The Oxford Weidenfeld Prize and Oxford Translation Day

My old friend and colleague Steph Morris just wired this in...

(Deputy Blog Agency reporting from the UK)

When Isabel Cole, my chum and fellow translator-and-writer, said she was on the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize shortlist for her rendering of Franz Fühmann’s Das Judenauto (The Jew Car, Seagull), couldn’t go to the prize ceremony, and had been asked to provide either a representative or a recording, I was flattered to be her preferred option – some US and Canadian translators on the shortlist sent entertaining video and audio messages. All I had to do was read from Isabel’s fine translation and introduce the book. The best bit was that not being Isabel I could also blow her trumpet. Which I did. Although I helped edit this translation, and saw it in an earlier draft, I was still mightily impressed by its fluidity and poetry. It was a joy to read. Isabel has earned this approbation after years of dedication to literature, with her many translations of fascinating (largely dead) authors for Seagull (hooray for them too). In the excitement I forgot to mention setting up No Mans Land, a huge achievement, but did mention the fact that she also writes – with a book out recently – a significant aspect, at least to me. (Isabel gave me some of the best feedback I received on my own manuscript and has a keen eye for fiction.) Having read The Jew Car in original too, I described what I think is special about the novel. The ironic voice on the one hand, evoking the perspectives both of naive young Nazi Franz and of post-war socialist Franz as he wrote, with humour as well as horror; and the un-heroic, anticlimactic dramatisation of ‘monumental’ events before, during and after the Second World War, with the focus on everyday, mundane details which makes the storytelling all the more convincing – refreshing and important in the context of the grotesque Schinken we’ve been subjected to recently: Nazi period dramas which buy into all the clichés and codes of Hollywood. Sorry rant over! (Well this is a blog...)

So, the winner was... not Isabel, it was Susan Wicks for her translation of Valérie Rouzeau’s poems – and there were two other poetry collections in the shortlist, plus a novel partly written in verse. As I was at pains to stress to Isabel on the phone, shortly afterwards, the judges were at pains to stress that the shortlist was as important as the winner, demonstrating this by each enthusing on stage about the books they particularly liked. In fact Susan declined to say anything herself on receiving the prize, nor did Matthew, MC, jury head and prize organiser, so the ceremony was also somewhat un-heroic. Luckily the principle of St Anne’s college toasted her over dinner. Oh yes, there was dinner, and fine wine (thanks Isabel, thanks St Anne’s!).

Susan is a Bloodaxe poet, and a Faber author, when not translating; like everyone who was at the dinner she was clearly someone who loved words and takes them seriously. As someone whose first degree was in ‘colouring in’ I found dining with a posse of top academics surprisingly relaxing, conducive and not in the least threatening. But not only was there dinner, more enticing to a thinny like me was the Rahmenprogramm. The prize ceremony was the climax of ‘Oxford Translation Day’, a festival of workshops, readings and talks spread over, erm, two days which reminded me of the VdÜ’s Wolfenbüttel gathering. Readers of this blog will be familiar with what goes on there. I attended a workshop on poetry writing, my new medium, run by English PEN, using poems in translation as the inspiration. Check the programme. Ok back to your regular blogger, that’s all from me.

Isabel Cole, Anthea Bell Shortlisted for Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize

I got very excited indeed yesterday when I learned that my good friend, founder and co-editor at no man's land and co-host of the Berlin translation lab, all round wonderful person and godmother of the Berlin translation scene Isabel Cole has been nominated for the shit-hot Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize for her version of Franz Fühmann's The Jew Car.

Another translation hero, Anthea Bell, is also shortlisted for Eugen Ruge's In Times of Fading Light, but I'm afraid I'll have to root for Isabel because Anthea has won it before. And because it's Isabel and I happen to think she's an incredibly talented translator who deserves recognition. I know the book and its translation well and can heartily recommend it. It's made up of fourteen episodes from the author's life, charting how he was drawn in to National Socialism and then out again, and more. It's very intricately written and Isabel does a great job of rendering that, never ever dumbing down. She's also a really good cook.

The Oxford–Weidenfeld Prize is for book-length literary translations into English from any living European language, and comes with 2000 pounds and a trip to Oxford. 

Isabel Cole on Surveillance

Regular readers will know that the writer and translator Isabel Cole is a long-standing partner in crime for me. We co-edit no man's land and co-host the no man's land literary translation lab, and we are often seen in cahoots over various other undertakings. She's been a great inspiration to me over the many years I've known her now.

So it's with a decent amount of pride and of course prejudice that I'd like to call your attention to two things Isabel has done recently. The first takes its starting point with a report in Words Without Borders on the genesis and progress of the writers' anti-surveillance appeal A Stand for Democracy in the Digital Age. It's heartening to see so many writers and readers coming together behind an important issue, and I know Isabel and the other initiators have put in months and months of hard work towards it. Please read her article and sign the petition, if you haven't done so already.

The second thing ties in so well with the first that I can't let it go unmentioned. Isabel also has an ebook out with Mikrotext, Ungesichertes Gelände. It's an epistolary love novella set amongst political activists, and I can't recommend it highly enough. Informed – almost inevitably because she is his translator – by the work of East German writer Wolfgang Hilbig, it is dark and wintry and heart-wrenching and quite the most intelligent and simultaneously beautiful and radical thing I've read in a long time. Isabel writes very precisely in German, not fulfilling that almost Orientalist cliché about exophonic writers adding "spice and sparkle" to their host language.

I can't write a proper review because I'm too biased, but the novella costs less than three euros so you can judge for yourself at the drop of a hat. Please do.

Typographical Translation Award

If I had a list of things that don't matter terribly much in life, the GoodReads Choice Awards would be on it. But they seem to matter to other people, presumably as a large award in lots of categories, voted on by the public. People seemed to be getting piqued that there wasn't a separate category for translations. I mean, I didn't check how the whole thing worked but presumably you could just nominate translated books in the existing categories, if you were that way inclined. But never mind.

I say never mind because it turns out something I do find exciting has resulted from all the hoo-ha. A new grass-roots award for translated titles first published in the USA in 2013, at Typographical Era. Isn't that nice? You can vote at the 2013 Typographical Translation Award page. And yes, that is my friend Isabel's book on the list.

Berlin Reads - and We Join in

Berlin's International Literature Festival opens on Wednesday, 4 September. It features the usual festival-type smorgasbord of writers from around the world, with a couple of interesting themes such as cultures of aging and women's sexuality on paper.

Anyway, the festival has had a slightly controversial reputation in the past. One of the ways it manages to survive on its budget is by tapping into readers' raw enthusiasm. So they had a programme which consisted of normal Berliners looking after the visiting writers in exchange for free tickets, for example, and of course the seemingly inevitable army of unpaid interns. This year (and I believe last year as well) they have a special pre-festival section called "Berlin liest".

Again, the thing consists of people doing something for free. But we're doing it anyway because we're like that (and let's face it, most of the readings I've ever done have been for free). We'll be reading at 4 p.m. on 4 September at St George's Bookshop in Prenzlauer Berg. Other people (see the link above) are reading out in the open in public places, but that was a step too far for me, frankly.

Here's our particular agenda:

Isabel Cole will be reading from Annemarie Schwarzenbach's All the Roads Are Open.
Karen Margolis will be reading two classical Chinese poems from The Land of the Five Flavours.
I'll be reading from Tilman Rammstedt's The King of China.
Lucy Renner-Jones will be reading from Silke Scheuermann's "Lisa and the Heavenly Bodies".

The translations are all our own work. Mine is a sneak preview, as the book's not quite out yet.

Isabel Cole Presents: Franz Fühmann

My dear friend Isabel Cole is a source of inspiration at the best of times. She founded the magazine no man's land and co-founded the no man's land translation lab with me. She writes and translates and has many other talents, including cooking and arguing and knowing when to stop drinking and go home. She's also wonderfully passionate about the writers she loves. Most of whom happen to be dead, which means we will never have to fight over them.

Even more inspiringly, her translation of Franz Fühmann's The Jew Car is now out from Seagull Books. I can't very well review it because I read through part of her translation, so obviously I'm going to think it's excellent, aren't I? But you should know that the book is fascinating and revealing and beautifully written.

Each story presents a snapshot of a personal and historical turning point in the life of the narrator, beginning with childhood anti-Semitism and moving to a youthful embrace—and then an ultimate rejection—of Nazi ideology. With scathing irony and hallucinatory intensity, reflections on the nature of memory, and the individual experience of history, the cycle acquires the weight of a novel.

Isabel's passion is infectious and it makes her translation glow. Oh yes. You can see her glowing in person on 13 June in New York. I think it's at the Goethe Institut, I think it's hosted by the Bridge Series, and I think she'll be rubbing shoulders with three other bundles of awesomeness, namely Tess Lewis, Ross Benjamin and Tim Mohr.

Celebrating a Life Too Short: Annemarie Schwarzenbach

Wednesday night was a special one in Berlin-Neukölln, celebrating the life and writing of the Swiss journalist, novelist, antifascist, archaeologist and world traveller Annemarie Schwarzenbach (1908-1942). The event was organised by her English translators - and my friends - Isabel Cole and Lucy Renner-Jones, and featured Schwarzenbach's great-nephew, the historian Alexis Schwarzenbach. Who was totally fabulous – I think we all fell a tiny bit in love.

But back to Annemarie. She grew up in a wealthy family with four brothers and sisters – the youngest being Alexis S.'s grandfather – and a domineering mother who loved her husband, her children and her live-in ladyfriend. Annemarie loved women too – and published her first novel at the age of 23. Then she fell in love with Erika Mann, who politicized her but didn't return the favour, and then she moved to Berlin and discovered drugs, before travelling widely, working as a photographer, marrying a French diplomat, doing archaeology, writing more novels and a lot of travel journalism. She eventually kicked the drugs and died as the result of a cycling accident. So like a prototype Nico without Andy Warhol.

The event was framed by Alexis Schwarzenbach, who gave us a fascinating slideshow of pictures of and by Annemarie, while providing more details on her life. She was a striking androgynous beauty, standing out in all the family photos with the kind of face that tells you just what mood she was in at the time. Mostly sulking. My favourite was of her holding hands with another teenage girl, at a table with Winifred Wagner, who'd popped by to collect some money from her parents for the fascist cause.

Lucy read from Lyric Novella, a love story set in Weimar-era Berlin featuring a protagonist who's ostensibly a man but can just as easily be read as a woman. Apparently Schwarzenbach regretted not being more open about that aspect. Lucy told us she read Isherwood for inspiration on the narrative voice, but that Schwarzenbach's character was having a lot less fun. She's also translated the later novel, Death in Persia, apparently a "more open exploration of lesbian love and existential anguish against the background of 1930s Teheran", which will be out later this year.  

And Isabel read from Schwarzenbach's journalistic texts on Afghanistan, compiled in All the Roads Are Open. This was the more impressive extract, to be honest, as we got a taste of her more mature writing including some beautiful descriptions. As Alexis Schwarzenbach pointed out, however, she was as much a woman of her time as she was a rebel – her gaze is classic Orientalism, as some of the photos illustrated very clearly.

On the basis of the event you should obviously buy both translations, but also Alexis Schwarzenbach's illustrated biography Auf der Schwelle des Fremden. As he pointed out, previous biographers have tended to take her literary first-person without the requisite pinch of salt, interpreting all sorts of things into her life. I agreed on that, having read a rather vexing portrait of her at the hairdresser's a while ago. So I assume his version is a little more distanced. You can also view photos of and by Annemarie Schwarzenbach in a couple of Swiss archives. It's worth it.

No man's land Scots-Franconian Translation Project

Far be it from me to merely rip off links from the Literary Saloon - but in this case I have something to add. Michael Orthofer links to an article on the Deutsche Welle website: Dialect poetry in translation connects regional cultures across Europe. And I have to point out that you can read the original Scots and Franconian poems in question, English versions, and their matching dialect translations at no man's land - just click on Issue 3.

And in no way am I doing so merely because my friend and co-editor at nml, Isabel Cole, herself a very talented translator, is mentioned in the article and went to great trouble to organise the translation workshop last year between poets writing in dialect from Scotland and Franconia. No, I just want to help you to appreciate the entirety of the project, including its outcome.