Introducing Koro, an entirely new language like nothing you've seen!

As reported in an article about the discovery of a Tibeto-Burman language previously unknown to linguistics, researchers made two interestingly contrasting claims. The first involves the claim that this language, Koro, is somehow linguistically isolate:

"Their language is quite distinct on every level—the sound, the words, the sentence structure," said Gregory Anderson, director of the nonprofit Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, who directs the project's research. [...] Languages like Koro "construe reality in very different ways," Dr. Anderson said. "They uniquely code knowledge of the natural world in ways that cannot be translated into a major language."

This claim of Koro's unusual separateness would seem to conflict with the researchers' report that the speakers themselves don't see that they are so isolate:

Moreover, it was masked by the unusual language diversity of the area, where so many languages are spoken that they seem to intermingle effortlessly in streams of thought. Indeed, the local Koro speakers themselves didn't consider theirs a separate language, even though it is as distinct from those spoken by other villagers as English is from Russian, the researchers said.[emphasis added]

As distinct as English is from Russian, how... not orthographically, since Koro does not have a written form, but syntactically? Lexically? It is a shame that the article in The Wall Street Journal couldn't extract more specific information from the researchers. What we are left with is a tantalizing report, of quite generic content: something new has been found! And it is quite unusual, let us tell you! Linguistic relativism rears its head again, providing support to those advocating for the preservation of linguistic communities under threat of extinction, but furthering the unfortunate belief that languages create barriers between cultures that obstruct mutual understanding.

My optimism prompts me to wonder if the unique uniqueness of Koro isn't just a bit of hard work translators, rather than evidence of human linguistic fragmentation.

*

NB: Perhaps this discovery is not completely recent, though it sounds like the research team mentioned did the leg-work to analyze the language for publication in a forthcoming issue of Indian Linguistics. According to Wikipedia,

Koro was recognized as a separate language in 2008 by a linguistic team of David Harrison, Gregory Anderson, and Ganesh Murmu while documenting two Hruso languages (Aka and Miji) as part of National Geographic's Enduring Voices project. It was reported to them as a dialect of Aka, but turned out to be highly divergent. However, it was apparently noticed by earlier researchers. Ethnologue reports that "A 2005 survey identified a group of Aka in East Kameng District called Koro Aka, distinct from Hruso Aka in West Kameng."

Found in Translation

An Op-Ed piece by Michael Cunningham that was printed in the NY Times this weekend.

Lydia Davis on Translation's Economy

The quality and nature of a translation (let’s say from the French) depends on three things, the first fairly obvious and the second two not quite as obvious: 1) the translator’s knowledge of French language, history, and culture; 2) his or her conception of the task of the translator; and 3) his or her ability to write well in English. These three variables have infinite subsets that recombine infinitely to produce the many different kinds and qualities of translations that we have. Publishers selecting a translator seem to proceed on the assumption that the most important qualification is the first. “Let’s ask Prof. X, head of the French Department at Y!” Often they completely ignore the second factor—how will Professor X approach the task of translating?—and certainly the third—what is Professor X’s writing style like? All three factors are vital, but in many instances, if one has to rank them, the third—how well the translator writes—may be the most important qualification, followed closely or equaled by the second—how he or she approaches the task of translating—and it is the first that comes in last place, since minor lapses in a knowledge of the language, history, and culture may result in mistakes that are, in a beautifully written, generally faithful version, fairly easily corrected, whereas a misconception of the task of the translator and, worse, an inability to write well will doom the entire book through its every sentence.

The above is from Lydia Davis' most recent note at The Paris Review, on the art and task of translation. I'd like to say that her characterization of publishers is unfair; that editors consider and deliberate, weigh advantage and quality, before making a decision — but, I can only speak for one unique small house with a mind for such matters of sums of money. And also because, she has the goods on Norton's edition of Madame Bovary. Tisk, tisk, Norton.

[cross-posted from Daniel Pritchard's blog The Wooden Spoon]

Call for Submissions: INVENTORY

Submission deadline for our next issue is June 15, 2011.

Seeking original translations of poetry and prose, as well as critical essays on translation for Inventory, an annual journal of literary translation based at Princeton University.

Inventory publishes thoughtful translations and focuses critical attention on translation theory and practice. The editors wish to highlight the craft and practice of literary translation, and to provide a forum for an artistic and critical conversation on the role of the contemporary literary translator. Based in Princeton University’s Department of Comparative Literature, Inventory finds and catalogues original translations of poetry and prose from any language into English, provides critical texts on the subject of translation, and offers suggestions by leaders in various fields of translation work left to be done.

Advisory Board

• Sandra Bermann
• Susan Bernofsky
• Peter Brooks
• Eduardo Cadava
• Paul Muldoon
• Lawrence Venuti
• Michael Wood

Guidelines for Submission

• We consider translations of poetry and prose from any language – ancient or modern – into English. We welcome new translations of previously translated work, and we encourage our translators to engage imaginatively with the conventions and possibilities of literary translation. We regret that we are unable to accept translations into languages other than English.
• Poetry submissions should include 3-6 poems (no more than five pages), and fiction submissions should not exceed 2000 words. We do accept excerpts, but request that you include a single-paragraph summary of the full work. Please attach a copy of all pieces in their first language.
• We also consider critical work, submissions of which should not exceed 2000 words and should focus on the topic of translation. Writers are encouraged not to limit their focus to the work of a single writer, but rather to address themselves to a larger conversation on contemporary artistic translation.
• Submissions should be directed to invent@princeton.edu, indicating in the subject line the genre and first language of the submission, if applicable. We ask that you include in the body of your email a brief paragraph describing the piece's translation history, as well any relevant information about why you have chosen to translate the piece at this time.
• Published writers retain copyright of their material and are free to publish again elsewhere.
• We regret that we can accept unsolicited submissions by email only.

Thank you for your interest, and please contact the editors at invent@princeton.edu with any questions.

Summer Poetry Pairing

I thought this was interesting - part of a New York Times series that pairs a poem from the Poetry Foundation with an article from the Times that expands on its themes.

http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/poetry-pairing-july-22-2010/

Translators needed to span glossal gaps as Globish grows

According to Burchfield, English was like Latin. Just as Latin broke up into mutually unintelligible languages like French, Spanish and Italian, so would global English similarly disintegrate into separate, mutually distinctive tongues. To the delight of leader-writers from Sydney to Saskatchewan, he pointed out that, historically speaking, languages have always had a tendency to break up, or to evolve. There were, he argued, some "powerful models of the severance of a language into two or more constituent parts, especially the emergence of the great Germanic languages of western Europe – English, German, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, and so on – from the mutually intelligible dialects of the 5th century. The obvious objection to this model, which his critics were swift to deploy, was the contemporary vigour and interconnectedness of global English. In the age of mass media, the future of world English, said Burchfield's opponents, would never follow the Latin model. To which he replied that such objections overlooked one vital fact: "English, as the second language of many speakers in countries throughout the world, is no more likely to survive the inevitable political changes of the future than did Latin, once the second language of the governing classes or regions within the Roman Empire."

From an article in The Observer by Robert McCrum, author of Globish: How the English Language Became the World's Language.

The manifest extension of English-language commerce and culture across much of the globe, and its subsequent fragmentation into varieties of regional patois, should keep literary translators busy--if they can recognize the opportunity to mediate communication across all the new gaps appearing in the world's linguistic landscape. "Builders needed," the sign reads, "of bridges in a variety of forms. Must work quick, and work must be strong." Hopefully the pay will be good.

Interview with Daína Chaviano

Lisa Carter has just posted an interview with Daína Chaviano, a discussion of the Cuban-American author's novel La isla de los amores infinítos from a translation perspective.

Chaviano is the award-winning author of several novels published in Spanish. She won the Azorín Award for Best Novel for El hombre, la hembra y el hambre (Man, Woman and Hunger). The Island of Eternal Love, which is her most recent work, was the recipient of the 2006 Florida Book Awards’ Gold Medal for Best Spanish-Language Book and has been translated into twenty-five languages. A Havana native, Chaviano has lived in Miami since 1991.

Chinglish Mishaps

Thought this might interest (and amuse) some folks:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/03/world/asia/03chinglish.html

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Kessler wins Harold Morton Landon Award

Stephen Kessler has been chosen by Edith Grossman to receive the 2010 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award for his translations of the poet Luis Cernuda collected in Desolation of the Chimera (White Pine Press, 2009). His previous translations include books by Vicente Aleixandre, Pablo Neruda, Raymond Queneau, César Vallejo, and many more. Read Cernuda's poems as translated by Stephen Kessler, at Poets.org.

Kirsch & Kaminsky on Poetry in Translation

At The Poetry Foundation website, poet / critic Adam Kirsch and poet / translator Ilya Kaminsky discuss the nature of, problems with, and possibilities for poetry in translation. They raise the common questions: how can one effectively translate formal techniques? is translation more re-imagining than transmogrification? what role does the personality of the translator play? These questions are fairly banal — they exist more for the critics to opine than as real practical problems for a translator. This is not to say that translators don't encounter them in their work. They do. But if a translator's approach is as programmatic as any answer, then they've almost certainly failed. As Kaminsky writes, ‘what interests me is not only the genius of the poet translated but also the genius of what is possible in English as it bends to accommodate or digest various new forms. By translating, we learn how the limits of our minds can be stretched to absorb the foreign, and how thereby we are able to make our language beautiful in a new way.’

Post Script
I agree with this aside whole-heartedly: ‘A side note about irony, which is a very popular device in American poetry today: I think when someone like Herbert used it in Poland in the time of martial law, when saying something straightforwardly meant being killed, it was a powerful thing. But when I see a thirty-something in Manhattan writing poems that are so overtly ironic they remind me of Seinfeld, I wonder if there is an overuse of this device in the work of our contemporaries.’

-- Daniel Pritchard, cross-posted from The Wooden Spoon

An Interview with Pevear and Volokhonsky

At The Millions, an interview between Anna Clark and the preeminent modern translators of Russian classics, particularly Tolstoy, Richard Pevear and Anna Volokhonsky: 'There are two questions that it might seem quite proper for a translator to keep in mind, but that in fact will spoil the translation. The first is, “What will the reader think?” And the second is, “How do we say that in English?” A good writer does what he or she has to do in the writing so that it “goes right,” as Robert Frost put it. There is at least as much intuition as intention in the process. A good translator has to follow that process far more consciously than the writer and yet come as close as possible in the new language to the instinctive “rightness” of the original. The greater the writer, the closer you want to come. That is both the challenge and the joy of it. But exactly what that “rightness” is remains undefinable, which is why there is no such thing as a definitive translation.'

On Amelia Rosselli

Daniel E Pritchard writes:

At the Center for Art of Translation blog, Scott Esposito introduces us to Amelia Rosselli (1930-1996), 'one of the most important experimental Italian poets of the 20th century, often associated with Gruppo 63 and the Italian avant-garde. First trained as a composer and musicologist, she turned to writing in her early twenties. She was fluent in Italian, French and English, and in her early writings, such as Diario in tre lingue (”Diary in Three Languages”), she reflected this linguistic background by switching from one language to another. Later, Rosselli’s poetry came to reflect this multilinguality in a more nuanced way: she began to write primarily in an idiosyncratic Italian that pushed the boundaries of the language to encompass her particular vocabulary. She incorporates syntactical traces of French and English in her Italian verse, and is famous for employing what Pier Paolo Pasolini called a “lapsus”: a slippage between languages that makes her poetry strange to the Italian ear.'

[cross-posted from The Wooden Spoon]

Online Certification with Dalkey Archive

Beginning in January of 2010, Dalkey Archive Press at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign will initiate a new and ambitious certificate program designed to help translators at any point in their early careers, and that will result in the publication of their first book-length translation. This program represents a unique opportunity for young translators to gain invaluable experience as well as produce a translation that will aid them in gaining future work with Dalkey Archive and other publishers.

The program is intended for translators who are at a point in their careers where they are ready to undertake professional translation work but do not know where to go next, and especially for those who need a flexible schedule because of geographical limitations and other commitments.

During the course of the yearlong program, translators will have the opportunity to complete one book-length literary translation to be published by Dalkey Archive Press, with an emphasis on literary fiction; books to be translated will be selected by Dalkey Archive Press in consultation with the translator. Editors at Dalkey Archive Press will be assigned to train applicants via email on a one-to-one basis. Occasional meetings at Dalkey Archive Press’s offices or videoconferences may also be organized.

The program is highly competitive and is intended for promising translators who are at an early point in their careers, but who have already achieved the skill level to undertake professional translation work. Ten students will be selected based on the strength of their application materials, and the relevance of their background to the kind of literature that Dalkey Archive publishes.

Translators interested in applying should send the following materials to onlineapp@dalkeyarchive.com as early as possible: a CV, including employment history; a letter of intent detailing qualifications, knowledge of the historical roots of the literary aesthetic represented in Dalkey Archive book, a list of the applicant's favorite authors and those authors the applicant is most interested in translating, and evidence of a substantial reading background in the applicants’ chosen language(s); and 3 sample translations of fiction from the applicant’s language(s) of specialization.

Samples should consist of the first pages of a published novel or short story only, and should not be from books that have already been translated and published in English. Each sample should be 5 to 10 pages long. Do not include the original-language versions of your samples.

Complete applications, including all abovementioned materials, should be sent via email as a single .pdf file only (no other formats will be read) labeled with the applicant’s name (i.e., lastnamefirstname.pdf). Within this file, application materials should be ordered as follows: CV, letter of intent, 3 samples, 3 letters of recommendation. Letters of intent should not be sent in the body of the email, but should be part of the application file. No substantial information should be included in the body of the email.

Emphasis will be placed on readiness to benefit from this online program rather than on academic experience or degrees. Applicants who have in-depth knowledge of Dalkey Archive’s books and general aesthetic will be given preference. A $5,000 will be required at the time of acceptance. This fee will be partially or fully offset by grants awarded by funding agencies for enrollees who complete a publishable translation.

Admissions announcements will be made within two weeks of receipt of applications. Any questions or requests concerning the application process and program should be sent to Jeremy Davies at davies@dalkeyarchive.com.

"Found in Translation" reading at UMass

The public is invited to attend "Found in Translation," a program of staged readings by the graduate students of Harley Erdman's graduate workshop in theater translation with a discussion led by Jean Graham-Jones (CUNY) on Friday, Dec. 4, at 8 pm.

Jean Graham-Jones is a professor in the graduate program at CUNY, author of Exorcising History: Argentine Theater under Dictatorship, and editor/translator of Reason Obscured: Nine Plays by Ricardo Monti, one of Artentina's greatest living playwrights.

The reading will take place in the Rand Theater, in the UMass Amhert Fine Arts Center, 151 Presidents Drive, Amherst, MA. 01003 (click here for directions). The event is made possible by a Visioning Mini-Grant from the College of Humanities and Fine Arts. A reception will follow. For more information, please contact Penny Remsen at remsen@theater.umass.edu.

Demand for niche translation growing (as is the risk for gaffes)

During a March meeting in Geneva, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton presented a gag gift to her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov. It was a red button with a word written in Russian that State Department translators thought meant "reset." The idea was to remind Russia of America's hopes for resetting the nations' tense relations. But when Lavrov opened the box and peered inside, he told Clinton the word on the button, peregruzka, translated to "overcharge" -- not the message the U.S. wanted to send.

-- the best part of an article in the Los Angeles Times about the growing demand for niche translators with unusually specializaed technical knowledge

Pritchard on Gass on Rilke

William H. Gass, again in Reading Rilke, writes, “translating is reading, reading of the best, the most essential, kind,” and that a translator must find the poem that the poet “would have written had he been English.” Held against these standards, Snow’s translations in The Poetry of Rilke are largely a success. He transforms the originals into a fluent English — mostly eschewing archaism and ornamentation.

[from the new issue of The Critical Flame]

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.