Lost and Sound

I've been to readings in a few odd places: in a bakery, a nut shop (as in almonds and pistachios, not the mentally ill), perched on cushions in a Mongolian yurt on Potsdamer Platz. In general, though, the only difference to an event in a bookshop or a library is the setting. Last night was different.

Tobias Rapp was reading from his book Lost and Sound - Berlin, Techno und der Easyjetset. The venue seemed conventional enough at first sight - a low building with a bar along one wall and rows of chairs set out, a few sofas against the walls. Only the lighting was rather unusual for a reading, casting magenta, yellow and cyan shadows on the book I sat reading demurely before things kicked off. What was different was the audience, because the reading took place in one of the book's settings: the techno club Berghain (or its "canteen", to be precise).

I'm not quite sure what it was. Maybe the beer bottles people were swigging at, or the mobile phones ringing intermittently. Maybe the low-level chatting going on throughout, or the less than subtle glances passed to and fro, indicating that at least some of the audience were very much on the pull. Maybe it was their clothes, or the fact that many of them had perfectly maintained but oddly pallid faces. But there were plenty of signs that these were not your average reading attenders: they were party people.

Berlin has a reputation, Rapp writes, as a techno mecca. Gone are the days of the overly cheesified Love Parade. Now Berlin has opened its arms to embrace the Easyjetset - hip young people from all over Europe and further afield who fly in cheap for a long weekend, picking up tips for where to go via electronic word of mouth. And one of those hot destinations is the Berghain, with its very own mythology of unfettered sexual and chemical hedonism. Yes, in that order.

The book is excellent reading. Rapp combines solid knowledge and research - for which he took a four-month sabbatical from his then job as pop editor for the taz - with an evangelical passion for the music and the atmosphere he writes about. He intersperses facts, theories, background information and interviews with ecstatic narrative passages, describing nights out in Berlin's various techno clubs throughout the week.

And the intelligent structure is mirrored in the book's ideas. Tobias Rapp thinks outside the box. He looks at clubs as an economic factor for Berlin, not just raising the sexiness quotient but bringing in hard cash. He goes into the tenuous and brittle links with emancipative politics, particularly in the case of last year's local-level referendum over whether to build a media office complex on the banks of the Spree, where a number of the clubs of the moment are located. He investigates the effects of the club culture on sexuality - but deliberately sidesteps the subject of drugs for fear of the book being labelled, as he told us last night.

The reading was entertaining, not just as an excursion into a subculture I'm entirely unfamiliar with. Rapp seemed rather nervous; perhaps this knowledgeable audience was the ultimate test for him. But he warmed up after a while and had us smirking with frequent asides and made up words (mäandrieren! acknowledgen! valider Einwand!). There was a certain amount of out-nerding going on between him and the audience - but my regular readers will know I'm a sucker for nerdism, even when I don't understand what people are talking about. The only down side was that in such a fast-evolving culture, some of last summer's facts are now outdated. But a little bird told me there's a chance the book might be translated into English - surely another perfect project for Tim Mohr...

Dancing with Myself

This week held a whole new experience in store for me - I got to translate myself. I'll have to go back a few months to explain how this came about.

Back in February, I was absolutely fascinated by the event "Das Fremde und das Eigene", which I wrote about here. It was about migrants in German literature - how they are accepted and reflected. I started reading around the subject, including Tom Cheesman's Novels of Turkish German Settlement (which I found fascinating but ultimately too wedded to its own normative ideas) and the very good TEXT + KRITIK special edition on Literatur und Migration. All three of these sources brushed on the subject of how ethnic minorities are actually presented by non-minority writers, but it was always a bit of a tangent.

So I decided to write about the subject myself. The ideas were circling in my head and it seemed too much for this blog. I had to write it in German, I realised, as - frankly - the subject is more than a little marginal for English speakers. And that's what I did.

Let me tell you, writing in German is hard. Now I understand all that soul-searching and lamenting that authors do. It's not just a question of finding the right words, you have to give them the right endings. And then you have to go through it and make sure it's not full of unintentional anglicisms - at least you do if you're me. Thankfully, a very valued colleague helped me by correcting the text very thoroughly (some of which I changed back again).

The editor man said "yes" and I was over the moon - and then came the waiting. I'm told this is normal; it's not as if the topic were particularly urgent. After a number of nudges and only one very minor tantrum, they finally sent me an edited version. I'd expected this to be painful, but in fact I wasn't upset by the fine cuts made to my text; it was as if a skilled butcher had trimmed it of excess fat.

So far, so exciting. Now came the moment when I had to translate my own writing, as the text is published on a bilingual website. I'd thought it would be really difficult - but it was easy! Almost too easy, in fact, and I found myself making many more compromises than I would with anyone else's text. I flattened out my carefully chosen verbs to "do" and "put" and "have". I went for much too conventional collocations that I'd deliberately avoided in the German. And I skipped out on a couple of things entirely, thinking they'd be impossible to render in English.

In short, my draft translation was a complete wet blanket. I sincerely hope I managed to polish it up to standard again the next day. If you want to judge for yourselves or you're genuinely interested in the subject matter, you can read the German here and the English here. I don't think I'm ready for hard-hitting feedback though.

Büchner Prize to Walter Kappacher

This year's Georg Büchner Prize, German-language literature's most prestigious award for a writer's entire work and worth €40,000, goes to Walter Kappacher. As Deutsche Welle reports, he is a "little-known Austrian author" inspired by Kafka and Beckett, as he appreciates books in which "nothing much 'happens'".

You can read a little taster from his most recent novel, Der Fliegenpalast (The Palace of Flies) at Lyrikwelt. Set in 1924, it is a portrait of the aging Hugo von Hoffmannsthal as he returns to the spa where he spent his summers as a child.

Peter Handke has sung Kappacher's praises as "a rare (writer)".

I'd say he's one to check out if you too like books with more contemplation than action.

More Literary Philately - Der Briefmark

I got a book through the post yesterday, with another fantastic literary stamp on it. This time it was honouring the 125th anniversary of Joachim Ringelnatz' birth, complete with the perfect poem for the occasion - "der Briefmark". Actually a loyal reader had pointed the poem out last time, but I hadn't seen the stamp itself - it's worth 85c, which is a bit of an unusual value. It features the poet's slightly silly silhouette, and you have to rotate either your head or your small parcel in order to read the text.

You can read the poem itself in German and English translation (by Ernest A. Seemann) here.

Julia Franck Meets A S Byatt

You Londoners are in for a treat. Not only will you soon be able to read Julia Franck's just plain fantastic prose when Anthea Bell's translation of Die Mittagsfrau comes out in English The Blind Side of the Heart - as will the rest of us, of course. You'll also have the chance to see Julia Franck in person at the Goethe Institut, in discussion with A S Byatt, Bell herself and Rosie Goldsmith.

I'm a big unabashed fan of Julia Franck, and genuinely loved Die Mittagsfrau, which won the German Book Prize in 2007. It's the story of a woman who abandons her child, and how the course of her life steers her into that position at the end of WWII. Although you know from the very beginning that the child will be abandoned, it's impossible to imagine how it might come to that.

Right now I'm reading Franck's previous novel, Lagerfeuer, which is just as impressive but perhaps slightly less conventional. And if anyone were to ask the slightly bizarre question of which writer I'd like to play me in the film of my life, the answer would have to be: Julia Franck, and not just because of the physical resemblance.

The discussion is on 11 June, and you can get hold of the book from the 4th. My advice - take two days off work, immerse yourself in the book and then go to the Goethe Institut once you've finished it but are still trapped in the troubled lives of its characters.

The Return of Translation Idol

You wait all year for a message from no man's land, and then two come along at once.

no man’s land literary translation lab presents:

The Return of Translation Idol – no man’s land sucht den Superübersetzer*

Marking the second anniversary of our monthly literary translation lab, no man’s land invites all those budding, successful and prizewinning German-English translators out there to join in our translation talent contest. Last year’s event with the poet Ron Winkler was a huge success with submissions from around the globe, which you can read on our website. And now’s your chance to pit your skills at prose translation.

The text to translate is a short extract from Selim Özdoğan’s story “Schwule Ziegen auf Lesbos” (see below). Translate it any which way you like – fast and loose, slow and steady, straight from the hip, give it a dialect, put it into iambic pentameter, recreate it as a film script – whatever you want to do. You don’t have to be a seasoned professional – a passion for words is all it takes. Please send your translation for the contest (in Word or rtf format) by 20 June to katy@interalia.de or isabel@no-mans-land.org. Don’t forget a brief paragraph about yourself and a telephone number where we can reach you, as we’ll be calling the winners live from the competition.

Ideally, you should be able to attend the contest itself, at 8.30 pm on 23 June at Saint George’s Bookshop, Wörther Straße 27, 10405 Berlin (Prenzlauer Berg). Just turn up with your translation, ready to read. The audience will vote on the winning version, and the writer will choose his own personal favourite. There’ll be prizes galore for the top Translation Idols. If you can’t attend, your text will be read on your behalf. It’s still well worth entering, as all entries will be published on the no man’s land website. Please let us know whether you’ll be coming to the contest when you send your translation.

So get your dictionaries out and get translating! Or just come along to participate in the audience vote and enjoy an entertaining evening of literature and translation.

no man’s land reserves the right to make a prior selection of entries for the contest itself, should the response be overwhelming.

*oder die Superübersetzerin.

The text:

Schwule Ziegen auf Lesbos

Es war zu jener Zeit, als jeder Mensch einerlei Zunge und Sprache hatte. Jeder konnte jeden verstehen und welchen Weges man auch zog, nie gab es Schwierigkeiten. Ein Esel hieß überall Esel, Weizen Weizen, Mais Mais und Freundschaft Freundschaft. Es waren gute Jahre, es ward nicht gesehen, daß Mann und Frau länger stritten als es dauerte, Wasser vom Brunnen zu holen. Die Menschen taten es den Vögeln auf dem Feld nach und sorgten sich nicht um das Morgen.

Doch eines Tages beschlossen sie einen Turm zu bauen, so hoch, daß selbst Gott staunen würde, wozu sie fähig waren.

In jenen Tagen lebte Yoshi als Einsiedler hoch oben auf dem Berg. Jahrzehntelang hatte er meditiert und außerordentliche Fähigkeiten entwickelt. So konnte er an mehreren Orten gleichzeitig sein, Vergangenheit, Zukunft und Gegenwart waren für ihn einerlei. Doch er hatte nur Raum und Zeit gemeistert. Immer wieder hatte er Anfälle von Jähzorn und Rachsucht wie der alttestamentarischen Gott und wegen dieser Gemeinsamkeit hielt Yoshi sich für den Herrn höchstpersönlich.

Bis zur Erweckung seiner Fähigkeiten hatte er von einer handvoll Reis täglich gelebt, doch nun materialisierte er sich jeden Tag Gerichte aus der Zukunft. Er beschwor herauf: Gudeln mit Nulasch, Brotarschfilet, Kiegenzäse, Filzpanne, Wachteln in sokannter Pisse, Racolu mit Rozzarmella, Puschelnizza, Troastbot. Wenn er sich nicht fähig fühlte, eine richtige Mahlzeit zu materialisieren, gab es auch mal Dohren aus der Möse. Als Nachtisch gab es seckere Lüßigkeiten, mal eine Prachtel Schalinen oder Vapuddennilling oder Zartschockerbitolade mit einer Kasse Taffee.

Call for Submissions no man's land # 4

Contemporary German-language fiction and poetry in English translation.
Deadline: August 15, 2009.

no man’s land, the online journal for contemporary German literature in translation, is seeking submissions for its 2009 issue.

For prose, send up to 3 texts (stories or self-contained novel excerpts, max. 4,000 words each) by one or different writers. For poetry, send work by up to 3 poets, each to a maximum of 5 poems. No simultaneous submissions, please, and no previously-published translations. The deadline is August 15, 2009 (postmark date), and we will inform contributors by mid-September 2009; the issue will go online in November. We regret that we are unable to offer honoraria.

Please include your contact information, biographical and publication information (for both translator and author) and a copy of the original. Also, please provide proof of permission from the original publisher and/or author – whoever holds the rights to the piece (this could be a copy of a letter, or forward us an e-mail).

Submissions should be sent to no man’s land, PO Box 02 13 04, 10125 Berlin, Germany. If you can include the original text in file format (PDF or other), submissions can be sent electronically to Isabel Cole at isabel@no-mans-land.org.

For more information, visit our website at www.no-mans-land.org, and feel free to contact us at the above e-mail address.

We look forward to reading your work!

The Editors, no man’s land

Isabel Cole
Katy Derbyshire
Clemens Kuhnert
Alistair Noon
Liesel Tarquini