Category: Translated Literature

2019 Warwick Prize in Translation, Long List

~ Olga Zilberbourg ~ 1 Comment

We congratulate Lisa Hayden, whose translation of Guzel Yakhina’s novel Zuleikha has been included among thirteen books longlisted for the third annual award of the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. We love this book and we are delighted with this news.

Read the full announcement here.

The list of longlisted titles, in alphabetical order, is as follows:

· Brother In Ice by Alicia Kopf, translated from Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem (And Other Stories, 2018)

· Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, translated from Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori (Granta, 2018)

· Disoriental by Négar Djavadi, translated from French by Tina Kover (Europa Editions, 2018)

· Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tocarczuk, translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2018)

· Katalin Street by Magda Szabó, translated from Hungarian by Len Rix (Maclehose Press, 2019)

· Negative of a Dual Photograph by Azita Ghahremann, translated from Farsi by Maura Dooley with Elhum Shakerifar (Bloodaxe, 2018)

· People in the Room by Norah Lange, translated from Spanish by Charlotte Whittle (And Other Stories, 2018)

· Picnic in the Storm by Yukiko Motoya, translated from Japanese by Asa Yoneda (Little, Brown Book Group (Corsair), 2018)

· Season of the Shadow by Léonora Miano, translated from French by Gila Walker (Seagull Books, 2018)

· Shadows on the Tundra by Dalia Grinkevičiūtė, translated from Lithuanian by Delija Valiukenas (Peirene, 2018)

· The Years by Annie Ernaux, translated from French by Alison L. Strayer (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2018)

· Thick of It by Ulrike Almut Sandig, translated from German by Karen Leeder (Seagull Books, 2018)

· Zuleikha by Guzel Yakhina, translated from Russian by Lisa C. Hayden (Oneworld, 2019)

Yuri Tynianov’s Permanent Evolution

~ Olga Zilberbourg ~ Leave a comment

Translators and scholars Ainsley Morse and Phillip Redko are bringing out a new volume of Yuri Tynianov’s work. Permanent Evolution contains his essays on literature, theory and film, many of which are translated here for the first time. Daria Khitrova of Harvard University penned the intro.

Publisher’s intro: “Yuri Tynianov was a key figure of Russian Formalism, an intellectual movement in early 20th century Russia that also included Viktor Shklovsky and Roman Jakobson. Tynianov developed a groundbreaking conceptualization of literature as a system within—and in constant interaction with—other cultural and social systems. His essays on Russian literary classics, like Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin and works by Dostoevsky and Gogol, as well as on the emerging art form of filmmaking, provide insight into the ways art and literature evolve and adapt new forms of expression. Although Tynianov was first a scholar of Russian literature, his ideas transcend the boundaries of any one genre or national tradition. Permanent Evolution gathers together for the first time Tynianov’s seminal articles on literary theory and film, including several articles never before translated into English.”

Emerging Translators Reading

~ Olga Zilberbourg ~ Leave a comment

ALTA, American Literary Translators Association hosted a virtual reading with three translators who are completing their yearlong program as mentees of exprienced translators working in the field.

This recording offers a unique opportunity to get an early glimpse into stories that hopefully will eventually become books. Fiona Bell is working from Russian on translating Natalia Meshchaninova–a contemporary filmmaker who also published a book of autobiographical stories–in this excerpt, the narrator tells of her teenage experience of keeping a diary, the way she constructs her self on paper, based on examples from her reading more (in particular, The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer — a novel that was spun off from the Twin Peaks series!).

Mirgul Kali, translating from Kazakh, reads an excerpt from Mukhtar Magauin’s novella Kokbalaq, that tells of a life of a traditional Kazakh musician in the Soviet Union, and from this excerpt we get to understand something of his relationship with his art. In the interview after the reading, Mirgul talks about learning from this book about her own culture and all the reading she needed to do to convey the musical terms into English. The more I learn about her project, the more impressed I am with the amount of scholarship and thought that has gone into this translation.

Jennifer Kellogg reads to us from Book of Excercises II by a modern Greek poet, Geogre Seferis who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1963. This book was published postuhomsouly in 1976, and most of the poems in this volume have not been translated to English until now.

Please enjoy and if you feel inspired, donate to ALTA to support this fantastic fellowship program.

British Library hosts English-language presentation of Kazakh literature

~ Yelena Furman ~ Leave a comment

The British Library held an event last month to promote literature from Kazakhstan as part of the project “Contemporary Kazakh Culture in The Global World.” It was the launch of two anthologies, one of prose and another of poetry, that were translated into English. The “anthologies, which are 500 pages each and include works by 60 Kazakh poets and writers, are being translated into the six official languages of the United Nations: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.” Cambridge University Press is the publisher of the English translations. 

According to the article, the “Contemporary Kazakh Culture in The Global World project is part of the Ruhani Zhangyru (Modernisation of Kazakhstan’s Identity) programme, which seeks to preserve and popularise the country’s historical and cultural heritage.”

Promoting lesser-known literatures is a laudable goal and something sorely needed in the West. But as with all projects that seek to project an image of a particular country, we need to be asking what type of image is being projected and for what reason(s), which voices are included and which left out. Of course, it is impossible to answer these questions until these anthologies become available. A project to keep an eye out for.

https://astanatimes.com/2019/09/british-library-hosts-english-language-presentation-of-kazakh-literature/

How Should We Review Translations? Part II

~ Yelena Furman ~ 1 Comment

Asymptote journal continues its discussion about translating and reviewing literature. The focus this time is on Korean poetry, but the issues raised are relevant to other translated literatures.

“To me, the most interesting aspect of reviewing a translation—above and beyond the accurate and thoughtful accounting of the book in question that all reviews require—is imagining how it will affect and be affected by its reception within the standards of specific reading communities. Or to put it another way: how the translation speaks to the context of a reading community and how that community speaks to the translation.”

https://www.asymptotejournal.com/blog/2019/09/25/how-should-we-review-translations-part-ii/

Upcoming Book: Cold War Casual

~ Olga Zilberbourg ~ Leave a comment

Anna Krushelnitskaya’s book, Cold War Casual/Простая холодная война is a bilingual work that collects oral testimony and interviews about the ways the events of the Cold War and the government propaganda affected people in the US and in the USSR. This seems of tremendous interest to all of us who have lived through that epoch and/or write about it.

Krushelnitskaya has translated the testimony and interviews so that each piece is available in both Russian and English. The announcement reads: “The interviews were conducted in the native languages of the respondents in a casual, friendly format to record the subjective evaluations of the Cold War period in an attempt to establish whether, and how, the lived experiences and memories of the respondents influenced their sense of national pride, instilled a fear of war or the enemy, invited cultural openness or isolation and participated in forming personal long-term ideological stances.”

This books is available for pre-order.

Pub date: October 22, 2019

Publisher: Front Edge Publishing, LLC

Olga Zilberbourg: To Understand Russia’s Complexities, Turn to Its Contemporary Literature

~ Yelena Furman ~ Leave a comment

“A FRIEND’S TEN-YEAR-OLD SON son recently came up to me at a party to ask, ‘You’re from Russia, right?’ Sensing caution in my assent, the boy hesitated before asking the next question, clearly trying to phrase it in a way that wouldn’t cause offense but would express his curiosity. He finally came up with, ‘It’s a very violent place, isn’t it?'”

http://epiphanyzine.com/features/understand-russias-complexities?fbclid=IwAR35rzgR1U6dFXsYJM6ueL6nid8S9R6BR0Qr44elOeHnU2HwPtyzVpxJ0RY

Olga Zilberbourg on Teffi’s Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea

~ Yelena Furman ~ Leave a comment

“Teffi, nom de plume of Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya, was born in 1872 into a prominent Russian family. Following in the footsteps of her older sister Maria—poet Mirra Lokhvitskaya—Teffi published poetry and prose from the age of 29. She soon rose to fame by practicing a unique brand of self-deprecating humor and topical social satire.”

https://www.thecommononline.org/review-memories-from-moscow-to-the-black-sea/?fbclid=IwAR2VI663kHbmhMarVRRwhcusvCmxG_KFMLKu7MtIRnHLUpUTBZs7dZmQnK8

Lizok’s Bookshelf: Yasnaya Polyana Finalists, 2019

~ Yelena Furman ~ Leave a comment

Previously, we posted Lisa Hayden’s blog post about the longlist for this prize, noting the gender disparity in terms of who is nominated for and, especially, awarded Russia’s literary prizes. The shortlist just came out and out of the six nominees, one is a woman. Of course, no one is suggesting nominations and/or awards should be based on gender alone nor is this meant to disparage the quality of the other nominated titles in any way. But it is important to note the imbalance, and even more so, to keep asking what can be done about it.

http://lizoksbooks.blogspot.com/2019/09/yasnaya-polyana-finalists-2019.html

Unfortunately, I Care: Joanna Chen Interviews Olga Livshin (BLARB)

~ Yelena Furman ~ Leave a comment

Read Joanna Chen’s beautiful and insightful interview with poet and translator Olga Livshin about her just-released book A Life Replaced: Poems with translations from Anna Akhmatova and Vladimir Gandelsman:

“And so for me, even when I write in English, it’s as if I am writing in Russian because I’m releasing something that was the first fourteen years of my life, it’s like I carry this genie inside me and I need to let it out occasionally. Let it walk around a little before I bottle it back up.” https://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/poetry/unfortunately-care-joanna-chen-interviews-olga-livshin/