Exciting New (and Forthcoming) Books

Three exciting books translated from German:

Chantal Wright is a translator and an academic and has written an experimental translation of Yoko Tawada's Portrait of a Tongue. So you get the English version, translated from the German, on the left, interspersed with Chantal's notes and thoughts and annotations on the right. I am very excited indeed about this, and I'll read it very soon. Hi Chantal!

Donal McLaughlin is a translator and a writer and has written a Glaswegian translation of Pedro Lenz's Swiss-German Der Goalie bin ig, called Naw Much of a Talker, reviewed in The Scotsman here. Donal read some of his translation to a group of us around a table up a Swiss hill this time last year, and it was a real thrill. Congrats on the book and the great review, Donal!

Tim Mohr is a translator and a journalist and has written a long-awaited translation of Wolfgang Herrndorf's Tschick, with the English title Why We Took the Car. It's sad that the author died before it comes out in January - but I know people are biting their nails to read it in English because about ten people searching for it come here every day. I'm looking forward to it, Tim!

More Translator Interviews

Watch out! There's a sudden fever for interviewing translators. Seems like people have decided we are interesting after all. I'm pleased - this is one of the things I think blogs are excellent at, casting a light on subjects that have otherwise been considered too niche to bother with.

Lizzy Siddal at Lizzy's Literary Life (no stranger to translator interviews and one of the bloggers holding international literature high in the UK) has an interview with Donal McLaughlin, shortlisted no less for the BTBA. Lizzy knows Donal, and I know Donal too. He's a man with a huge amount of enthusiasm and talent, always willing to help out and also always dashing about the world.

And JC Sutcliffe has just launched a whole bunch of interviews with translators - as part of her "Three Rs" series, in which she's interviewed a huge number of writers about their work. JC is a translator herself and often looks at translated literature on her blog Slightly Bookist. The first interview is with me. 

And Lisa Carter at Intralingo has started a regular feature casting an, erm, Spotlight on... - interviewing literary translators, so far Lucas Klein (Chinese), Lydia Razran Stone (Russian) and C.M. Mayo (Spanish).

Not to forget Cristina Vezzaro's awesome new site Authors & Translators.

Perhaps because the sun is sort of shining and I'm planning a shopping spree, I've decided to view this development as a symptom of burgeoning interest in translated writing in general and growing respect for translators' work - along with some very cool literary magazine projects and a smattering of new small publishers emerging right now. More on that another time. Also, of course, it's a sign that translators are promoting each other and perhaps realising that people might be interested in what we have to say. Hooray.

BTBA Shortlists

Three books translated from German have made the fiction and poetry shortlists for the Best Translated Book Award:

Elfriede Czurda: Almost 1 Book, Almost 1 Life, trans. Rosmarie Waldrop

Herta Müller: The Hunger Angel, trans. Philip Boehm

Urs Widmer: My Father's Book, trans. Donal McLaughlin

Woo!

None on the Impac Prize or the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize shortlists, but hey. Lots of other good books out there.

BTBA Longlist / Four Point Five Percent

First of all, the fiction longlist for the Best Translated Book Award has been announced - and includes four books translated from German:

Awakening to the Great Sleep War by Gert Jonke, translated from the German by Jean M. Snook (Dalkey Archive Press; Austria)

The Hunger Angel by Herta Müller, translated from the German by Philip Boehm (Metropolitan Books; Romania)

Island of Second Sight by Albert Vigoleis Thelen, translated from the German by Donald O. White (Overlook; Germany)

My Father’s Book by Urs Widmer, translated from the German by Donal McLaughlin (Seagull Books; Switzerland)

My fingers are crossed quite hard, although not equally for all four.

And then, speaking of Three Percent, Literature Across Frontiers has published a report on translation statistics in the UK and Ireland. At last, someone's done a study - and come up with some figures. According to LAF, translations constitute 2.5% of published titles (all literary genres including biography, literary criticism and others) and 4.5% of published literary titles (fiction, poetry and drama) in the UK and Ireland. German was the second-most translated language in the years under review (after French and before Spanish). The study used data from the British Library, which is more reliable than the Index Translationum for various reasons, as the author reports.

I've oversimplified. The two categories in particular are more complicated and especially interesting for anyone who's worked in a library with the Dewey Decimal system - oh those 800s! The main part of the study is only 28 pages long and well worth a read - especially for publishers. There are some great appendices too including useful resources - a list of publishers who do translations, for instance. Here's my favourite quote:

As previous reports have shown, the status of the translators themselves is precarious in the UK, with reviewers, for example, sometimes even failing to mention that the work is a translation, and failing to name the translator. Publishers play the most important role in raising the profile of translators and translation – and in this apparently small matter, they can make a significant difference.

The small matter is providing the industry with detailed data, but obviously publishers can and do make all sorts of significant differences.

A Few Links to My Buddies

First off an interesting interview with Robert Walser translator Susan Bernofsky at Bookforum. Among other things, she talks about her excellent blog Translationista:

People send me books to review on the blog and I would love do more of that; to have a review where the reviewer is required to talk at length about the translation as part of the review. Not enough book reviews do that in significant way because there’s limited space and it’s not a priority to discuss the translation. But from my point of view it is a priority, so I’m going to create a space where that priority can be honored.

I'm looking forward to that.

Then we have a piece on Indian publishers Seagull Books, with sound bites from my friend Donal McLaughlin and myself on what exactly they do with translators, in trade mag Publishing Perspectives. I really must watch my use of exclamations marks.

And another dear friend, Jamie Lee Searle, writes about a great new mentoring scheme for emerging translators in the UK at her blog between the lines.

Translators Recommend...

Ah, translators! Where would you be without us? You'd be stuck on a gloomy little island reading books about tea and biscuits with the vicar*, that's where. In the interests of world peace and eternal literary harmony, Donal McLaughlin, Tess Lewis and myself (three venerable translators) have recommended some books for German Literature Month for Lizzy and her literary life. And Lizzy, being all-round lovely and more appreciative than most, kindly writes: "If, like me, you tend to read German literature only in English translation, it’s only fair and right to thank the wonderful translators, who make it possible."

I'm feeling all warm inside now.


*Insert cliché about your country and its national literature here.

Donal's Eye View: berlinleipzigrevisited

A friend, fellow translator, writer, blogger and participant in the Angry Sheep translators' mega-event - the one and only Donal McLaughlin - is recording his impressions of the workshop and the Leipzig Book Fair at berlinleipzigrevisited. It looks a dash more coherent than my version.

Donal McLaughlin on Staging The Reader

You may recall David Hare's article on adapting Bernhard Schlink's The Reader for the recent film, which I for one found slightly less revealing than it could have been.
Back in the year 2000, the Scottish Germanist, writer and translator Donal McLaughlin was closely involved in the first adaptation of The Reader - for the stage. Now he's finally had a heart and posted some of the real nitty-gritty stuff Hare didn't share, on his website. It's a fascinating read, as Donal explores all the many difficulties of transporting the novel from the pages of a German book to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Part of his job as advisor to the production was to provide the background information to the novel that your average English-language readers just don't have, specifically the German student movement, which plays an unspoken role all of its own. You can also find out how the press reacted, what other challenges the novel posed for stage adaptation - and how there should have been more nudity. Pubic wig, anyone?