation English to Spanish online this fall, beginning September 2 and ending December 14. For more information, please contact Lorerna Terando at terando@uwm.edu.

Translate in the Catskills

The Translate in the Catskills workshop from August 21-23 in Maplecrest, NY will be helping freelancers use target language writing skills to rise to the top of the market. The workshop is aimed particularly at EN > FR and FR > EN translators, but other languages are welcome too. Program details and information on the course leaders can be found at http://translateinthecatskills.wordpress.com. Places are limited, so potential attendees are encouraged to sign up early.

Sassan Tabatabai in PEN Translation Slam

Sassan Tabatabai, a contributor to and supporter of PBJ since the journal's inception, is being featured in the first of a series of online Translation Slams organized by PEN American Center. His translation is of a political slogan devised by protesters who took to the streets of Iran this year after results of the June presidential elections were announced. From the PEN American site:

The slogan refers directly to an insult levied at protesters by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who referred to them as khas-o-khaashaak, meaning dirt and dust, scraps and bits. The structure of this slogan -- I am / you are -- recalls a ghazal included in the collection Divaan-eh Shams by Rumi, the classic 13th century Persian poet who is generally considered one of the foremost figures in Iranian literary history and is known for celebrating love in his poetry. That slogans in the current protests in Iran are being based on poems bears witness to the extent to which poetry plays a role in the Iranian upbringing and consciousness.

Tabatabai's version of the protest slogan ends with a statement of resolute determination: "I am brave, I am bold, I am the lord / of this land." Both translations -- that by Tabatabai, and the other by Niloufar Talebi, director of The Translation Project -- can be seen beside the Persian/Farsi text of the protest poem at the PEN American Center website.

Le Clézio in English Translation: Sale!

Boston publisher David R. Godine has let us know that they are offering two novels from Nobel Prize–winning author J.M.G. Le Clézio at 30% off the cover price, until August 1st:

DESERT, translated from the French by C. Dickson
The Swedish Academy, in awarding J.M.G. Le Clézio the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature, praised Desert as Le Clézio's "definitive breakthrough as a novelist." Published in France in 1980, Desert received the Grand Prix Paul Morand from the Académie Française, was translated into twenty-three languages, and quickly proved to be a best-selling novel in many countries around the world. Available for the first time in English translation, Desert is a novel composed of two alternating narratives, set in counterpoint. The first takes place in the desert between 1909 and 1912 and evokes the migration of a young adolescent boy, Nour, and his people, the Blue Men, notorious warriors of the desert. Driven from their lands by French colonial soldiers, Nour's tribe has come to the valley of the Saguiet El Hamra to seek the aid of the great spiritual leader known as Water of the Eyes. The religious chief sends them out from the holy city of Smara into the desert to travel still further. Spurred on by thirst, hunger, and suffering, Nour's tribe and others flee northward in the hopes of finding a land that can harbor them at last. The second narrative relates the contemporary story of Lalla, a descendant of the Blue Men. Though she is an orphan living in a shantytown known as the Project near a coastal city in Morocco, the blood of her proud, obstinate tribe runs in her veins. All too soon, Lalla must flee to escape a forced marriage with an older, wealthy man. She travels to France, undergoing many trials there, from working as a hotel maid to becoming a highly-paid fashion model, and yet she never betrays the blood of her ancestors.

From the Reviews:
In scenes of shimmering intensity, Le Clezio contrasts nature's stark and majestic clarity, from scouring sand to the incinerating sun and the vast gleaming net of stars, with the chaos, toxicity, and injustice of human life. A long time coming for English-language readers, Le Clezio's incandescent masterpiece couldn't be more relevant.
— Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)

THE PROSPECTOR, translated by Carol Marks
The Prospector is the crowning achievement from one of France's preeminent contemporary novelists and a work rich with sensuality and haunting resonance. It is the turn of the century on the island of Mauritius, and young Alexis L'Etang enjoys an idyllic existence with his parents and beloved sister: sampling the pleasures of privilege, exploring the constellations and tropical flora, and dreaming of treasure buried long ago by the legendary Unknown Corsair. But with his father's death, Alexis must leave his childhood paradise and enter the harsh world of privation and shame. Years later, Alexis has become obsessed with the idea of finding the Corsair's treasure and, through it, the lost magic and opulence of his youth. He abandons job and family, setting off on a quest that will take him from remote tropical islands to the hell of World War I, and from a love affair with the elusive Ouma to a momentous confrontation with the search that has consumed his life. By turns harsh and lyrical, pointed and nostalgic, The Prospector is "a parable of the human condition" (Le Mond) by one of the most significant literary figures in Europe today.

From the Reviews:
Le Clézio's prose is so sensual and rhythmic it's hypnotic. — Boston Phoenix
A novel of intense beauty. — Review of Contemporary Fiction
A remarkable work. — Booklist, starred review

News and Reviews to Peruse this July

In the summer, a young translator's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of summer reading. There are plenty of new books in translation out there, along with reviews and reviewers giving their yay or nay.

Scott Esposito, editor of The Quarterly Conversation, has a review of J.M.G. Le Clézio's Desert up at The Critical Flame. This is the second of the French Nobel Prize-winner's work to be published in the United States. Esposito particularly admires the slow, deliberate pace of the novel and ends his review with praise:

Desert is a dramatization of certain things that Western civilization doesn’t — and won’t — get. That Le Clézio can make these things seem beautiful and precious without preaching or succumbing to petty romanticization makes it all the more unfortunate that he had to be awarded a Nobel prize before English-language readers could learn what he had to say.

Meanwhile, over at Three Percent, translator and bookseller Margarita Shalina reviews The Sacred Book of the Werewolf by Russian novelist Victor Pelevin. This novel transforms the Russian folkloric archetype of the fox and the wolf into their modern guises of the sex worker and the government secret agent. Shalina concludes her review with the suggestion that "Pelevin is attempting to relay that Russians have been living their lives in a perpetual state of moral ambiguity going back as far as the ancient folktales. In such a state, why shouldn’t a fox or a wolf or a sex worker or an FSB agent aspire to evolve into a higher being?"

Lastly, for your listening pleasure please do visit Poetry International Web, which, for a limited time, is featuring audio clips of talented poets from all over the world reading at the Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam, recorded by Radio Netherlands Worldwide from the 1970s onward. Listen to poems by Mahmoud Darwish, Pablo Neruda, Wole Soyinka, Joseph Brodsky, Inger Christensen, Derek Walcott, Ernst Jandl, and others. They won't be up there forever, so listen now!

To the NYTimes: Remember the translator!

Ezra E. Fitz, of Brentwood, Tenn., reminds the editors of The New York Times that without the diligence and skill of translators, world literature would largely be inaccessible to English-speaking monoglot readers:

Gerald Martin’s “Gabriel García Márquez: A Life” (June 7) is certainly chock-full of savory facts and hearty commentary, but it is also notable for its near-total lack of another, equally vital literary nutrient: the translator. You can count the references to Gregory Rabassa and Edith Grossman on one hand.

Your reviewer, Paul Berman, notes that García Márquez studied Joyce, Woolf, Faulkner and Proust “in Spanish translation,” but when he raves about the “gorgeous sentences” in “The Autumn of the Patriarch,” lauding it as “a heroic demonstration of man’s triumph over language,” he neglects to mention whether he read those sentences in Spanish or English.

Martin himself reads “The Autumn of the Patriarch” with close scrutiny, counting the number of sentences in each chapter and noting the subtle changes in narrative voice, before ultimately concluding that the novel “stands as the decisive oeuvre of García Márquez’s career” because “it encapsulates all his other works.”

Let us remind ourselves that García Márquez’s gorgeous sentences have been encapsulated in English variations thanks to the unheralded work of his translators.

New Russian Poetry at Jacket

Привет. Jacket Magazine 36 devotes a substantial chunk of space to new Russian poetry in translation, compiled by Russian poets and translators Peter and Tatyana Golub. In a preferatory essay, Peter Golub explains,

I selected the great majority of the poets in this anthology because they belong to the category of newcomers who are not disposed to enter the cycle of simple reproduction, i.e. to recognize the old hallowed literature and do likewise. Many of these poets bring with them dispositions that clash with prevailing norms and expectations.

The poets he chooses are in their 20s and 30s. What marks this generation of poets, Golub argues, is that they "cannot simply resist the dominant field, because the dominant field no longer consists of official Soviet literature, but of legitimate literary figures like Osip Mandelshtam, Gennady Aigi, and Joseph Brodsky, and living writers like Kolya Baitov, Evgeny Rein, and Elena Schwartz." The younger poets' "task is to add new space to the existing field, to carefully balance respect for the older authors and also to challenge the establishment with a call for new literature. This means playing by the rules of the field, and facing competition from its established figures, while trying to be catalysts of change."

In addition to the poems in translation -- and I will leave you to discover the young Russian poets yourselves -- Jacket's special feature includes a handy list of links to organizations promoting new Russian literature, including Argo-Risk projects and press and Interpoezia bilingual poetry quarterly, as well as an interview with Russian literary scholar and editor Mikhail Aizenberg, and essays on poets Anastasia Afanasieva and Nina Iskrenko.

More wet floor signage

At this late date we have a follow-up to one of our most heavily trafficked blog posts, "The Example of the Wet Floor Sign." In that post we gave as an example of the difficulty in obtaining both semantic and rhythmic equivalence in the transfer of meaning from source language to target, the problem of wet floor signs (native to supermarket aisles and institutional corridors). "Caution: Wet Floor" being an insufficiently musical translation of "Cuidado: Piso Mojado," our PBJ crew suggested "Caution: We're Washin'." Now, Ilya Gutner, our New York City correspondent, suggests an alternative rendering:

Don't forget,
Floor is wet.

This is the nitty-gritty, nuts-and-bolts of translation, folks. It doesn't get more real than this.

Kirsch on new translations of ancient Chinese poetry

In his twofer review of David Hinton's anthology of classical Chinese poetry and David Young's Du Fu: A Life in Poetry, Adam Kirsch gestures dramatically and divertingly toward the historical and cultural depth which often goes under-appreciated of Chinese poetry in translation. He reminds us of the dubious and charismatic authorships, subversive quality, and truly penetrating clarity and perception (among other qualities we forget are not exclusive to poetry written after 1900) that drew Pound to this literature and which will reward new readers. I would be drawn to the books in any case, but Kirsch's review, informative and erudite as it is, enhances the appeal. One just wants quickly to dig in:

Reading commentaries on Chinese poetry--notably, Stephen Owen's The Great Age of Chinese Poetry, which deals with the High T'ang period of Li Po and Tu Fu--one begins to get an inkling of how many layers of meaning even the simplest, most imagistic poem contained for its original readers. Each genre of Chinese poetry had rules about rhyme, line length, and parallelism so intricate as to make the English sonnet look like free verse. Then there were conventions about how poems should start and end, and what images they could use, and what register of formality was appropriate to different subjects and different readers.

Now, I do take as challenge and invitation Kirsch's claim that many of the expressive features of Chinese literature -- e.g., the immediacy with which single-character ideograms communicate meaning; the shadings available to a tonal language; the paratactic grammar; and, as Kirsch notes, the relative scarcity of grammatical helpers like pronouns -- "are totally untranslatable into English." Tentatively scheduled but enthusiastically hoped for, in the Spring 2009 issue of Pusteblume, is new translation from contemporary Chinese by Eleanor Goodman. Look for the essay paired with these texts, to deflate the familiar argument that in translating Chinese, though something lovely may be transformed into English, much must be left behind.

BU Translation Prizes ceremony

Winners will be announced and awards presented at the ceremony for the 2009 Boston University Translation Prizes, the Shmuel Traum Prize and the Robert Fitzgerald Translation Prize.

When: Monday, May 4, 2009, at 2 PM
Where: School of Theology Room 625, 745 Commonwealth Avenue

For more information, contact dhabersh@bu.edu.

LeClezio to read at MIT on April 28th

Talk and reading (in English) by Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, "The Writer and the World: Reflections of an Author."

Date: Tuesday April 28, 2009
Time: 6:00-8:00 PM
Location: MIT Stata Center, 32 Vassar Street, Room 123

In more essential, Boston-based reading news, 2008 Nobel Prize winner Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio will be reading at MIT's Stata Center on April 28th, from 6 to 8 p.m. Few of Le Clézio's works are available in English as of yet; Boston-based press David R. Godine published a translation of Clézio's novel The Prospector in 1993. Listen to an audio clip of Christopher Merrill discussing the novel at PRI's "The World".

Tuesday's talk is sponsored by the Foreign Languages & Literatures Section, Contemporary French Studies Fund and The French Cultural Services in Boston, MA.

Bernardo Atxaga and Ilan Stavans to read on Monday May 4

Reading at BU Photonics Center
8 St. Mary's Street, 9th Floor
on Monday, May 4, at 7:00 p.m.

Bernardo Atxaga, a Basque novelist, poet, and short story writer who writes in the Basque language (Euskara), will be reading along with Mexican-American cultural critic Ilan Stavans as part of BU's Institute for Human Science's "Imagining Europe" project. The talk will be moderated by Mark Feeney of The Boston Globe. According to the project's website, the intent of the public fora is to "ask artists and writers inhabiting different cultural circles, so to speak, to reflect as Europeans on such questions as what constitutes the European 'we,' what keeps 'us' together, and where do “we” want to go in the future."

Transcripts of the series of conversations -- including Atxaga's and Stavan's contributions -- will be published in a volume by Zephyr Press. Monday's reading will also kick off the launch of AGNI 69 (despite the fact that neither speaker features in this issue). After the reading and discussion at the BU Photonics Center, there will be a tapas dinner at AGNI's offices.

Dr Johnson, making no bones about it

From today's Wordsmith mailing:

Poetry, indeed, cannot be translated; and, therefore, it is the poets that preserve the languages; for we would not be at the trouble to learn a language if we could have all that is written in it just as well in a translation. But as the beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written, we learn the language.

-Samuel Johnson, lexicographer (1709-1784)

2008 Nobel Laureate Discusses Languages

Translating a Moving Target: Poetry of a New Romania

Poetry reading and discussion with Romanian poet Liliana Ursu and her American translator Sean Cotter. Moderated by AGNI founder Askold Melnyczuk.

Liliana Ursu is an internationally acclaimed Romanian poet, prose writer, and translator. Ursu's first book in English, The Sky Behind the Forest was translated by Ursu, Adam J. Sorkin, and Tess Gallagher. It became a British Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation and was shortlisted for Oxford's Weidenfeld Prize.

Co-sponsored by the BU Center for International Relations and AGNI, in cooperation with the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA), and Zephyr Press. A reception will follow.

Thursday, Mar 26, 2009, 6:30-8:30pm
Photonics Center, 8 St. Mary's Street (9th floor)
Open to General Public; Admission is free

For more information, contact Elizabeth Amrien: eamrien@bu.edu.

New Paul Valéry biography

As an accomplished poet, philosopher, and essayist, Paul Valéry is the quintessential Man of Letters, or--as The Guardian would have it--"the ultimate French intellectual."

Michel Jarrety has put together a new biography, published in French by Editions Fayard. In an interview on the publisher's website, Jarrety discusses Valéry as a poet and a man of science, and his great circle of acquaintances, and the process of writing his extensive biography.

Paul Gifford at The Guardian observes:

Valéry’s circle of contacts remains dazzling. He was intimate with leading poets and writers (Mallarmé, Gide, Rilke); he worked alongside Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Thomas Mann, Gabriele d’Annunzio, John Galsworthy and Stefan Zweig; he exchanged ideas with André Malraux, Jean Giraudoux, Colette and Paul Claudel (but also with George Meredith, Arnold Bennett, H. G. Wells and Aldous Huxley); his lectures at the Collège de France were an influence on Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes, Michel Tournier, Yves Bonnefoy and Paul de Man. Who else with such a profile could also have had Einstein as trusted interlocutor and colleague, discussed atoms with Niels Bohr, or the crisis of representation in sciences with the likes of Paul Langevin and Émile Borel; compared notes with Ravel and Stravinsky, Degas and Picasso; collaborated with Bergson and Sir James Frazer; interacted with both Pétain and de Gaulle; interviewed Mussolini and crossed paths with an entire gallery of Europe’s interwar power-brokers? To say nothing of the cast list of princesses, duchesses, countesses and other denizens of the cosmopolitan, high-society Paris salons who provided the writer with dinners, contacts, funding, entertainment, country-seat vacationing, confidantes and lovers.

Jarrety's biography can't but be interesting focusing on a busy polymath like Valéry, and it covers the scope of both his public life and his private (love) life extensively.

As of now, Paul Valéry is only available in French and is priced at 52 Euros.

Upcoming readings sponsored by the Institute for Human Sciences

Dear poets and translators,

In the next few weeks, the Institute for Human Sciences is holding a few interesting looking readings by translators and Turkish-German and Romanian poets and writers at Boston University. Below is the schedule:

Thursday, March 19, 2009 6:30 PM
Poetry reading and discussion: Poetics between Languages: The Turkish-German Experience with ZAFER SENOCAK and ELIZABETH OEHLKERS WRIGHT**

Born in Ankara in1961, ZAFER SENOCAK has been living in Germany since 1970, where he has become a leading voice in the German discussions on multiculturalism,national and cultural identity, and a mediator between Turkish and German culture. The widely published poet, essayist, journalist and editor has won several prestigious literary awards in Germany.**

ELIZABETH OEHLKERS WRIGHT has been translating Zafer Senocak and other contemporary German poets for years. *Door Languages*, a selection of Senocak's poems in her translation was published by Zephyr Press in Fall 2008.**Moderator: ASKOLD MELNYCZUK*Founder and former editor of **AGNI*,* professor at UMass Boston and in Bennington's MFA program, and author of the new Europe-trotting, gripping, noirish family mystery** The House of Widows*

6:30 PM Boston University Photonics Center8 St. Mary's Street, 9th floor
Free and open to the public
Reception to follow

Thursday, March 26, 2009 6:30 PM
Poetry reading and discussion
Translating a Moving Target: Poetry of a New Romania with LILIANA URSU and SEAN COTTER**

URSU is an internationally acclaimed Romanian poet, prose writer, and translator. Ursu's first book in English, *The Sky Behind the Forest* (Bloodaxe Books, 1997), translated by Ursu, Adam J. Sorkin, and Tess Gallagher, became a British Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation and was shortlisted for Oxford's Weidenfeld Prize.**

SEAN COTTER has translated several books of Romanian poetry, including*Goldsmith Market* (Zephyr Press, 2004) and the forthcoming *Lightwall* (Zephyr Press,2009)**

Moderator: ASKOLD MELNYCZUK* Founder and former editor of **AGNI*,* professor at UMass Boston and in Bennington's MFA program, and author of the new Europe-trotting, gripping,noirish family mystery** The House of Widows*Boston University Photonics Center 8 St. Mary's Street, 9th floor

Free and open to the public Reception to follow

A Verse Falls in the Forest

The Irish Times has an interesting article today on the most recent batch of Irish-language poetry prizes. Given that few people speak the language, even in Ireland itself, the question was raised whether these poets feel they're writing in a vacuum. Áine Uí Fhoghlú, who won the Michael Hartnett Poetry Award for her collection An Liú sa Chuan, responds "sometimes you wonder if there's anybody out there. But like any art form [writing poetry] is not something you particularly set out to do. It kind of comes over you. For me personally, it's as if a poem comes in spite of me and it's my job to shape that into something that I consider art. So it's something that happens. It's like a well that bubbles up and you can't stop it and if you plug it up it comes out somewhere else." It shows an almost Kierkegaardian faith, a propulsion to expression, that could be said to reside in all poets. But the question remains: what can one make of contemporary poets in languages such as Irish? And even more pressing, I think — what happens when the most giften translators of this language pass away?

Translation Fellowships at Vermont Studio Center

For those of you who are interested, the Vermont Studio Center and Zoland Poetry will be offering month-long fellowships for translators at the VSC's international retreat center in Johnson, Vermont. Applications should be filled in by February, 15. Details are available at: http://vermontstudiocenter.org/vsc-zoland-poetry-fellowships-2/

Call for Submissions from Washington Square

We've just had word from Martha Collins through a translators' mailing list that Washington Square, the student-edited and -produced journal at New York University’s Graduate Writing Program, is now accepting submissions for its Summer/Fall 2009 issues. They are looking for previously unpublished English translations of (non-English) poems and short stories of serious literary intent.

Manuscripts must be received by March 1, 2009, and accompanied by a SASE and cover letter with author’s name, address, phone number, email address, and title(s) of submission(s). Poetry submissions should not exceed 10 pages/5 poems. Fiction submissions should not be in excess of 20 pages.

Submissions may be sent by post to the attention of the 'International Editor', Washington Square, Creative Writing Program, New York University, 58 West 10th Street, New York, NY 10011, or as attachments by email to washingtonsquarereview@gmail.com.

A Round-up of Translation News

Poetry International Web has some new writers up for January: Jūkichi Yagi, a "twentieth-century Christian poet" from Japan, Maria van Daalen , a Dutch poet interested in Haitian Vodou, as well as a few Colombian writers: Luz Mary Giraldo and Federico Díaz-Granados--both poets and literary critic--and Myriam Montoya, a Colombian poet based in Paris.

Over at Three Percent, Chad Post is highlighting a book a day from their Best Translated Book of 2008 Fiction Longlist over the next couple of weeks. Today's book: The Taker and Other Stories by Brazilian writer Rubem Fonseca, translated from the Portuguese by Clifford Landers.

At Slate, Adam Kirsch reviews Burton Raffel's new translation of The Canterbury Tales from Middle to Modern English. Kirsch claims the "one big virtue" of this new translation is its utter comprehensibility--taking the "chore" out of muddling out the Middle English on one's own. Kirsch writes:

For those readers who are absolutely unwilling to puzzle out Middle English spelling, or spend time getting acquainted with Chaucer's versification and syntax, Raffel's edition will be a useful substitute. But even Raffel, a poet who has translated everyone from Cervantes to Stendhal, seems a little curious why anyone would bother reading The Canterbury Tales in ranslation. "Native speakers of English, as recently as the first half of the twentieth century, were not particularly uncomfortable with Chaucer's difficulties," he writes in his introduction. Since the English language has not changed much in the last 50 years, he clearly believes that the problem lies with its speakers—that we have gotten lazier and more provincial. No one who embarks on reading The Canterbury Tales, however, can be all that lazy, and any reader who compares the original with Raffel's version will surely agree that the extra effort is worthwhile. For Raffel's translation loses the original's music without finding a music of its own; he is wordy where the original is pithy and bare where the original is lush. Chaucer is in many ways the progenitor of English fiction—he is closer to Dickens than to Keats—but he is also a great master of English poetry; and since poetry is what is lost in translation, why not take the trouble to read the original and avoid the loss? Besides, as the Pardoner says, "lewed peple loven tales olde;/ Swiche thynges kan they wel reporte and holde."

Kafka's Amerika

I, for one, am looking forward to reading the new translation of Kafka's third--and least read--novel, alternatively called The Missing Person and Amerika. The novel was originally published in 1927, after Kafka's death, by his literary executor Max Brod. A new translation, by Mark Harman, is being published by Shocken Books. Adam Kirsch gives an overview of Amerika--not Harman's translation, as such, but Kafka's story in general--in The New York Times Sunday Book Review.

N.B. In the same NYTSBR, Sarah Fay reviews Tokyo Fiancée by Belgian writer Amélie Nothomb--a semi-autobiographical account of a young Belgian woman teaching French in Japan and falling in love with her student.

Call for submissions: Portuguese Interpreting/Translation Conference

The Translation Center and the Masters Program in Translation Studies at UMass Amherst will be hosting a conference on Portuguese translation in Amherst, MA on April 18-19, 2009.

The organizers are looking for presentations on a wide range of topics within the field of interpreting, translation and the Portuguese language. Their especial interest is the connection between professionals and academics in the field.

The conference will have a special student panel for graduate students to present their work.

Proposals may be sent to Elena Langdon, treasurer of the Portuguese Language Division of the American Translators Association: elena.langdon@gmail.com.

eXchanges, Icelandish, Freeman on -eth

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
eXchanges, the University of Iowa’s online journal of literary translation, will be accepting variations on the theme MIRRORS & MASKS for their spring 2009 issue until March 20, 2009. Short stories, novel excerpts, literary nonfiction, and poetry are all welcome, as well as critical essays on translation.

To be considered, submissions must include the original source text as well as the translation; biographies and photos of both author and translator; a short note on the process of translation; and permission for online publication for both languages. Submissions should total no more than ten pages in length. Electronic submissions -- which are strongly preferred -- should be send as .doc attachments to exchanges@iowa.uiowa.edu. Direct paper submissions to eXchanges, Bowman House, 230 N. Clinton St., Iowa City, IA, 52242, U.S.A. The editors do accept simultaneous submissions; however, they ask that submitters inform them if work is under consideration elsewhere.

HELLO, COUSINS
The Fall 2008 issue, ROOTS & BRANCHES, is online at the journal's website. Browsing through, I saw work from Japanese, Italian, Chinese, and Hindi, but, having recently fallen in with the writing of Halldór Laxness, decided to check out the Icelandic poem "morðsaga" by Sigurbjörg Þrastardóttir, given in German as "moritat" by Kristof Magnusson and as "murder story" by Þrastardóttir's English translator Bernard Scudder.

The title phrase "morð-saga" can be easily seen to mean "murder story," without having to clean off much of that phonetic and orthographic grime that accumulates over time on cognates, in much the same way that that sea corrosion builds up on cannons sunk with a ship-wreck. Oh, but let us be cautious of cognates -- I have in mind the admonition of translator Cola Franzen: that when rely on cognate meaning, we run the risk of ruining the tone of our version. Good advice indeed; but as readers of parallel texts we should be able to relax our vigilance against seeming sameness and faux amis, and have a little fun picking out the connections. As we can with the triplet wafer-thin / hauchdünn / næfurþunnt . Apparently "næfur" corresponds to "wafer" -- that's neat!.

It is thrilling to see clean kinship between English, German, and Icelandic, to feel part (as a native speaker of English) of an extended family of lexical relations. English: Don’t you think? German: Findest du nicht? Icelandic: Finnst þér ekki?

FREEMAN IN THE SUNDAY GLOBE
In today's Globe, Jan Freeman picks up the theme of linguistic cousins in a related (!) way: "Same for run the gantlet instead of gauntlet: The word was gattlopp in Swedish, but it was mangled the moment we borrowed it, almost 400 years ago. Does it really matter which spelling of the French word for "glove" we use to represent it today?" Ha, I laughed aloud; a point for Freeman again literary pedantry. Precision can be pretentious as well as useful. (Finnst þér ekki?) Elsewhere in the same column, Freeman expresses admirable irritation, admirably restrained, toward the use of verbs incorrectly conjugated in the Elizabethan way. She uses the occasion to preacheth tolerance of linguistic change, a cause we would all do well to support with our various energies. While not forgetting that there is a difference between change and degeneration, and that tolerance of the former should not admit comfort with the latter. Ah, but, like, who shall judgeth?

Abusive tendencies of translation

'Translation is something akin to vivisecting a ghost,' James Stotts tells us in the new issue of the literary journal Reconfigurations. "An analysis of translation, then, would be like the shadow cast by a ghost—pale indeed." Not in this case; Stotts is erudite and informative in this account of reading a clutch of dense lyrics (on the theme of goldfinches) by Osip Mandelstam. Stotts writes:

The problem with translation is that both decent and opportunist professors, both earnest poets and career hackwriters conventionally approach the translation of a body of work as some conquerable task, as if the poetic achievement of Mandelstam could be taken on and achieved again by proxy. Even good writers usually seem to be at their worst as translators. Mandelstam’s own appraisal of translation seems fairer: translations should be tools for approaching the original poem in its original language. The other half of the equation is the use of translations as an alternative mode of poetic production: simply a plagiaristic method for writing poetry. That would allow for the abusive tendencies of all translation, in a way that exposes and counters the apologetics of bad translators. It would also demand the same kind of struggle toward linguistic mastery in English that Mandelstam concerned himself with in Russian. A poem not only draws on its language, but creates new possibilities for it as well, and so a translation must also have that creative, dynamic feature to be worthwhile.

Stotts, a writer and photographer, is translating for a selected poems of Marina Tsvetaeva forthcoming from Whale and Star Press. His "invisible shotgun anthology" of Russian writing" includes such masters as Afanasy Fet, Sergei Esenin, Joseph Brodsky, and, yes, Mandelstam.

Love of Translation

I'd like to follow-up on Nora's post last month about the NPR featurette on translation, by directing readers to a more extended commentary on the conclusion of that show over at the blog of translator Erica Mena. Over at her Beneath Sense blog, Mena elevates the discussion of translation out of taxonomy and into urgent necessity:

[Translation] is both a science, in the sense of languages being a science, and an art in the sense of creative writing. This bridge that literary translation creates between the critical and the creative, the objective and the subjective, is what perhaps initially drew me into its practice. But it is more than a science and an art, it is and has to be a love.

Emphasis mine. In the same port, Mena recalls her burgeoning devotion to this lovely artful science:

I was told in one of my first translation workshops with renowned poet and translator Martha Collins that there aren't very many young literary translators. It seemed odd to me at the time that any craft would have much to do with the age of its practitioners. But it occurs to me that perhaps it has something to do with that requirement of love. As a creative writer, the love I hold for my own work is somewhat selfish - it's hard to get real distance from it, to separate it from my intentions and emotions. As a translator, the love I bear for the work I'm translating is significantly different. It's not that I don't feel intimately attached to the work - I certainly do - possessive sometimes, proprietary over the original. But that to devote yourself, your creative energies, entirely to someone else's work requires a kind of selfless love that comes with perspective and time.

Too often, in seminars and in discussion with publishers, is lost the vital urges, the devotion and passion, which brings us to literature and which we in turn take from it. My appreciation to Erica for reinforcing the heated feeling beneath the cool surfaces of les belles-lettres.

Pat Holt, with a wail: Where's all the translation?

Pat Holt, long-time book critic for The San Francisco Chronicle and publisher since 1998 of the estimable book industry column Holt Uncensored, is gobsmacked that more works in translation aren’t published in America. Among the results we suffer, she observes, are a culture a-wither in the confines of literary imprisonment (my paraphrase – but you can see that she’d agree), and a publishing industry suffering by cutting themselves off from an obvious source of new talent:

Wouldn’t any publisher consider it a plus if a prospective assistant editor came to the job interview with a reading fluency in at least one foreign language? During college the candidate could have studied the classics in that language, traveled in that country and read all the promising modern authors. If hired, the new editorial assistant could comb through the foreign country’s publishing lists, acquire advance copies, investigate the U.S. market for prospective works in translation and write up Readers Reports that would be reviewed by a senior editor. This would be good training for the editorial assistant and it would sure breathe new life into an industry struggling to match the literary demands of the world.

Incisive criticism and insightful advice. An example of how this advice can succeed in application is the good idea David Godine had when he picked up Chercheur D’or at a foreign book fair, commissioned a translation, released it on the English-language market at The Prospector, and enjoyed a healthy kick in sales when Le Clézio won the Nobel Prize this year.

To acknowledge the other obvious example at the moment: Farrar, Straus and Giroux can't have any complaints as it keeps on publishing best-selling translations of what seems like Roberto Bolaño's entire ouevre, one after the other, in a feverish single-file congo line of doorstop opus epics of Latin American literary imagination. In Spain, in Germany, in Brazil, in Russia, lurk all kinds of authors, some as accomplished as any of the laurelled Anglo-American set, others as talented as Bolaño and as unknown as he was ten years ago. The oil's there, publishers, so why ain't ya drillin'? As we have learned is important in such endeavors, you better get there before someone drinks your milkshake. Not everyone's asleep: Dalkey, Godine, Open Letter, and Tameme have all got their bendy straws in place.

Holt goes on in some detail highlighting the benefits to be gained if American publishers were to engage a larger portion of international literature; her post is well worth reading in its entirety, as the first of three things she’d love to see (that is, that she’d love to see occur in American publishing). We wait, breath bated, for the third.

Among the many noteworthy points Holt relates in the making of her case:
-a Nobel Prize judge observes that American writers and publishers are too insular
-the NEA literature director describes the decline of published books in translation “a national crisis”
-the chair of PEN’s translation committee concludes that such monoglot practices “prevent authors from reaching readers anywhere outside their own country”

Many thanks to C.M. Mayo for pointing out Holt’s return to commentary on the ALTA mailing list. Mayo is the founder of Tameme, Inc., a California-based nonprofit devoted to the promotion of Spanish-English and English-Spanish translation. You can learn more about that outfit and about Mayo herself at her blog, or by checking out this recent interview in Saint Ann’s Review.

NPR Feature on Translation

This weekend on NPR's All Things Considered, Rick Kleffel briefly discussed the difficulties and pleasures of translation. Kleffel focuses particularly on the difficulties of translating cultural elements from one time and place to another. For example, on translating 18th century Italian playwright Carlo Goldoni into English for the first time, Italian translator Bea Basso realized: "All of a sudden I was a translator of gestures, traditions, customs, ways of behaving even — how many kisses do you give to people when you enter a room." In translating Gargantua and Pantagruel, Burton Raffel met the same difficulties: "Rabelais, the author of this very strange book, ends the chapter with a sputtering iteration. I believe it's something like 43 different words in French for s- - -," says Raffel. "My problem was finding 43 different words because English is not so plentiful in these things."

Listen to a clip of the radio piece or compare different translations of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables.

Translating Procedural Poetry

When K. Silem Mohammad came to read with Christian Bök at the De Young Museum, we discussed at length how one could possibly translate his sonnegrams. If you recall, KSM's sonnegrams are more or less line by line anagrammatic poems written from Shakespeare's sonnets. I had been somewhat dismayed by some Italian translations of Google-sculpted poems by Gary Sullivan, which were just reproducing the meaning of the poems in question (mind you, I can read Italian, but I don't really know the language). The translator had basically worked from an artifact, rather than try to recreate a certain moment of writing. Of course, had the translator written the translation by simply entering the translation of the search terms into the Italian version of Google, he would have gotten a wildly different poem. But is it that bad?

My problem with such translation is that it treats more or less the poem as a communicative object. The poem as artifact has something to say. As Walter Benjamin wrote in "The Task of the Translator," translations will always be read under the shadow of their originals, but it does not entail that shadows have to be dull. And so, what is interesting about procedural poetry (Oulipo, flarf, some Language poetry) is not so much what they have to say but rather their gestures and their mechanics. The semantic acrobatics are icing on the cake.

What I proposed to KSM was to take a translation of Shakespeare (in French) and apply to it similar permutations to the one KSM operated on the English text. As KSM put it, it's writing a new poem out of a constraint/procedure. Which in itself is what poetic translation tends to be anyway, writing a new poem within the constraints of a foreign-language text. (Note that I am not planning right now to translate Kasey's sonnegrams)

KSM thought this was somewhat of a novel way of translating, but it's not really. In The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry (ed. Mary Ann Caws), we find the following poem by Michelle Grangaud, "Isidore Ducasse comte de Lautréamont" (at least the first stanza):

méduse l'auditoire mets sac à côté nord
et mise du crocodile dans ta mare ouest
démode du croissant au court à demi est
toast à taire consomme le décideur sud
sors ta mince camelote du désert oui-da
monte maturité à la corde cuisse de dos

If we had just translated the poem word for word, sentence by sentence (the way Georges Hugnet translated The Making of Americans), this is what we would have gotten:

mystify the audience place bag on the north side
and stake of the crocodile in your western puddle
old-fashioned croissant on the eastern court and a half
toast to shut drink the southern decider
show your narrow crap from the oui-da desert
increase maturity to the rope thigh of back

Like the French, it's still funny and nonsensical, but Grangaud is an Oulipian and the poem is a repeated anagram of its title coupled with the structure of sestina. Here is the translation that Paul and Rosemary Lloyd did:

I am more cursed at close a dent outside
a sluice meet roused a distracted moon
some toadies direct moat clause under
o I must care seamed a rose tinted cloud
lo our coast master educated me inside
so tailed mouse can't deem dour ice star

The translation here in term of gesture is more faithful to the original. Nevermind meaning, there wasn't any to begin with. However, I am not saying this should necessarily be the way to translate procedural poems. This translation is still problematic, in that it is syntactically more correct than its original, for example (there is almost no syntax in the original).

Another interesting translation of procedural poetry is Cole Swensen's work on Pierre Alferi's Kub Or. The original text:

au lieu de moquer marquise
me font vos yeux beaux mourir
penser images secondes
arrangement d'étourneaux
qui vont à la ligne haute
tension battre le flip-book
et revoir le mouvement

cinéma

And as translated in OXO:

rather than mocking marquise
of your eyes so beautiful
die i think frames per second
the arrangement of starlings
aligned on the high tension
wire shuffles the flip-book
and revises the motion

cinéma

Alféri's original is 7 syllables in 7 lines in conversation with 7 photographs by Suzanne Doppelt. What is so admirable about Swensen's translation is that she manages to keep both the structural constraints of the original, but also the dialogue it establishes with the photographs.

The fundamental problem of truth.

Once, during rehearsals, Stanislavsky told an actor: "You can act well. You can act badly. Act, as you please. I am not interested. It is important to me that you act veraciously."

The problem of truth is primary in the perilous business of translation. There are ever-present battles between those, who argue that a translator should be as close as possible to the original, and those, who say that literary translation is not all that literary if it does not alter the original. Frequently, both fall into pits of their own creation – the former produce unreadable transmissions and the latter create something that resembles the original only in name. Literary translation, as acting, should be veracious, and thus cannot be either/or, it has to be both, literary and honest to the original.

Sarah Glazer in her 2001 essay "Lost in Translation" implicitly makes a strong case for such translation by evaluating the current English version of "The Second Sex” by Simone de Beauvoir. The “founding text of modern feminism” has been inaccurately translated, to the point of distortion, by a person who was least qualified for such an exercise - a biologist with no background in either feminism or philosophy. Albeit a result of a misunderstanding, this work gave English readers a wrong impression of the author, whom they now see as an “incoherent” and “sloppy” thinker, and destroyed the philosophical merit of the treatise. More disheartening is the fact that the publisher refused a request by Beauvoir's literary heir, Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, to re-translate the work. Thus, the book will remain in its current version and those who wish to read the actual written word of the founding feminist will need to learn French. Perhaps, the argument for verity in “The Second Sex” has more merit – it is crucial to be precise in a work that operates with philosophical concepts, which don’t appreciate misinterpretation. However, Sarah Glazer, addresses a very prominent problem in translation as a whole - frequently, translators are either not part of the world of writing, or confuse the exercise of translating with that of creative writing, or both.

Recently, I have been trying to find “Master and Margarita” for a friend of mine. As you know, there are currently 3 versions of the novel available. I have done my research, and have to admit that Pevear and Volokhonsky’s translation is the best. I know, they are accused of monopolizing the market of Russian translation, but the other two versions took liberties with the text that I cannot forgive. I think this team has the fundamentals for "veracious translating" – a native speaker of Russian, a native speaker of English (both literary gifted) and a degree of honesty to the original that is rare.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that... Americans don't read international authors.

As Jane Austen famously--wryly--wrote, "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." Mimicking Austen's syntax--and perhaps her dry irony--Motoko Rich of the New York Times writes "It is a commonly held assumption that Americans don’t like to read authors who write in languages they don’t understand."

Fortunately, as Rich notes, some Americans do read authors who write in languages they don't understand. Or, at least, some small American publishers like Boston's David R. Godine--who published Nobel Prize winner Le Clézio--put the work out there for us to read.

In her article "Translation is Foreign to U.S. Publishers," Rich cites Horace Engdahl, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, who observes, quite rightly, that the "U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature.”

Similarly, Anne-Solange Noble, the foreign-rights director at Gallimard-- Le Clézio's French publisher--is at turns baffled and aggravated by American literary isolationism. She explains that “American publishers are depriving the American readership of the cultural diversity through translation to which they are entitled. It is what I call the poverty of the rich.”

Three cheers then for the small publishers like Godine, Dalkey Archive, Archipelago, Graywolf, Zephyr Press and Open Letter, who heroically publish works in translation, despite small budgets, poor promotion, and little attention from the American media and reading public.

2008 Nobel to French Author

Today's New York Times reports that the 2008 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature is French author J.M.G. Le Clézio. His 1985 novel Le Chercheur d'or was translated into English by Carol Marks, and published this year under the title The Prospector by Boston's own David R. Godine publishers. Boston translation FTW.

Americana in Arabic

Juan Cole, at the Dept. of History at the University of Michigan, is developing a non-profit project to translate classic works of American thought and history into Arabic. Such editions rarely appear; when they do, they are often abridged or not long available before going out of print. A poor distribution system for Arabic books and the scarcity of public libraries compounds the problem, the project website reports. The project authors write:

We have therefore begun a project to translate important books by great Americans and about America into Arabic, and to subsidize their publication so that they can be bought inexpensively. We are also subventing their distribution. We seek funding from the general public as well as from foundations. [...] Among our main goals, which we think are distinctive, is the formation of a large corpus of Americana in Middle Eastern languages, maintaining them in print and available inexpensively, and ensuring continued distribution and availability.

Interested persons may join an e-mail announcement list.

The image shown is the cover of a bilingual edition of The Declaration of Independent and the Constitution of the United States, published by the Cato Institute. Many nations have certification standards for translators and intepreters whose work involves legal documents. Who is responsible for translating the foundational texts of government? When we consider the vasty oceans of legal ink spilled by pols, pundits, and attorneys as various interests dispute the compacted meaning of, say, the privacy clause, we have to wonder what standards are in place to ensure that the vagaries of translation don't proliferate constitutional confusions.

Bord na Gaidhlig

The Herald reported a few months back on the resignation of Scotland's Bord na Gaidhlig chief of development, Kenneth Murray. The Bord na Gaidhlig is the Scottish cultural organ charged with the continued life of Gaelic, the native language of the area and on of a family of languages that includes Irish, Welsh, and several more minor – oh, how could they possibly be more minor? – continental tongues. It would be a taxing position for those deeply and fully committed to the language, never mind an outsider in the field as Murray apparently was.

Commissions such as these work to avoid the complete death of a given naturally learned language (learned from being spoken in the home) and to stop it from becoming an inactive language (meaning that it would be known, but only in the way that Latin is now known). According to UNESCO, ten languages die out every year, a recently-arrived-at and alarmingly high rate: 'Europe’s colonial conquests caused a sharp decline in linguistic diversity, eliminating at least 15 per cent of all languages spoken at the time. Over the last 300 years, Europe has lost a dozen, and Australia has only 20 left of the 250 spoken at the end of the 18th century. In Brazil, about 540 (three-quarters of the total) have died out since Portuguese colonization began in 1530.'

Is it a (write it!) disaster that these languages go extinct? Or maybe it is better to ask, what is the implication of their demise for the rest of humanity? There are those who would argue – I might be among them – that greater pluralities of languages allow for a greater variety of conceptions, that implicit in a language is the structure of a culture's conceptual thinking. More practically, we lose what there was of humanity contained in the texts of these languages: historical texts, myths, verse, and what might be called theosophy. This is why translation is so important.

Comp Lit Roundtable and Lecture at Boston University

Dr. Haun Saussy, Bird White Housum Professor of Comparative Literature at Yale University, will be presenting a lecture entitled "Of Course It’s Not Strictly 'Comparing,' But Does It Matter What We 'Compare'?", on
Thursday September 25, 2008, from 5:30 – 7:30 pm in room 326 of the College of Arts and Sciences classroom building at 685 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston.

The next day, Friday September 26th, the Boston University Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature will be hosting a roundtable discussion on comparative literature, featuring Bonnie Costello; Laurence Breiner; Margaret Litvin; Jeffrey Mehlman; Stephen Scully; J. Keith Vincent; and Haun Saussy. The discussion will be held from 2 – 4 pm, in room 106 of the Kenmore Classroom Building at 565 Commonwealth Avenue.

Both events are co-sponsored by the Humanities Foundation at Boston University.

E.g., "Dimplings Warmed in Water Gas "

Dan Pritchard, of The Wooden Spoon and The Hub, directs our attention to what is either a moment of richly reflexive ironic commentary on our pig-idiot monoglossia or a simple error in machine translation. Dan's nota bene itself begs for translation: "Flarf is like motorcycles, they're everywhere!"

The scenario. A restaurant in China, anticipating a large potential dinership with the arrival of the Olympics in Beijing, seems to have used a software program to translate its name into English. The result: a lime-green banner above their entrances, with their Chinese name on the left, and on the right, the words "Translate server error."

Perhaps they mean "server" here to mean "waitperson," and are simply highlighting the ability of their staff to transform mistakes in table service into amazing dining experiences. Perhaps not. The photo shown here comes from the collection of Flickr user tenz1225.

Similar gaffes can be found at the Flickr group Bad translations -- mauvaises traductions -- traduzioi brutte. Through BT-MT-TB, I came across a link to an altruistic outfit operating under the name Signs In China. According to their About Us page, this group of volunteers comprises "some professors, students, and friends of the Beijing Foreign Studies University." They "invite every English-speaking visitor, expatriate, and Chinese-English bilingual to join us in correcting mangled English signs and improving the use of English in China."

Theirs is a laudable linguistic mission, but it brings them into direct conflict with clubby groups like Chinglish that curate a Flickr gallery of confused signage. Who shall prevail? The pure-hearted pedants with their pails of white-out and sense of purpose? Or the snickering connoisseurs of corrupt marquees and menus? The ancient battle continues.

The Rub: To Sub or to Dub?

Professor Abe Mark Nornes of the University of Michigan has recently published a book that examines the confounding dynamics of film translation, called "Cinema Babel: Translating Foreign Cinema". Donald Richie's review of the book opens the door for some productive questions. For example, are audiences best served by translations that follow the rules of the original language (and all of its cultural implications) or should a translator's aim be to make a film accessible to his target audience by employing the rules of their language? 

My question is, how much is lost when one chooses one method of translation over another? I frequently encounter translations that do not do the original film justice. Many times the problems of translating are closely tied to the culture associated with the target language. I have a very specific example in mind from the "Shrek" movie.  I have watched this film in the original English and in two versions of Spanish: Spain-Spanish and Mexican-Spanish.  In the original there is a scene where Donkey is excitedly rambling on to Shrek about having a sleep-over, he says, "...and in the morning, we'll make waffles!" In the Mexican-Spanish version there is a bizzare translation, that makes any native speaker laugh: "...y por la mañana, haremos tamales!" For those of you that do not know, tamales are corn cakes that are usually filled with meat and cooked while wrapped in either corn or plantain leaves. I assure you that they have nothing to do with waffles. I don't think that they are usually a breakfast item either. Why that particular translator chose "tamales" I will never know, but it does add a significant layer of comedy in Spanish, that previously did not exist. The Spain-Spanish version is much more faithful to the original idea: "y por la mañana, haremos gofres". Gofres are definitely waffles, but I assure you that they are never a breakfast item in Spain, as they are usually sold in the street covered in chocolate syrup and whipped cream. Had I to translate for Spain, I would have said churros, which are basically crunchy fried donut sticks that you dip in coffee, and are universally loved by all in the early hours of the morning. 

I am an avid watcher of foreign cinema, and I must say that, personally, I prefer subtitles to dubbing. I feel that subtitles are less intrusive, and afford you the singular opportunity of experiencing a film in the richness of its original language. It's not everyday that I can hear a sustained conversation in Farsi, or Finnish, and I relish those opportunities (especially if I can get an inkling of what is being said through some well-placed subtitles). I recently had a conversation with a Spanish friend about dubbing. For a very long time, dubbing has been the order of the day with foreign films and TV programs in Spain, though, happily, that is now changing. She felt really cheated of the opportunity to learn English through TV, like so many of her friends had in other European nations that do not commonly dub. 

Really, so much is lost when things are dubbed, from the opportunity to know a specific actor's voice and intonation, to the experience of hearing the cadences of a language that is not your own. 

eXchanges, the University of Iowa's translation e-journal, is seeking submissions

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Tradition and innovation, introversion and extraversion, osmosis and photosynthesis, phylogeny and divination, family and friendship...

eXchanges will be accepting variations on the theme ROOTS & BRANCHES for our fall 2008 issue until October 24, 2008. Short stories, novel excerpts, literary nonfiction, and poetry are all welcome, as well as critical essays on translation.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES:

To be considered, submissions must include:
Both the original and the translation
Biographies and photos of both author and translator
A short note on the process of translation
Permission for online publication for both languages
Submissions should total no more than ten pages in length.

Electronic submissions are preferred.

Please send both original and translation as .doc attachments to exchangesjournal@gmail.com.

Direct paper submissions to eXchanges, Bowman House, 230 N. Clinton St., Iowa City, IA, 52242, U.S.A.

We do accept simultaneous submissions; however, please inform us if your work is under consideration elsewhere.

For more information please visit eXchanges at www.uiowa.edu/~xchanges or email exchangesjournal@gmail.com.

Adam Zagajewski wins the 2008 Milosz Prize

Polskie Radio news reports that Adam Zagajewski, a Polish poet, novelist and essayist who teaches at the University of Chicago has won the 2008 Milosz Prize. The prize, established by the United States Embassy in Poland is "given to persons who have made outstanding contributions to the development of the Polish-US cultural dialogue and contacts".

Below: Zagajewski's poem "Autumn"


Autumn

Autumn is always too early.
The peonies are still blooming, bees
are still working out ideal states,
and the cold bayonets of autumn
suddenly glint in the fields and the wind
rages.

What is its origin? Why should it destroy
dreams, arbors, memories?
The alien enters the hushed woods,
anger advancing, insinuating plague;
woodsmoke, the raucous howls
of Tatars.

Autumn rips away leaves, names,
fruit, it covers the borders and paths,
extinguishes lamps and tapers; young
autumn, lips purpled, embraces
mortal creatures, stealing
their existence.

Sap flows, sacrificed blood,
wine, oil, wild rivers,
yellow rivers swollen with corpses,
the curse flowing on: mud, lava, avalanche,
gush.

Breathless autumn, racing, blue
knives glinting in her glance.
She scythes names like herbs with her keen
sickle, merciless in her blaze
and her breath. Anonymous letter, terror,
Red Army.



In other Polish poetry news, Valparaiso Poetry Review features an essay on Zbigniew Herbert's Collected Poems.

Chinese Literature reviewed in the New York Times Sunday Book Review

My last blog post concerned the cult figure Li Yang, advocate of "Crazy English". To rectify somewhat that focus on the idiosyncratic and bizarre, I'd like to mention a few new works by Chinese authors mentioned in this week's New York Times Sunday Book Review.

Jonathan Spence reviews Mo Yan's Life and Death are Wearing Me Out, published by Arcade and translated by Howard Goldblatt. Spence writes:

"At one level [...] “Life and Death” is a kind of documentary,
carrying the reader across time from the land reform at the end of the Chinese Civil War, through the establishment of mutual-aid teams and lower-level cooperatives in the early and mid-1950s, into the extreme years of the Great Leap Forward and the famine of the late ’50s and early ’60s, and on to the steady erosion of the collective economy in the new era of largely unregulated “capitalism with socialist characteristics.” At the novel’s close, some of the characters are driving BMWs, while others are dyeing their hair blond and wearing gold rings in their noses.

Yet although one can say that the political dramas narrated by Mo Yan are historically faithful to the currently known record, “Life and Death” remains a wildly visionary and creative novel, constantly mocking and rearranging itself and jolting the reader with its own internal commentary. This is politics as pathology. From the start, the reader must be willing to share with Mo Yan the novel’s central conceit: that the five main narrators are not
humans but animals, albeit ones who speak with sharply modulated human voices. Each of the successive narrators — a donkey, an ox, a pig, a dog, a monkey — are the sequential reincarnations of a man named Ximen Nao, as determined by Yama, lord of the underworld."

Meanwhile, Aventurina King writes on loved / reviled Chinese pop novelist Guo Jingming. King writes:

Thousands of teenagers — his readers are rarely over 20 — flock to Guo’s signing sessions. Some post frenzied declarations of love on his blog: “Little Four, I will always be with you!” (Guo’s nickname comes from “fourth dimension war,” a random quotation he found in a magazine.) Alongside adoring letters
addressed to “Big Brother Guo,” the author posts pictures of himself half-naked in the shower, in his underwear or swathed in Dolce & Gabbana accessories and Louis XIV-style shirts.

Guo is hardly universally beloved. Last fall, he was voted China’s most hated male celebrity for the third year in a row on Tianya, one of the country’s biggest online forums. Yet three of his four novels have sold over a million copies each, and last year he had the highest income of any Chinese author: $1.4
million.

The most critically acclaimed Chinese novels of recent years — “Wolf Totem” (a parable about the death of Mongolian culture and a veiled critique of the Cultural Revolution), Yu Hua’s “To Live,” Mo Yan’s “Republic of Wine” — generally use their characters as vessels for broad social and political commentary. But Guo’s novels focus on the tortured psyches of his adolescent characters, who either nurse their melancholy by sitting alone for long hours under trees and on rooftops, or try to blunt it with drinking, fighting and karaoke.

In addition, Liesl Schillinger writes on Yan Lianke's Serve the People! translated by Julia Lovel, which she describes as a "bluntly drawn, mildly erotic fable" banned in China. Francine Prose reviews Wang Anyi's The Song of Everlasting Sorrow, and Pankaj Mishra discusses Jiang Rong's Wolf Totem.

China's Elvis of English

In a recent article, the New Yorker reports on cult figure Li Yang whose "Crazy English" -- a bizarre blend of ideology and slick marketing scheme -- has set itself loose upon China in preparation for the 2008 Olympics.

Evan Osnos writes: "China intends to teach itself as much English as possible by the time the guests arrive, and Li has been brought in by the Beijing Organizing Committee to make that happen. He is China’s Elvis of English, perhaps the world’s only language teacher known to bring students to tears of excitement. He has built an empire out of his country’s deepening devotion to a language it once derided as the tongue of barbarians and capitalists. His philosophy, captured by one of his many slogans, is flamboyantly patriotic: “Conquer English to Make China Stronger!”"

Li's idea of English is a strange one, to say the least, inextricably linked to ideology; the implication is that with the power of English you can gain prowess in the workplace, attract a trophy mate, and excel in all kinds of ways. These tantalizing promises have their appeal, of course. Osnos writes that "Li’s cosmology ties the ability to speak English to personal strength, and personal strength to national power. It’s a combination that produces intense, sometimes desperate adoration." Thousands flock to his sessions and, according to publisher's statistics, millions of his books and audio products have sold.

Unsurprisingly, Li's pedagogical methods are unconventional at best and bolster this myth of English as a uniquely powerful tool. His 'Crazy English' involved yelling. (Osnos provides the example of doctors brushing up on their English for the Olympic Games shouting after Li: "I! Would! Like! To! Take! Your! Tem! Per! Ture!" to what Osnos images would be the consternation of their patients.)

The fees Li charges for arena-filled sessions and private group meetings are extortionate and all his commercial efforts reveal the work of a savvy marketeer and demagogue. As Osnos writes, "Li’s name adorns more than a hundred books, videos, audio boxed sets, and software packages, such as the “Li Yang Crazy English Blurt Out MP3 Collection,” which sells for sixty-six yuan—a little more than nine dollars—and his motivational memoir, which costs twenty yuan." Osnos playfully adds that the original title of Li's memoir, I Am Crazy, I Succeed "used a word that implied “I Am Psychotic, I Succeed,” but the publishing house rejected it."

Polish author Magdalena Tulli reading at BU

The Polish novelist and translator Magdalena Tulli will be reading at Boston University's School of Management on May 1st at 7 PM. Her novels include Dreams and Stones and Moving Parts. The American novelist Lawrence Weschler will also read, and the two writers will discuss their work. Following the reading and discussion, there will be a release party for the new issue of Agni literary magazine.

Eshleman wins Academy of American Poets award

From the AAP website, "CLAYTON ESHLEMAN RECEIVES THE 2008 HAROLD MORTON LANDON TRANSLATION AWARD": The Academy of American Poets is pleased to announce that Clayton Eshleman has been chosen by the poet and translator Jerome Rothenberg as the recipient of the 2008 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award. Mr. Eshleman is being recognized for his translation of The Complete Poetry of César Vallejo (University of California Press, 2007). This is the second time Mr. Eshleman, who as been translating Vallejo's work for over 45 years, has won the award; the first time was in 2001 for Vallejo's Trilce. The Harold Morton Landon Translation Award is given to the best book of poetry translated from any language into English published in the previous year, and carries a prize of $1,000.

Fast, good, or cheap: pick any two.

Writing for The Smart Set, Jessa Crispin uncovers the shocking rationale for the relative dearth of literature in translation (emphasis mine):

I decide to skip the translation panel I had planned to attend after lunch. The London Book Fair had declared this year’s market focus the Arab World. This meant two things that I could tell. One, instead of just hideously overpriced stale pizzas and soggy sandwiches, you could also now find hideously overpriced Middle Eastern food. Two, at every panel, some publisher had to himself on the back about the increased sales of works in translation. In reality, however, translated works now make up approximately four percent of books published in the English-speaking world, instead of the previous three percent. Whenever a representative from an Arabic publisher stood up during the Q&A section to ask why, if there’s so much interest in translated literature, more literature is not translated, he is answered with awkward silence. “Translation is expensive,” is a general answer given, once someone on a panel realizes no one is going to volunteer to speak first.

Gander's translations in NYC

On Saturday, May 3rd, PEN America is sponsoring a panel titled "The Art of ranslation" at the NYU Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House, 58 West 10th St., at 4 p.m., a reading and discussion with Forrest Gander on the Mexican poet Coral Bracho, Fanny Howe on the Polish poets Henia and Ilona Karmel, and Stephanie Sandler and Genya Turovskaya on the Russian poet Elena Fanailova. Eliot Weinberger will introduce the event. Tickets are free to PEN and PSA members and NYU students or $5 at the door. This event is being cosponsored by Poetry Society of America, Zoland Poetry, and the Creative Writing Program at NYU.

From the PEN America site: "[Gander’s] translations include No Shelter: Selected Poems of Pura Lopez Colome (Graywolf), and (with Kent Johnson) two books by Jaime Saenz, The Night and Immanent Visitor, which was a finalist for the 2003 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. Gander’s translations of Coral Bracho’s poems, Firefly Under the Tongue, will be published in spring 2008."

Poetry's Translation Issue Podcast

Hear some of the poems from Poetry's April translation issue at the Poetry Foundations podcast. First, reads "Our sweet companions -- sharing your bunk and your bed" by Marina Tsvetaeva, translated by Sasha Dugdale, who notes that, perhaps Tsvetaeva had been reading Pushkin's narrative poem "The Gypsies" or had otherwise been momentarily yearning for a nomadic life.

Hear a poem by Swedish "retrogardist" (akin to Neo-Formalist) poet, Håkan Sandell. The Translator, Bill Coyle, claims that Sandell does not enslave himself to the past, but gives himself the resources to plunder from tradition at will. Sandell's "Poetry rejoices..." reflects on the universality of poetry that transmits itself across geographic space--"on the Faroe Islands, over rendezvous on the Champs-Elysée [...] over Japan, over Korea"--and also across time, "over arts refined over a thousand years." Poetry, here, even transcends form, and is found in the arts of swordmanship and drinking tea.

Borges on writing (Norton Lectures from 1967 and 1967)

Excerpts from the 1967 and 1968 Norton Lectures given by Jorge Luis Borges can be heard here.

Amongst other things, Borges discusses how French literature, although great, is too self-conscious. Preconceiving one's characters, Borges argues can lead one to "labor under illusory problems."

Borges' advice to writers: tamper as little with your own work as possible.

Amsterdam World Book Capital 2008

Oh how I'd love to be in Amsterdam at the end of May when the city holds the UNESCO World Book Market. There will be over 1000 book stalls set up and a program of events, including publishing and author sessions. In connection with the event, the Amsterdam Public Library will hold an exhibition called Amsterdam in Words, which will feature authors who have written about Amsterdam. In June, Amsterdam will hold the Congress of European Booksellers, organized by the European Booksellers Federation and the International Booksellers Federation.

In Memoriam: Robert Fagles

The great translator, poet, and teacher Robert Fagles died at age 74 on March 26, 2008. His translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey were published in the '90s, and his Aeneid followed in 2006.

In an interesting video interview 2003, Fagles discusses how he originally "fell into" the classics and translation while he was an undergraduate at Amherst. He recalls his early love for Lattimore's translations and how learning Russian head him towards translation. Fagles affectionately quotes Auden's description of translation as "Braille for the blind".

Each new translation of a classic work, he claims, is a different performance, with its own nuances and foregrounded elements. In his own translation of The Odyssey, he attempts to bring across Homer's "single ruling imagination". Homer, he claims, is "the great conceiver."

Translations from Asia

This month's feature on Words Without Borders: China:

"As the world looks to Beijing and the 2008 Olympics, we present a national women’s team of writers to guide us through the richly sedimented and often contradictory layers of the current Chinese psyche. Against the background of contemporary China—where modern business harks back to historical trade, economic growth introduces the painful reality of layoffs, the Cantonese dialect asserts itself against Mandarin, and an argument for the one-child policy takes a peculiarly feminist twist—characters run from social and cultural pressure, fight to support extended families, and dive into unrequited love. Huang Yongmei, Liu Sola, Sheng Keyi, Wang Anyi, Wang Ping, Ye Mi, and Zhao Ying introduce us to the humor, pathos, and great complexity that is China today. Our great thanks to guest editor Hu Ying for allowing us this glimpse below the new China’s gleaming surfaces."

On the Words Without Borders blog, Anne Ishii also briefly notes the curious absence of Asia in a report of recent translations read at the Columbia Grad Student Translation Conference, and published at Context. Ishii writes that, "the real kicker of the survey was the curious absence of statistics on Chinese, Japanese, Korean, South Asian, Thai and Vietnamese translations." As a side note, I would like to announce that Boston's Pen & Anvil Press intends to publish an anthology of Japanese poems in translation in the next year or so.

Translation Panel at Boston University

Come meet professionals from fields including textual translation and legal, educational, and social services interpreting, at a panel discussion entitled FOUND IN TRANSLATION: INSIGHTS ON TRANSLATION AND INTERPRETING FOR A GLOBAL AUDIENCE on APRIL 14, 2008 at 7 PM in Kenmore Classroom Building (KCB) 101.

Representing a variety of languages, signed and spoken, panelists will present students with a taste of the work they do and the important role it plays in a diverse society.Sign language interpreters will be present, and refreshments will be served. More information, including list of participants, is available at the website of the sponsoring organization, the BU undergraduate Linguistics Association.