Helen and Kurt Wolff Translators' Prize to Philip Boehm

As the Goethe Institut announced a while ago (and I only just noticed on one of my regular (but obviously not regular enough) trawls through the Literary Saloon), this year's prestigious Helen and Kurt Wolff Translators' Prize for translations from German to English published in the USA has gone to Philip Boehm for Gregor von Rezzori’s An Ermine in Czernopol. I met Philip, a multilingual theatre director in St Louis, a year or so ago, so I'm very pleased to see him win this award.

Honorable Mention goes to Donald O. White for his translation of A.V. Thelen’s novel The Island of Second Sight. As far as I'm aware, it's White's untiring efforts we have to thank for being able to read this book in English in the first place.

Congratulations to both!

Introducing Readux Books

My lovely friend Amanda DeMarco is an awe-inspiring person. Not only has she very recently introduced me to bourbon, she's also just announced she's launching a publishing house, Readux Books. Come October you'll be able to read the first four teeny books (small format, 32–64 pp.) either in beautiful print editions or electronically. And most of them will be translations! Including from German!

I'm very excited indeed about this. I actually know what most of the books will be but I don't think I'm supposed to tell you. What I'm sure I am allowed to say is that they're going to be fantastic and you'll be licking your literary lips at the very thought of them. I know I am.

Nerd Chic: E-Readers of Yesteryear

The optician's down the road has a pair of spectacles in the display window, unironically labelled "nerd glasses". Those big black ones, you know. I saw a woman at the supermarket with a Daunt Books tote bag yesterday. And I recently overheard some Americans on Facebook, discussing a haircut spotted in a local bar which they described as "Dorothy Hammill hair". This, people, is Berlin. The place where you can be yourself and let it all hang out; where everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came; the place where you can see our troubles are all the same. Or was that somewhere else?

No matter. Berlin is big on nerd chic, in a non-threatening way. It's OK to flaunt your slightly odd passions here. So when I read Hannah Johnson's sweet piece at Publishing Perspectives about loving her dinosaur-style Kindle, I thought, Yes! So what if everyone else has a flashy tablet? Our e-readers don't reflect! So what if they can check their emails and skype while reading? Our e-readers don't distract us! You may recall, also, my scientific experiment establishing that e-readers won't get us laid either. Hooray! Who wants to be diverted from their reading material by public-transport pick-up artists?

I've now decided that e-readers of yesteryear are the ultimate nerd accessory. You know how everyone was wearing digital watches last year or whenever? Forget it. An e-reader is better, because it won't annoy you by beeping or actually telling the time (if you have the same model as I do, at least). They're so out they're in. So make like your mum and dig yours out of the closet again - because every fashion comes around twice you know.

German Children's and Young Adults' Literature Prize to Translated Works?

The Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis is Germany's big prize for picture books, children's books, YA books and children's/YA non-fiction books. Most of the biggies have won it over the years, including two of my friends. The unusual thing about it is that it can be awarded to books written originally in German or published in translation, all within a particular year. There has been some annoyance about that on the part of some German writers of children's and young adults' literature. In fact they went as far as to write an open letter to the family minister calling for an end to the practice (original formatting):

An alteration to the award guidelines for the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis is indispensible and overdue in the following two points:

 

1)      The evaluation by the critics' and young people's juries should apply to  German-language original works in the categories picture book, children's book, young adults' book and non-fiction.

2)      German translations of foreign-language works should be honoured  separately, i.e. in their own category/categories.

 

After almost sixty years of the award's existence, may German-language children's and young adults' literature finally be adequately acknowledged and valued by the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis, as other countries deal with their own literary production.

In case you're wondering why they wrote to the family minister, it's because her ministry is officially in charge of the prize.

Anyway, the open letter did the rounds of the social media, making me feel a little uncomfortable but not enough to keep me up at night. And then today the German literary translators issued a response in a press release containing a long and combative statement by Heike Brandt. Unfortunately, you're going to have to click the link above and then go to "Pressemitteilungen" to get there. I do apologise. A soundbite from the VDÜ's chairman Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel to make up for it:

It is good and important that the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis covers the entire range of children's and young adults' literature published in Germany, originals and translations into German. A national limitation of the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreises would be an untimely and fatal signal. Setting up a prize category for translations would not balance that out.

Now you can imagine I'm torn. On the one hand, I want my German writer friends to win prizes for their books. On the other hand I want my German translator friends to win prizes for their books - on a par with all the other books. Because that's precisely what makes this award special: the fact that it's a prize for all children's and young adult's books and doesn't make a false distinction between books written in German and books written in Swedish, English or Hebrew. The upset authors claim it's not a level playing field, however, because translated books have had longer to establish themselves on the market (abroad) and gain attention. They say it's more difficult for books written by German authors to win the prize. I'm not sure about that. A brief glance at the previous winners shows it's a fairly even distribution. In fact in 2011 no translated books won anything, although last year was back to half and half. I suspect this year's nominations might be the straw that broke the camel's back, with only three originals in the running for any of the critics' fiction prizes.

Nevertheless I shall come down from the fence and say that yes, I think it's marvellous that this award treats originals and translations as exactly the same things: great books. On the anecdotal level, my daughter reads German originals, German translations and English originals of all her confusing YA fantasy series, depending on what she gets her hands on. And to back that up, there's the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis young people's jury, who fairly consistently nominate a mix of translated and original titles. I think Germany could be proud not to make a distinction like all those other countries with their narrow-minded national book awards. But then of course I could just be saying that because I'm a translator.

Update: As the very clever writer, translator and YA-lit expert Danny Hahn pointed out, this is exactly how the Dublin IMPAC prize works, and is something to be applauded. And as with the IMPAC prize, the award money either goes to the writer (of a German-language original) or is shared equally between the writer and translator.

 

Ides of May

Today is World Book Day, which I have to admit I find a bit crap. At least in Germany, where there aren't really any free books involved. Surely all those "Yay for books" things are preaching to the converted? Whatever. Books. Yay. Let's spread the tidings of this radical new invention today.

Enough. There are some things to look forward to with a little more content, in all sorts of places. First up, the PEN World Voices festival in NYC. Austrian poetry and prose writer Barbara Frischmuth, German Book Prize winner Ursula Krechel, Swiss geezer Rolf Lappert, and all sorts of other impressive people and things from 29 April to 5 May.

From 10-12 May there's the Solothurner Literaturtage in Switzerland, where you lucky people can see me on a panel, single-handedly and hypocritically championing online reviewers. But also some proper writers, including Jenny Erpenbeck, Navid Kermani, Julya Rabinowich, Andreas Stichmann, Urs Widmer, Patrick Tschan... plus lots of translators translating live. I'm quite pleased I don't actually have to do that part.

Followed by London's European Literature Night on 15 May. Featuring Austrian writer Norbert Gstrein for your tongue-twisting delight, Germany's Birgit Vanderbeke and a host of other golden daffodils. All chaired by Rosie Goldsmith, someone I look up to immensely – and not just for her dress sense.

And if you're grounded in Berlin because it's so darn cool you can't bear to leave (I feel for you), then you can look forward to a thing called 24 Stunden Buch on 31 May and 1 June. I may be missing something but there doesn't seem to be a programme just yet. But they do tell us that (pardon my shouting): "from 12:00 to 12:00 there will be readings and other literary events around the clock, some of them in very unusual places, for children and adults. A bus transfer will link the reading locations during the evening and the night so that visitors can enjoy literature non-stop!" Now aren't you all fired up now?


Update: Argh! I just looked up World Book Night in the UK. It is not for me. Possibly in an attempt to make the list of books they give away more fitting for the event's name, they have added a translated book. Bernhard Schlink's lowest-common-denominator The Reader. Thank goodness I left the country. Yes, I know I'm a snob. 

London Book Fair Fun

The London Book Fair just finished and thousands of publishing people put their hands to their shrunken wallets in relief. Phew! Now we can go back to paying less than £3.50 for a small Coke. The highlight was obviously the Literary Translation Centre, where the events came thick and fast and there was free cake at lunchtime. The downside was that there were so many great people there that it was hard to concentrate. 

I was duly inspired by a panel on promoting literature in translation - hell, why not suggest events to bookshops? I think I will. Susan Bernofsky, Rosie Goldsmith and Katrin Thomaneck had all sorts of other ideas that are still swishing around my head. I left after the beginning of the panel on What Publishers Want - because I decided I'd rather not know what publishers want. And I enjoyed the panel on innovations in literary translation, including some information on TL hub, an online tool for collaborative translations. It's free and sounded fairly flexible - if only I had a project to use it for. 

Oddly, that particular event highlighted one of the difficulties of the Literary Translation Centre. It's part-sponsored by Amazon, who are making waves with their Amazon Crossing programme. Now Amazon is not all that popular at the moment so I can understand people in the audience raising issues with their editor during the Q&A. Certainly, talk of improving efficiency by speeding up the translation process sounded rather worrying, although it seemed to refer to the publisher's end rather than the translator's. And another point that wasn't answered was how translators can make measured decisions on whether to sign up for royalty-heavy deals if sales information is not provided. But I don't know whether one person from a huge corporation can be held to account for their tax payment practice, for example. I picked up a general sense of unease from many in the audience, while others were quick to leap to Amazon's defence. For me, it boils down to this: we can choose who we work for so if we don't like the conditions a large corporation offers we don't have to take them. Particularly in the case of Amazon, who invite people to "audition" for translations on a special platform rather than approaching them directly. Unfortunately, the centre itself doesn't seem to be bombarded with sponsorship offers. I'm glad it exists and I hope it continues to do so in future. I just wish we lived in a world where something as wonderful as the Literary Translation Centre could thrive without corporate sponsorship - because then there'd be more opportunity for open discussions on subjects like this without anyone getting scared. 

The centre's other problem is that it's just too small and was constantly bursting at the seams. Presumably this issue can't be addressed until Bombay Sapphire offers to take over as sponsor.

What else happened? I moderated Clemens J. Setz at the Austrian Embassy, which was plush but had the world's smallest snacks. Clemens J. Setz was fantastic and entertaining and puzzling and very easy to moderate, requiring only a quick prod now and then to send him off into the next interesting reverie. Serpent's Tail will be publishing Indigo in Ross Benjamin's translation next year. Clemens read some of it and it was truly beautiful. There's a picture at Lizzy's Literary Life showing me looking bemused in my magical confidence dress. Lizzy was lovely and very glittery around the bottom half. There was some schmoozing over wine and miniscule snacks. Frisch & Co launched with a party I couldn't attend, but I hear it was very good. I also talked on a panel about how to become a literary translator, which was short but sweet. Organiser Danny Hahn very kindly announced - at the end, mercifully - that it was my birthday, at which point I was showered with wishes and even one impromptu gift from the obligatory strange person. I met lots of passionate people and got leaned on by a publisher with a different measure of personal space to my own. I saw a lovely baby bump that made me very happy. And I had a birthday G&T slightly too early in the afternoon, with one of the first people to put faith in me as a translator. 

To round off, all this talk of birthdays may make me sound like a bit of a masochist. Who'd voluntarily fly to a book fair for their birthday? Two answers: firstly, it felt rather wonderful to have "arrived" to such an extent as to be invited onto a panel, which is a good feeling to have on a special date. And secondly, don't forget that London is where my family lives, so it wasn't like I was going back to a lonely hotel room and a chocolate cupcake. Also, I genuinely enjoy book fairs, at least up until the tipping point from which I loathe them.

Drinking with Anna Blumbach

I went drinking with Anna Blumbach.