Showing posts with label videos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label videos. Show all posts
Tuesday, 8 July 2014
Make Translator Portraits, Not War
The European Council of Literary Translators' Associations, CEATL, has announced its third video competition to raise the profile of literary translators. This year they want portraits of literary translators, which sounds like a fine idea to me. Send them your video by 1 September, when voting starts for one week via a Facebook page.
Thursday, 30 January 2014
Eye-Feasting Season
Fans of German books! Tonight's the night you get to feast your eyes on beautiful, intelligent people! Start with my lovely friend Tess Lewis, who is curating this year's Festival Neue Literatur in New York and stars in her own video. And she's very cleverly picked only attractive people to present their writing - from Austria, Switzerland and Germany and from the USA - at the festival: Milena Michiko Flašar (Austria), Olga Grjasnowa (Germany), Maja
Haderlap (Austria), Abbas Khider (Germany), Melinda Nadj Abonji
(Switzerland), and Richard Weihe (Switzerland) plus U.S.
authors Monique Truong and Keith Gessen. Go along! Drool!
If you're not actually in New York in February, there's still hope for you. The Chemnitz bookshop Lessing und Kompanie has the world's most beautiful Tumblr. According to the trade mag Börsenblatt they invested a big fat €3500 in an all-day session with a professional photographer taking shots of 127 of their customers in the shop, with their favourite books. My friends and I have been perving over the pictures for a week or so now. This is how internet dating should actually work. Actually attractive photos, no stupid self-descriptions, and don't you think you can tell so much about someone by their favourite book? Whether it's been read hundreds of times over, how they hold it, what kind of book it is... One friend likes the Döblin fan, I prefer the Joycean, another loves the idea of a man whose favourite book is about Italian food. Honestly, I could look at it for hours. I probably will.
Not quite as telefantastic but still amusing is a new German ad campaign for, erm, reading. Various TV personalities you may not have heard of make some interesting statements about what reading can do for you. Not to be taken too literally, I suspect, especially the claim that "reading makes you fit". No, it really doesn't. I do like "reading makes you bright" though, and not only because I used to have a bit of a crush on Steffen Hallaschka when he was on 100 Grad. It was the nineties. We all looked like that.
If you're not actually in New York in February, there's still hope for you. The Chemnitz bookshop Lessing und Kompanie has the world's most beautiful Tumblr. According to the trade mag Börsenblatt they invested a big fat €3500 in an all-day session with a professional photographer taking shots of 127 of their customers in the shop, with their favourite books. My friends and I have been perving over the pictures for a week or so now. This is how internet dating should actually work. Actually attractive photos, no stupid self-descriptions, and don't you think you can tell so much about someone by their favourite book? Whether it's been read hundreds of times over, how they hold it, what kind of book it is... One friend likes the Döblin fan, I prefer the Joycean, another loves the idea of a man whose favourite book is about Italian food. Honestly, I could look at it for hours. I probably will.
Not quite as telefantastic but still amusing is a new German ad campaign for, erm, reading. Various TV personalities you may not have heard of make some interesting statements about what reading can do for you. Not to be taken too literally, I suspect, especially the claim that "reading makes you fit". No, it really doesn't. I do like "reading makes you bright" though, and not only because I used to have a bit of a crush on Steffen Hallaschka when he was on 100 Grad. It was the nineties. We all looked like that.
Monday, 16 September 2013
Two Winning Videos
The European Council of Literary Translators' Associations (CEATL) is not the world's sexiest organisation, but they have now chosen two very sexy videos as winners of their "Spot the Translator" contest. If you haven't been sent at least one of the links over the past month or so, you obviously aren't a translator. The aim of the game is to raise awareness for literary translators' work.
Thursday, 15 December 2011
German Book Office Buzz Videos
In a terribly, terribly exciting development, the lovely people at the German Book Office NY have made a series of videos celebrating the other lovely people at New Books in German and presenting a selection of, umm, recommended new books in German. They had a glamorous launch party with a screening on Monday, where the world's literati rubbed shoulders over canapés and champagne. And truffles. And Salman Rushdie brought some brownies he'd made, which were very good apparently but brought out Philip Roth's nut allergy because he forgot to mention the secret ingredient (pistachios!). Anyway, by the time the videos were screened I hear all was well again because Jeannette Winterson had her epi-pen with her and administered a quick emergency injection.
So the world was almost as wowed as I was by the amazing videos you can now watch on the GBO's Youtube channel. I'm in one of them too, talking about Simon Urban's Plan D. Please contact my agent if you want to offer me a film contract. Contact the GBO or NBG if you're a publisher and feel inspired to buy the translation rights to any of the books. And many, many thanks to Brittany Hazelwood for doing such an excellent job.
So the world was almost as wowed as I was by the amazing videos you can now watch on the GBO's Youtube channel. I'm in one of them too, talking about Simon Urban's Plan D. Please contact my agent if you want to offer me a film contract. Contact the GBO or NBG if you're a publisher and feel inspired to buy the translation rights to any of the books. And many, many thanks to Brittany Hazelwood for doing such an excellent job.
Saturday, 11 December 2010
German Book Office Videos
How cool is this? I mean, don't you just love it when people tell you about great books they've read, and they get all enthusiastic and then they have to go and get the book and read a bit out of it for you, just to convince you? You know?
The German Book Office in New York is an instrument of cultural imperialism, running a white propaganda operation in the USA on behalf of German literature. And now they've come up with a new, vicious weapon: videos! Of people talking about German books! And they're so insidious - every time I pick up Peter Wawerzinek's Rabenliebe now, I know I'll hear award-winning translator Ross Benjamin's voice intoning lovingly.
That's it, American publishers. You might as well throw in the towel right now. You know you can't keep up your resistance to Teutonic literature much longer. Make mine a Jägermeister, Herr Ober!
The German Book Office in New York is an instrument of cultural imperialism, running a white propaganda operation in the USA on behalf of German literature. And now they've come up with a new, vicious weapon: videos! Of people talking about German books! And they're so insidious - every time I pick up Peter Wawerzinek's Rabenliebe now, I know I'll hear award-winning translator Ross Benjamin's voice intoning lovingly.
That's it, American publishers. You might as well throw in the towel right now. You know you can't keep up your resistance to Teutonic literature much longer. Make mine a Jägermeister, Herr Ober!
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