The German writer Jörg Albrecht was yesterday granted permission to leave Abu Dhabi, as various media have reported. His publishers Wallstein Verlag say he landed in Berlin this morning.
M. Lynx Qualey has a dispatch on the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair as a whole at Words Without Borders, for some general background information.
The petition to the Minister of Culture of the United Arab Emirates to allow Albrecht to leave the country was signed by some 6000 people within 24 hours, and I like to think that got him home faster.
Wednesday, 14 May 2014
Monday, 12 May 2014
German Writer Jörg Albrecht Still Not Allowed to Leave Abu Dhabi
The German writer Jörg Albrecht was invited to the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair to participate in an exchange programme. On the day of his arrival he left his hotel to go for a walk and take some photos. Unfortunately, he appears to have unwittingly photographed the wrong thing, namely the Iraqi and Iranian embassies. He was arrested on the street and held by the secret police for three days, then released but not allowed to leave the country. He was not granted access to a lawyer while in prison, nor were his friends able to find him. He has still not been charged and is still in a hotel, alone.
You can read an interview with him at Die Zeit (12.05.14) listen to an interview with his editor at WDR3 (11.05.14), read a press release by his publishing house Wallstein Verlag and sign a petition appealing to the UAE Minister of Culture at change.org.
I hope he is allowed to return home as soon as possible, although according to his interview he does not expect action from the court until next week.
You can read an interview with him at Die Zeit (12.05.14) listen to an interview with his editor at WDR3 (11.05.14), read a press release by his publishing house Wallstein Verlag and sign a petition appealing to the UAE Minister of Culture at change.org.
I hope he is allowed to return home as soon as possible, although according to his interview he does not expect action from the court until next week.
Thursday, 8 May 2014
Magazines
Dear editors,
I have loads of stuff here, translations of amazing writers who are doing great stuff in Germany, winning prizes, gaining respect, pushing boundaries, all that kind of thing. Instead of me submitting it to you with a begging letter and you ignoring it for months on end and then possibly deigning to send a nebulous response about how it's not right for your magazine, why don't you just get in touch with me if you want something?
Thanks,
Katy
***
Actually, I do realize magazine editors have better things to do. One of the reasons I'm glad I'm not a writer is that I get offended too easily. Imagine if it was my own writing I was submitting to magazines. I'd be really really unhappy all the time.
But here's the thing: in the past, I've encouraged emerging translators to submit to literary magazines as a way of building up a résumé, like an unpublished writer might do. And one of the things I've said is to submit to magazines that don't focus on translation as well as the ones that do. Partly, this is a translation politics thing, because I think we should try and get out there and shout about non-Anglophone writers all over the place and not just in the usual venues. And partly it's because I think more people read them, and getting these pieces read is all I'm interested in. It's not like anyone's paying for them.
But while I've had excellent and encouraging experiences, on the whole, with journals that focus on translation, submitting to just plain literary journals has mainly been one big merry-go-round of frustration. The disturbing thing is, the things I send in are not by nobodies. They're by published writers, they've been edited and printed and reviewed positively and then I've translated them and usually also had someone edit the translation for me. Some of these writers have won major literary prizes here in Germany. And then as soon as they leave the country: nothing.
It makes me wonder about a few things: are there national tastes? Is that the problem, that British and American editors prefer a different kind of writing to German readers? That feels kind of unlikely to me, judging by the amount of fiction that gets translated from English to German. Then again, I bought The New Yorker's Twenty Under Forty and was distinctly underwhelmed. The other hazy thing is about writers having made names for themselves. Does the fact that German readers have heard of these authors make them think their writing is better than if it were a kind of blind tasting? So that, when I submit a translation to a British journal, say, the editors are reading it in a less biased way because they're not swayed by the name? If so, what does that say about me? Does it mean I'm subject to the same dazzle-factor? Probably, at least to some extent.
I'll probably keep on plugging away, at least on good days. I'll probably keep trying to come up with modest but enthusiastic cover letters to try and explain why I'm crazy about these superb pieces of writing. But if you happen to be a magazine editor and you've been thinking, hey, why do we have so few outstanding stories and essays translated from German, something needs to be done about this! - then do get in touch.
I have loads of stuff here, translations of amazing writers who are doing great stuff in Germany, winning prizes, gaining respect, pushing boundaries, all that kind of thing. Instead of me submitting it to you with a begging letter and you ignoring it for months on end and then possibly deigning to send a nebulous response about how it's not right for your magazine, why don't you just get in touch with me if you want something?
Thanks,
Katy
***
Actually, I do realize magazine editors have better things to do. One of the reasons I'm glad I'm not a writer is that I get offended too easily. Imagine if it was my own writing I was submitting to magazines. I'd be really really unhappy all the time.
But here's the thing: in the past, I've encouraged emerging translators to submit to literary magazines as a way of building up a résumé, like an unpublished writer might do. And one of the things I've said is to submit to magazines that don't focus on translation as well as the ones that do. Partly, this is a translation politics thing, because I think we should try and get out there and shout about non-Anglophone writers all over the place and not just in the usual venues. And partly it's because I think more people read them, and getting these pieces read is all I'm interested in. It's not like anyone's paying for them.
But while I've had excellent and encouraging experiences, on the whole, with journals that focus on translation, submitting to just plain literary journals has mainly been one big merry-go-round of frustration. The disturbing thing is, the things I send in are not by nobodies. They're by published writers, they've been edited and printed and reviewed positively and then I've translated them and usually also had someone edit the translation for me. Some of these writers have won major literary prizes here in Germany. And then as soon as they leave the country: nothing.
It makes me wonder about a few things: are there national tastes? Is that the problem, that British and American editors prefer a different kind of writing to German readers? That feels kind of unlikely to me, judging by the amount of fiction that gets translated from English to German. Then again, I bought The New Yorker's Twenty Under Forty and was distinctly underwhelmed. The other hazy thing is about writers having made names for themselves. Does the fact that German readers have heard of these authors make them think their writing is better than if it were a kind of blind tasting? So that, when I submit a translation to a British journal, say, the editors are reading it in a less biased way because they're not swayed by the name? If so, what does that say about me? Does it mean I'm subject to the same dazzle-factor? Probably, at least to some extent.
I'll probably keep on plugging away, at least on good days. I'll probably keep trying to come up with modest but enthusiastic cover letters to try and explain why I'm crazy about these superb pieces of writing. But if you happen to be a magazine editor and you've been thinking, hey, why do we have so few outstanding stories and essays translated from German, something needs to be done about this! - then do get in touch.
Wednesday, 7 May 2014
Clemens Meyer's Dream of a Police Career
This is so fantastic. When I went out drinking with the writer Clemens Meyer he said the director Andreas Dresen was making a film version of his debut novel Als wir träumten. And he said he hoped he could get a cameo role. This February article in the Märkische Allgemeine gives us a little teaser, and it has an entry on imdb and is in post-production but I can't find a release date.
What you can look at, though, on that Fischer Verlag website 114, is a picture of Clemens in costume as a police officer. With a tiny interview about how he wanted to be a detective on the murder squad when he was a kid, but that became (ahem) impossible. I'm so impressed. It's even better than the larger-than-life painting of him that surprised me in the Leipzig art museum. He's living the dream, that boy is, living the dream.
What you can look at, though, on that Fischer Verlag website 114, is a picture of Clemens in costume as a police officer. With a tiny interview about how he wanted to be a detective on the murder squad when he was a kid, but that became (ahem) impossible. I'm so impressed. It's even better than the larger-than-life painting of him that surprised me in the Leipzig art museum. He's living the dream, that boy is, living the dream.
Tuesday, 6 May 2014
In which I go out drinking with Jan Skudlarek
Yes, I am still going out drinking with German writers once a month. My latest victim was the poet Jan Skudlarek, now online at the Tagesspiegel.
Monday, 5 May 2014
Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize to Shelley Frisch!
I'm so pleased! The Goethe Institut Chicago have announced that my extremely talented friend Shelley Frisch will receive the Wolff Translator's Prize for her rendering of Rainer Stach's Kafka - The Years of Insight. It's the second part of a mammoth biography trilogy, which Shelley has been working on with immense dedication for years.
I've had the pleasure and the honour of working with Shelley at a week-long workshop, where I learned just how good she is at her craft. And I interviewed her a couple of years ago too. Shelley is a great translator who focuses on non-fiction, and I'm delighted she's getting the recognition she deserves. Bravo, my dear!
I've had the pleasure and the honour of working with Shelley at a week-long workshop, where I learned just how good she is at her craft. And I interviewed her a couple of years ago too. Shelley is a great translator who focuses on non-fiction, and I'm delighted she's getting the recognition she deserves. Bravo, my dear!
Friday, 2 May 2014
Ross Ufberg's Excellent Idea
Ridiculously attractive new American publisher Ross Ufberg (or maybe he's hiding something under that hat) details a very good idea in Publishing Perspectives: a place on the internet where translators could share projects they're investing time in, and publishers could pick up on projects they'd like to invest money in. He points out that there are so many publishers out there who may not be aware of amazing books not available in English, and so many translators passionate about those very books, and asks how they might come together.
Translators from German are fairly well connected to each other, but I still can't count the number of times when two or more people have gone bananas over the exact same book and even translated the whole thing on spec, only to find out there are others feeling the same way. It's not a nice experience.
I don't know how to build a website of the kind Ufberg suggests but I'd love to be part of it. One thing I'm not sure about, however – and I'm finding it hard to express the problem – is that I think some translators are all-rounders and some are better at translating certain kinds of writing than others, and some are set in their ways and some haven't yet managed to get as much practice as they'd need. So not every translator is ideally suited to work on every book. And as important as passion is in translating, the first person to bagsy a particular book might not be the best person for the job, if you see what I mean. As in, I personally might really love a fifteenth-century epic, but no way am I going to do the best job of translating it. So I would worry that a site like Litfinder.org (don't bother checking, it doesn't exist) might raise unrealistic expectations. But it would still be a giant step for translatorkind.
Translators from German are fairly well connected to each other, but I still can't count the number of times when two or more people have gone bananas over the exact same book and even translated the whole thing on spec, only to find out there are others feeling the same way. It's not a nice experience.
I don't know how to build a website of the kind Ufberg suggests but I'd love to be part of it. One thing I'm not sure about, however – and I'm finding it hard to express the problem – is that I think some translators are all-rounders and some are better at translating certain kinds of writing than others, and some are set in their ways and some haven't yet managed to get as much practice as they'd need. So not every translator is ideally suited to work on every book. And as important as passion is in translating, the first person to bagsy a particular book might not be the best person for the job, if you see what I mean. As in, I personally might really love a fifteenth-century epic, but no way am I going to do the best job of translating it. So I would worry that a site like Litfinder.org (don't bother checking, it doesn't exist) might raise unrealistic expectations. But it would still be a giant step for translatorkind.
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