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Saturday, July 29, 2023

Book Nook: Nothing lost in this translation of Mai San Judge’s Ardali - The Indian Express - Translation

Indian literature written in regional languages has received worldwide acclaim in recent times. The past few decades demonstrate that translation has played a significant role in the expansion of Indian literature. Translation of literary texts regenerates and revitalizes unexplored literature across the globe. It helps the text to travel across nations, boundaries and time without losing creativity and aesthetic pleasure of the source text.

Outstanding translations from Indian languages continue to be published. One such recent addition to the translation genre is Mai San Judge’s Ardali written by Ninder Ghugianvi in 2001 (12th edition was published in 2022) and translated by Dr Paramjit Singh Ramana as I Was Judge’s Orderly in 2023 by National Book Trust, New Delhi . This book has been translated into many other Indian languages. Ghugianvi is a well-known and widely read writer hailing from Punjab, who writes in Punjabi. Son of a small village shopkeeper, a school dropout, a lawyer’s Munshi (clerk) in district court at Faridkot and later appointed as a court orderly, Ghugianvi’s life has been an alluring one. He has more than 50 books to his credit. His works have garnered critical acclaim and have touched the hearts of readers around the globe. Many research scholars in various universities are doing PhDs on his works. The translator of the book, Dr Paramjit Singh Ramana is a former Professor of English and Head, University Regional Centre, Bathinda. He has translated the works of prominent Punjabi writers such as Gurdial Singh, Mohan Bhandari, Waryam Singh Sandhu and others into English.

I Was Judge’s Orderly, a memoir, takes the readers on a captivating journey through the life of a man who serves as a court orderly for judges. The book exposes the intricate workings of the judicial system and offers a rare perspective of someone intimately involved in the judicial setup. Through his vivid, insightful and credible descriptions, Ghugianvi explores the human drama that unfolds within the courtrooms, judges’ conduct outside the courtroom and their secluded life inside the red bungalows. This enlightens the readers on the complexities and contradictions inherent in the pursuit of justice.

Surjit Patar’s lines from his celebrated poem ‘Kuch Keha ta Hanera Jarega Kive’ are befitting for this book.

The men have become trees in the court,

They have dried in the waiting for justice,

Ask these men to go to their homes,

How long will they stay here like this?

The author’s journey begins as a Munshi (clerk) to an advocate for almost a year. In this span of time, everyone in the court has known that he is a writer as well as an artist. When the vacant positions of the orderlies are to be filled up, he applies for the same and gets selected. This is how his journey as an orderly starts. During his entire tenure as an orderly, he serves three distinguished judges. The first judge as well as his family is compassionate and affectionate to the author. Rinku, the first judge’s son admires the author’s artistic and literary talent. But the first judge is transferred soon and the second judge arrives in the red bungalow. The second judge comes alone, it has been insinuated in the book that his children study in some foreign university and his wife lives in Mohali. The couple does not share an amiable relationship. It is during the tenure of the second judge only when the author feels helplessly entangled in the golden chains of the government setup. Everyday rants, insults and abuses made him almost give up his job and go back to his village. The threshold of his patience breaks during the tenure of the third judge and he resigns. He says while handing over the resignation letter to the superintendent, “No sir. No… I have thought a lot… it is such a demeaning job…Sir it will kill me…please sir…I am thankful to you…you have been very nice to me…please relieve me as early as possible…free me forever…so that I may go…” (Ghugianvi 148).

The author joins as an orderly owing to his unfaltering faith in the judicial system. As he delves deeper into the complexities of his role as an orderly, his belief in the judicial system shatters. Author reveals the fragility and corruption prevalent in the system. The second judge, to whom the author served, does not allow him to go to his village for Diwali festivities because he is expecting esteemed guests at his residence in hope of tempting gifts from them. The judge never pays for anything on his own, he asks people to do favour to him so that he can reciprocate the same in the court, by pronouncing a verdict in their favour. The reader and the steno of the judge ask for ‘sewapani’, an illegal gratification from whoever wins the case. The judge is aware of the prevalence of ‘sewapani’ culture among subordinate employees. The second judge is highly abusive to the author. He initially encouraged the author to play his Tumbi and attend his musical events but later turns down his pleadings. He sarcastically calls him Tumbi-master and looks down upon his passion for music and often mockingly labels him a Mirasi.

The author is deeply hurt by these taunts, for the tumbi is a gift from his guru, Ustad Yamla Jat. He is a dedicated and devoted disciple of Ustad Yamla Jat, a renowned Punjabi folk singer. His guru presents him a Tumbi and it is of immeasurable value to him. He respects him a lot and always protects the memento Tumbi given by his guru. He often thinks , “I told Sahib so many times that I was a disciple and follower of Yamla ji… Sahib attached no value to all this… He knew absolutely nothing about Punjabi literature, music, art or culture.” (110)

The book is divided into 20 chapters, all equally appealing. The meticulously chosen episodes from one year span of the author’s life give the book the form of a fascinating tale with a rich narrative and compelling characters. Set in the Malwa region of Punjab, the book reflects the vibrant culture, beliefs and values of the society prevalent in those times. It also offers a window to the judicial system of our country from a different lens. The translator alerts the readers in the translator’s note, “The narrative is not simply interesting and instructive; it is an attempt to bring us face to face with the system we accept without questioning” (Ghugianvi ix).

Memoirs serve as a powerful tool to offer readers an intimate glimpse into the lives of individuals. Generally memoirs are written by people with rags-to-riches stories. But Ghugianvi, through this book, in reverse, has brought a marginalized character into the limelight. In the opinion of the translator as mentioned in the translator’s note, “The first person narrator does not present himself as a “hero”, nor does he try to win our sympathy, admiration or approval by boasting about his achievements or moral superiority. Of course, he presents himself as a talented singer, musician and litterateur. But mostly his self-mocking ironic tone presents him as a weak hapless victim of the system” (Ghugianvi X). Memoirs of such marginalized individuals disrupt the dominant narratives that often overlook or misrepresent the experiences of marginalized individuals and communities. Literature aids the marginalised to give voice to their experiences and emotions. Literary translation helps the most authentic and heartfelt portrayal of the marginalised. It also helps in facilitating the accessibility and dissemination of their stories , experiences and perspectives to a wider audience, along with bridging cultural gaps and fostering empathy and respect for diverse backgrounds. Authors who write in vernacular often find it challenging to reach a broader audience due to linguistic barriers and limited access to publishing opportunities. Translations serve as intermediaries, through translations, these writers gain visibility and contribute to the literary canon.

Friday, July 28, 2023

Here's how to read stories and novels originally written in Esperanto - The Washington Post - Translation

More than 100 years ago, the blind Ukrainian writer Vasily Eroshenko was introduced to the language Esperanto. L.L. Zamenhof, the Polish ophthalmologist who constructed the language in the late 19th century, had envisioned Esperanto as a simple, beautifully designed language that is easy to learn. It has 16 basic rules and no irregular verbs, and draws its roots from Romance languages, German, Slavic and Greek. Zamenhof had hoped that Esperanto would be adopted worldwide as an international second language, and that it would reduce social conflict between communities and nations. It never caught on, but dedicated Esperantists still exist the world over.

Eroshenko, who would become one of those devotees, was captivated by how the invented language enabled him to converse with people all over the world. In Japan, he befriended activists, gave lectures in Esperanto and started writing in the language, which he would describe as “the key to all my philosophy.” He believed in its power to connect people, and change people. His body of work includes a set of Esperanto fairy tales — stories about mice and flowers and paper lanterns — that are quaint on the surface but also scathing critiques of Western civilization’s deficiencies. Eroshenko’s work explores colonization, police brutality, human destruction of the natural world, and the marginalization of the poorest and most vulnerable among us. English translations by Adam Kuolowskyof some of these works, along with translations of other fairy tales Eroshenko wrote in Japanese, are available for the first time in a new book called “The Narrow Cage and Other Modern Fairy Tales,” published this year by Columbia University Press.

“I heard this quote somewhere that Tolstoy only took two hours to learn Esperanto,” said Kuplowsky, who set out to learn Esperanto expressly so that he could translate Eroshenko’s work. “I thought that maybe it would take me a month.”

All the books Obama is reading this summer

Kuplowsky was right. He picked up an Esperanto textbook on Project Gutenberg and, with the help of several dictionaries, felt confident enough to translate after a month. In the process, he joined a small but dedicated group of Esperanto translators interested in preserving and disseminating original Esperanto literature. Many of them are drawn to these works because of the ideology that Zamenhof promoted when he introduced the language, including its emphasis on nondiscrimination and broad-mindedness. Passionate Esperantists are interested not just in translation, but also in the preservation of Esperanto literature in its original form. There are coordinated efforts to promote the literature, including an initiative called Fenikso, that aims to republish a set of Esperanto classics. Spearheaded by Esperanto-USA, the project hopes to republish 37 prose and 22 poetry books.

“It’s a literary canon if you will,” said Hoss Firooznia, an Esperanto-USA board member who is leading the effort. “These are books which, if you’re learning Esperanto, you’re advised to read but students can’t find them anymore.”

That preservation effort is not without challenges. Copyrights on some of the books have expired. For others, Firooznia tries to secure rights by contacting publishers, authors or the descendants of authors. “The publishing houses are these mom-and-pop organizations that really don’t have much financial backing,” Firooznia said. “Once the publisher disappears and the books are out of print, you can’t find them anymore.”

Firooznia’s goal is to republish three or four books by the end of the year. The books will be available digitally and also as print-on-demand. Among the first to be republished is “Viktimoj,” by the Hungarian writer Julio Baghy, a novel based on Baghy’s experiences as a prisoner of war in Siberia and was published in serial form in 1925 in the Literatura Mondo magazine.

Firooznia, who works full-time as a systems administrator at the University of Rochester, also recently completed his MFA in literary translation at the university. His thesis is an English translation of an Esperanto novel called “Ombro sur interna pejzago” or “Shadows on an Inner Landscape,” by the Croatian author Spomenka Stimec, a loosely autobiographical title that chronicles the collapse of a woman’s marriage.

At the University of Rochester, Firooznia runs an Esperanto club and maintains a small Esperanto lending library in his office. He’s also teaching an online course in literary translation from Esperanto to other languages.

“I’m teaching other Esperantists what I learned,” he said. “We’re talking about translation into and out of and just general questions of translation like balancing fidelity versus fluency.”

Esperanto is sometimes looked upon with disdain, as a novelty language with few readers and speakers. “By now this artificial language has become something of a joke except to those few who study, speak and write it,” a Washington Post critic wrote in a 2001 review of “Masquerade,” a memoir originally written in Esperanto by Tivadar Soros, father of billionaire George Soros.

The translator of the text in question was Humphrey Tonkin, widely regarded as one of the most respected Esperantists living today. Tonkin, 83, has taught at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. He is the former president of the University of Hartford and has twice been the president of the Universal Esperanto Association, the largest body of Esperantists in the world.

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“If you’re outside of Esperanto, and you’ve never heard of it before then, by definition it’s minuscule,” Tonkin said. “It’s about not knowing about something and belittling it.”

Tonkin said those who write in Esperanto tend to be internationalists, people who have a perspective on the world that is not rooted in their own nationality.

“You could say that Esperanto literature will assume an attitude of nondiscrimination,” he said. “There’s a kind of openness that you don’t find in other literature to the same extent.”

The preservation of Esperanto in both its spoken and written forms facilitates activism, said Giridhar Rao, an Esperantist and professor in the School of Education at Azim Premji University. “The Esperanto community is already primed to think about language asymmetry, language inequality, language and power,” Rao said.

Rao became interested in Esperanto in the 1990s, when he was researching science fiction as a doctoral student and a colleague pointed him toward Esperanto literature.

“It’s a kind of large-scale planetary thinking, which Esperanto and science fiction seem to both have,” Rao said. “There’s a sense of the future, of imagining that another world is possible, that another language is possible.”

For Kuplowsky, too, the language offers a sense of connection. A second-generation Ukrainian Canadian, he does not know Ukrainian. But it was deeply meaningful to him that he was able to read — and translate — the work of Eroshenko from Esperanto to English, not least of all because the stories themselves resonate surprisingly with Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. “They expose, in the symbolic form of fairy tales, all the insanity, hypocrisy and tragedy of war,” Kuplowsky said. “They remind us how the problems of the past century remain the problems of the present century.”

Sindya Bhanoo is a reporter based in Corvallis, Ore. She teaches creative writing and journalism at Oregon State University.

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Thursday, July 27, 2023

Yilin Wang on The Poetry of Qiu Jin and the Important Work of Translation - Book Riot - Translation

Elisa Shoenberger has been building a library since she was 13. She loves writing about all aspects of books from author interviews, antiquarian books, archives, and everything in between. She also writes regularly for Murder & Mayhem and Library Journal. She's also written articles for Huffington Post, Boston Globe, WIRED, Slate, and many other publications. When she's not writing about reading, she's reading and adventuring to find cool new art. She also plays alto saxophone and occasionally stiltwalks. Find out more on her website or follow her on Twitter @vogontroubadour.

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When Yilin Wang began translating the poetry of Chinese revolutionary and feminist Qiu Jin, she had not anticipated that she would be facing off against the British Museum. Recently in an exhibition on China, Wang learned that her translations had been used in the exhibit without permission or compensation. Moreover, she was not credited in the exhibition itself (though she was credited in the exhibition guide). Read about the controversy here.

She’s in the process of filing a lawsuit against the museum after raising money through Kickstarter for her legal fees. While the suit is just beginning, I had the opportunity to sit down and talk to her about the work of Qiu Jin and the importance and challenge of translation.

The Overlooked Poetry of Qiu Jin

In China, Qiu Jin is a well-known historical figure for her revolutionary efforts to overthrow the Qing dynasty. She was also an educator who taught at a women’s school and a poet. But Wang believes that while “her political activities as a revolutionary are very well known, she’s been overlooked a bit as a poet, specifically because of her role as a feminist poet.”

Wang became interested in translating poetry, particularly of underrepresented voices in history and present-day China. She was surprised to learn that 100 years after Qiu Jin’s death, there was no English translation of her poetry. She said, “I feel like that is a big omission, given how important her poetry is to the emergence of feminism in the Chinese context, and given how many other Chinese poets have been translated.

Wang explained that in the 20th century context of China (though also true of the U.S. and other parts of the world in the 20th and 21st centuries), “feminism is something that is still quite socially overlooked by authorities in the education system and in history texts. [It’s] something that they downplay, sideline, and erase.” Plus, Wang noted that cis-male poets tend to be translated while female and queer poets are often overlooked.

Qiu Jin’s Legacy

Qiu Jin wrote about women’s relationships and queerplatonic relationships, Wang said. She wrote about gender norms and limiting gender roles. She’s an icon for queer and trans communities. “I find her poetry to be kind of very relevant to readers today, even though she wrote like more than 100 years ago,” Wang noted.

Her translations, which were first used and later removed from the exhibit, were sadly one of many things on display that were taken without permission. The exhibit focused on the late Qing dynasty, “where China suffered a lot from British imperialism,” she said. Various objects in the exhibit were taken from China. For instance, there’s a painting of a dog called Looty, because he was looted in 1860 during the second Opium War, according to the Royal Collection Trust website.

The Art of Translation

While many readers take translation for granted, Wang pointed out that it’s a specialized form of writing and art. “It takes a lot of labor,” Wang said. “It takes a lot of knowledge.” To translate a poem from Mandarin into English, she has to have fluency in both languages, cultural knowledge of today’s literature, her knowledge of English and formal classical Chinese poetry.

On top of that, she’s researching the social and political background of the time, as well as Qiu Jin’s life and the historical women heroes and poets referenced in Qui Jin’s poetry. On top of all that, she also noted, “I’m using my skills as an editor to select poems. I’m using my background as a sensitivity reader to think about cultural representation. I’m also using creative writing skills to write a poem in English that captures the spirit of the Chinese.” She’ll go through 10-15 drafts for each poem. It’s not a literal translation. In interviews, Wang said that each poem of Qiu Jin can take 20-50 hours.

“I tried to find the right words in terms of emotions, idioms, and allusions. Classical Chinese is very different from English in terms of grammar and syntax,” said Wang. For instance, Mandarin and English are very different grammar; verbs are not conjugated, nor is there a distinction between singular and plural nouns, so the meaning has to be inferred from context. The translator has to deal with all of these tiny details, explained Wang.

Name the Translator

People may just see the poem at the end of the entire process; so much of the work can be invisible and undervalued. One of the big misconceptions about translations is that the translation is not copyrighted. That’s not true, said Wang. Even though Qiu Jin’s poems may be out of copyright, Wang’s translations of her poems are copyrighted for Wang. “It’s more like an adaptation. If you took him a book and made a movie. People wouldn’t think that just because the book is public domain that the movie would be. Somehow people think that the transition is kind of the original.”

There’s been a movement #namethetranslator that has been going on in social media. Wang explained that it’s an ongoing problem in publishing and academic spaces that overlook translators. Publishers won’t put them on the book covers; book reviewers may not include them in their reviews; and awards fail to include the translator. She had hoped that institutions like the British Museum would set a good example with the ethical treatment of translators.

We’ll see in the upcoming months how Wang’s legal case against the museum will go.

If you want to learn more about Qiu Jin’s life in English, Wang recommended Ying Hu’s Burying Autumn: Poetry, Friendship and Loss, which includes Qiu Jin as one of the three subjects.

cover of The Lantern and the Night Moth by Yilin Wang

For folks interested in reading Yilin Wang’s translations, check out her translations on her website and Asymptote.

She’s also currently working on two books about Qiu Jin. The first The Lantern and the Night Moths: Five Modern and Contemporary Chinese Poets in Translation has an expected publication date of April 2, 2024, and will include Qiu Jin along with four poets. The second project will be a full-length book of just Qiu Jin’s poetry.

Want more poetry in translation? Check out this list of five best poetry collections by women in translation. Want to hear about recently released translations? Check out this list of best new books in translation in spring 2023.

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The Best New Korean Literature In Translation - Book Riot - Translation

Pierce Alquist is a transplanted New Yorker living and working in the publishing scene in Boston. Don’t worry if she fooled you, the red hair is misleading. She’s a literature in translation devotee and reviewer and lover of small, independent presses. A voracious traveler and foodie, you can find her in her kitchen making borscht or covered in red pepper paste as she perfects her kimchi recipe.

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Every season I pour over the catalogs and galleys of new releases in translation and highlight some of the titles that I’m excited about for Book Riot. I was especially impressed with this spring and summer’s incredible offerings of literature translated from Korean. There were even more stunning titles than usual and much more than I could fit into my original list, where I try to highlight a wide diversity of languages and countries. So I was inspired to create a list solely of the titles translated from Korean this season as an added bonus. And because I couldn’t help myself, I also looked ahead at and included some exciting early fall titles.

Looking at this list, I’m overwhelmed by the overall quality of all of these titles — to put it simply, every single one of them is a banger. I’ve always loved Korean literature in translation, but to have more titles available than ever before, written and translated at this high standard, feels like an absolute gift. I’m also impressed by the variety of what’s currently being translated from Korean right now. There are critically acclaimed and beloved authors and translators returning with their newest book, like my most-anticipated book of the season: Phantom Pain Wings by Kim Hyesoon and translated by Don Mee Choi, alongside exceptional English-language debuts like Walking Practice by Dolki Min and translated by Victoria Caudle and Whale by Cheon Myeong-kwan and translated by Chi-Young Kim. There’s also a fascinating mixture of form and genre, from science fiction to literary fiction and novels, short stories, and poetry alike. It’s a thrilling time to be a lover of Korean literature in translation!

Best New Korean Literature in Translation

Walking Practice by Dolki Min, translated by Victoria Caudle

Walking Practice was my biggest surprise of the season! The novel follows a shapeshifting alien that is the lone survivor of their planet’s destruction, now confined to Earth’s atmosphere. To survive, they learn to use dating apps and their shapeshifting abilities to seduce and eat their suitors. The alien’s inner commentary — horrifying and strange and yet also thoughtful and endearing — about what it means to be an outsider, acting as “human,” and their desire to belong is utterly fascinating and a biting critique of social structures that discriminate against queer, gender-nonconforming, and disabled people. Victoria Caudle’s translation was striking, both insightful and utterly original, and I was grateful for her translator’s note that provided a glimpse behind the curtain. Blending humor and horror, science fiction and searing cultural commentary, Walking Practice stuns — almost as if I was its next victim. (HarperVia, March 14)

Cover of I Went to See My Father by Kyung-Sook Shin

I Went to See My Father by Kyung-Sook Shin, translated by Anton Hur

I Went to See My Father follows the life of a woman reconnecting with her elderly father after the death of her own daughter. While taking care of him, she finds a chest of letters and begins to piece together stories of a life she never knew. It is a powerful and haunting novel about family, war, loss, and fatherhood. While Kyung-Sook Shin is widely known internationally for the international bestseller and winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize Please Look After Mom, translated by Chi-Young Kim, I also recommend The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness, translated by Ha-yun Jung, a haunting coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of Korea’s industrial sweatshops of the 1970s, and The Court Dancer, translated by Anton Hur, a beautifully written historical novel set during the dramatic final years of the Joseon Dynasty. (Astra House, April 11)

Greek Lessons by Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith and Emily Yae Won

I love Han Kang’s sharp and stunning novels, including the Man Booker International Prize winner The Vegetarian, Human Acts, and The White Book, all translated by Deborah Smith, and was eagerly anticipating this new book. Of her past novels, Greek Lessons, translated by Smith and Emily Yae Won, seems to most closely resemble The White Book — a novel that uses an exploration of the color white to think about grief and loss. Likewise, Greek Lessons is a meditation on human connection told through the act of learning and sharing language, specifically Ancient Greek. It’s a pleasure to watch Kang think in this radiant translation. (Hogarth, April 18)

Whale by Cheon Myeong-kwan, translated by Chi-Young Kim

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, Whale is the English-language debut of Cheon Myeong-kwan, an award-winning South Korean novelist and screenwriter, and translated by Chi-Young Kim, who received the Man Asian Literary Prize for her translation of Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin. It is a multigenerational story of three women set in a remote, coastal village in the rapidly modernizing South Korea of the latter half of the 20th century. Whale is widely considered a modern classic in South Korea and has been compared frequently to One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez with its mix of magical and realist elements and its epic scale, but Whale is its own creature entirely — a strange and beguiling blend of satire, folklore, Korean Han, and something else that feels indescribable. (Archipelago, May 2)

Cover of Phantom Pain Wings by Kim Hyesoon

Phantom Pain Wings by Kim Hyesoon, translated by Don Mee Choi

When I first wrote about Autobiography of Death by Kim Hyesoon and translated by Don Mee Choi, I said that it felt like one of the most important books I’ve ever read. I still feel that way, and my estimation of this author and translator continues to grow with this new collection that also grapples with death, memory, and trauma but is even more deeply personal. Kim Hyesoon writes, “I came to write Phantom Pain Wings after Daddy passed away. I called out for birds endlessly. I wanted to become a translator of bird language.” Like its predecessor, one of the best parts of this collection is watching Hyesoon and Don Mee Choi’s fiercely intelligent minds at work, and I’m grateful for the inclusion of Hyesoon’s profound essay “Bird Rider” and Don Mee Choi’s translator’s diary. (New Directions, May 2)

cover of Counterweight by Djuna; bright red with an eyeball hanging in the sky and bats flying in the background

Counterweight by Djuna, translated by Anton Hur

Djuna is a novelist and film critic, widely considered to be one of South Korea’s most important science fiction writers. They have also published their books anonymously for more than 20 years. This is their first novel to be translated into English — and they couldn’t be in better hands than with acclaimed translator Anton Hur — and when I heard that Djuna had conceived of this work as a “low-budget science fiction film” I was immediately intrigued. Within the first few pages, I knew I was already deeply enmeshed in something special. This novel is dizzying and cinematic with corporate politics, family dynamics, an elevator into space, neuro-implant “worms,” an island nation’s fight against a colonial/capitalist takeover, and so much more. (Pantheon, July 11)

At Night He Lifts Weights by Kang Young-sook cover

At Night He Lifts Weights: Stories by Kang Young-sook, translated by Janet Hong

Kang Young-sook is an award-winning author of many novels and short story collections and currently teaches creative writing at Korea National University of Arts. This short story collection is her first to be translated into English, by none other than the brilliant Janet Hong. I’m a great admirer of Hong’s translations of the short stories of Ha Seong-Nan and numerous graphic novels by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, Yeong-Shin Ma, and Ancco, among others. Perceptive and subversive, the stories in At Night He Lifts Weights vary in tone and genre, but each is singularly captivating, swirling around themes of loss — ecological destruction, loneliness, and death. Each has a subtle illusion of calm that conceals what lies below in the unnerving depths. (Transit Books, September 12)

Cover of The Owl Cries by Hye-Young Pyun

The Owl Cries by Hye-young Pyun, translated by Sora Kim-Russell

In this intense, psychological thriller, park ranger In-su Park decides to search for a missing man in the woods after a series of bizarre incidents, including discovering a mysterious note left on his desk that says, “The owl lives in the forest.” Just like in their Shirley Jackson Award–winning The Hole, Hye-Young Pyun and translator Sora Kim-Russell create a fast-paced and all-consuming story with an unusual narrator. In-su Park searches desperately for the missing man while also discovering more than he’d like in the forest, the people around him, and in himself. A novel of secrets, isolation, and pain, The Owl Cries is another tightly executed feat of writing. (Arcade, October 3)

Looking for even more great recommendations of literature in translation from this season? Check out 10 of the Best New Books In Translation Out Spring 2023.

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The Annotated Nightstand: What Translator Emilie Moorhouse is Reading Now and Next - Literary Hub - Translation

An English translation of the surrealist poet Joyce Mansour’s work has just arrived via City Lights in Emilie Moorhouse’s thoughtful and powerful translation. Born in England in the 1920s to Egyptian-Jewish parents, Mansour grew up in Cairo as a member of Egyptian the upper-class. Her mother died when she was 15, her first husband just three years later. Mansour moved to Paris at 20 and, while there, she was swept up into the second wave surrealist scene—with André Breton as a mentor. She began writing entirely in French, despite being bilingual in Arabic and English. In her translator’s note, Moorhouse explained what provoked her to find a poet like Mansour to translate. At the height of the MeToo movement, Moorhouse realized a particular purpose when finding her next translation project. Moorhouse explains, “I decided I needed to translate the writing of a woman who spoke openly and shamelessly about her desires.” In Mansour, she found a remarkable voice that seemed to terrify many into shunning her outright. For, as Moorhouse explains, Mansour’s “favorite subject matter happened to be two of society’s greatest fears: death and unfettered female desire.” In one poem, titled by its first line “Fièvre ton sexe est un crabe”/“Fever your sex is a crab,” she writes (via Moorhouse):

Déchirent mes doigts de cuir
Arrachent mes pistons

Ma bouche court le long de ta ligne d’horizon
Voyageuse sans peur sur une mer de frénésie

Tear at my leather fingers
Snatch at my pistons

My mouth runs along your horizon
A traveler unafraid on a frenzied sea

This captures the edge-of-your-seat urgency of Mansour. The images are like hairpin turns that never cease. It’s novel, strange, thrilling. Moorhouse complicates the poem further when she explains “the crab often represent[s] the cancer that ended her mother’s life…In Mansour’s work, love and death are inseparable.” In Tamara Faith Berger’s excellent interview with Moorhouse at The Rumpus, Moorhouse explains what, exactly, seemed to drive the lack of notable interest in Mansour’s work in France, despite the fact she published over a dozen powerful poetry collections. “I use the word chauvinistic because I think that certain French literary elite have this very precise idea of what ‘French’ literature is, and what ‘great’ literature is,” says Moorhouse. “[W]omen were allowed to write for children.” I’m so grateful to Moorhouse for her helping bring this remarkable poet’s work to English readers, and help expand our knowledge of women writers throughout the world—helping buck against the historical chauvinism Mansour endured. I know my bookshelf will be better for it. “Her work is defiant; even by today’s standards, it smashes taboos around female expression and desire,” Moorhouse explains. “She is Baudelaire minus the shame.”

Moorhouse tells us about her to-read pile, “I have a background as an environmental activist so I’m very interested in literature that weaves land and environmental themes into the narrative. I also teach literature to students who are often newcomers to Canada and I think for them it’s important to both read stories that echo their own experience and to discover unfamiliar voices, especially local Indigenous ones.”

Cato Fortin, Madioula Kébé-Kamara, & Maude Lafleur (eds.), Il y a des joies dont on ignore l’existence (There are joys we don’t know exist)
The jacket copy for this Quebecois collection states (via Google translation…*cringe* please forgive me): “There are joys whose shimmerings and subtleties we do not know how to recognize, those joys which threaten to bring down what we had believed to be right and true until now. There are joys that cuddle us and slap us with the same hand, joys that only half relieve, but whose unusual beauty gives us the courage to stay a little longer. There are joys that make us breathe sighs of relief. I feel good here. I built a home there. A home is comfort, security, warmth. It is also the fire that inhabits us. The Diverses Syllabes editions were born from this fire. Of this fire and of a storm. From a wave of solidarity, desires to share, learn and laugh. It’s not about coming together to define who we are, but about gathering around a heart, of a core that reflects our many faces. We had to lift the veil on these joys whose existence we do not know, that they finally resonate.”

Éric Chacour, Ce que je sais de toi
Chacour, the child of Egyptian immigrants in Montreal who considered themselves Levantine, Syro-Lebanese, Chawam, or, most inclusively of “the community.” Ce que je sais de toi / What I know of you, Charcour’s first novel, just published this year, follows Tarek, a doctor in Cairo in the 1980s. Tarek’s connection with another person upends the clear path of his life. Chacour explains in an essay, “When I started writing this novel, it seemed obvious to me that one of my characters would be Muslim and the other Christian. Everything had to separate them: social status, family background, religion. My desire was not to oppose them, but rather to put a distance between them from the outset, to make their rapprochement unlikely. In an early version of the story, Tarek was a Coptic, as are the overwhelming majority of the millions of Christians in Egypt. But quickly, the idea that he could be Levantine imposed itself. Perhaps this minority within the minority seemed to me like the right setting for the story of his confinement, and that the decline it had known through the successive departures of its members added to the inner drama he was experiencing.”

Kama La Mackerel, ZOM-FAM
Artist, performer, translator, and writer La Mackerel’s poetry collection “mythologizes a queer/trans narrative of and for their home island, Mauritius.” ZOM-FAM (in Mauritian Kreol meaning literally “man-woman” or “transgender”) was a finalist for the Dayne Ogilvie Prize. The judges wrote, “Kama La Mackerel’s poetry is a sensuous and fiercely political exploration of gender, familial love, and the intergenerational impacts of colonization. Their multilingual, lyrical poems entrance with hypnotic rhythm and tell a story that spans decades and borders. La Mackerel captures the power of connections maintained in spite of the blunt, relentless pain of distance. Wooing the reader with a carefully orchestrated, gentle lapping of words, they then jolt us with earned, splashy staccatos of euphoria.”

Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower
Octavia Butler’s powerful and disturbing novel made serious rounds at the height of the pandemic as she seemed, like an oracle, to predict so much of what we were enduring or succumbing to (ubiquitous racial and class difference defined by violence as well as the fallout of climate change—not to mention a leader with “Make America Great Again” as his tagline). So many people were buying and reading it, in fact, it was a New York Times bestseller—16 years after its original publication. I was able to see an exhibit of Butler’s ephemera several years ago, which included journals and letters, the early covers of her books that bore white figures despite the fact her main characters were Black. One quotation from a journal entry I keep pinned where I can see it. “Our past…teaches most of us that it’s best to expect nothing—so as not to be disappointed when you get nothing,” she writes. “No person who has absorbed that bit of corrosive philosophy needs an oppressor to keep her down.”

Abdellah Taïa, Another Morocco: Selected Stories (tr. Rachael Small)
Taïa left Morocco for France in the 1990s and began to write and make films and also, he had hoped, to live freely as a gay man. Taïa ultimately became the first openly gay man published in Morocco when he came out in 2006, having lived in France for years. I highly recommend listening/reading an interview Taïa gave with David Naimon regarding another book. Rachael Small, the translator of this collection, describes in an interview how she ran to the library after read Taïa had won the Prix de Flore. “[I] picked up the first book I could find, Une mélancolie arabe. I was instantly seduced by the raw, unabashed intimacy of the voice, the brutal beauty of his prose and storytelling, and I immediately started translating,” Small explains. “By that point, I had fallen so deeply for Taïa’s prose that rather than search for a different author to translate, I decided to go through the rest of his catalogue and began reading Mon Maroc, his first book…These very short stories felt much more guarded than the novels, but rich in a different kind of intimacy that was expressed through the intricate detail of daily life. It’s both like listening to a dear uncle tell tales of life in the old country and speaking with a new friend who is testing the waters, trying to decide what he can or can’t reveal to you about himself.”

Iman Mersal, The Threshold (tr. Robyn Creswell)
The Egyptian-Canadian poet Iman Mersal’s new work in translation is selected from her first four books. Creswell describes in an interview the complications of translating Arabic poetry into English. He writes, “English can do wryness, but Arabic verse has musical possibilities that I don’t think contemporary poetry in English can really capture. Because written Arabic is a literary language—it isn’t spoken except in formal situations—it’s possible to be grandly symphonic or virtuosically lyrical in a way that’s hard to imagine in English…With Iman the difficulty for an English translator is different, and I would say more manageable. In a poem about her father, she wonders whether he might have disliked her ‘unmusical poems.’ I don’t think they’re actually unmusical (I don’t think Iman does either), but their rhythms and cadences and sounds have a lot in common with the spoken language.”

Michel Jean, Tiohtià:ke [Montréal]
Jean is an Innu First Nations writer and journalist whose novel Tiohtià:ke [Montréal] contends with the difficult realities of houselessness within First Nations communities in Montreal. As the jacket copy states, “Before the arrival of Europeans, the island of Montreal was Mohwak territory. Tiohtià:ke is the Mohwak name for the island of Montreal. Elie Mestenapeo, a young Innu from the Côte-Nord region of Quebec, killed his abusive father in a fit of rage. He spent 10 years in prison. On his release, banished for life by his community, he headed for Montreal, where he soon joined a new community: that of the homeless Indigenous, the invisible among the invisible. Michel Jean works through this tragic world with grace, using a minimalist style, full of sounds, smells and images and devoid of pathos.”

Michel Jean (ed.), Wapke
Jean edited this collection of short stories by Indigenous writers—the first of its kind to come out of Quebec—with the title “wapke” (“tomorrow” in Atikamekw). The description reads, “Fourteen authors from multiple nations and backgrounds project themselves into the future through fiction, tackling current social, political and environmental themes. Under the direction of Michel Jean, Wapke offers an often striking social commentary in which the hope for change emerges.” Authors include Joséphine Bacon (Innue), Katia Bacon (Innue), Marie-Andrée Gill (Innue), Elisapie Isaac (Inuk), Michel Jean (Innu), Alyssa Jérôme (Innu), Natasha Kanapé Fontaine (Innu), J.D. Kurtness (Innu), Janis Ottawa (Atikamekw), Virginia Pésémapéo Bordeleau (Cree), Isabelle Picard (Wendat), Louis-Karl Picard-Sioui (Wendat), Jean Sioui (Wendat) and Cyndy Wylde (Anicinape and Atikamekw).

Ann-Helén Laestadius, Stolen (tr. Rachel Willson-Broyles)
Laestadius’s novel, an international bestseller, follows nine-year-old Elsa, an Indigenous Sámi girl who witnesses the poaching of a reindeer she was herding. She is threatened to silence by the hunter. The Kirkus Review explains, “Previous reindeer slaughters had gone unpursued by local police since this sort of crime against the Sámi (and their way of life) was considered mere theft. Frustrated by the seeming passivity with which the group accepts the situation, Elsa sets upon her own path as she grows into adulthood: She questions traditional gender roles as well as the failure of local police to apprehend the hunter who is torturing and killing her community’s reindeer…Willson-Broyles’ translation from Swedish is matter-of-fact and incorporates many phrases and words from the Sámi language.”

Joshua Whitehead, Making Love with the Land: Essays
So many exciting books in Moorhouse’s pile, and it ends with a bang. In general, nonfiction books from University of Minnesota Press push the boundaries in ways that are exciting. Whitehead is known for his award-winning novel Johnny Appleseed. Making Love with the Land, according to PW, “examines the relationship between queerness, the body, and language in his intimate first foray into nonfiction. Billy-Ray Belcourt says Making Love with the Land “is defiantly artful. The essays are alert to so much of the beauty and the terror of the world. I imagine they cost a great deal to write. While reading, I was entirely overcome with gratitude. How lucky we all are to witness Whitehead’s kinetic thinking as well to be in pain with him. A truly dazzling feat of heart, analysis, and sentence-making.”

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Translation From Hostage Code to English of X Corp CEO Linda Yaccarino's Company-Wide Memo - Daring Fireball - Translation

Company-wide memo from nominal X Corp CEO Linda Yaccarino, sent this morning:

Hi team,

What a momentous weekend.

Everyone said to me, “Linda, what are you thinking? You don’t want to work for that guy. He’s crazy and impulsive. You’ve got a great job at NBC. You’ve got a great future ahead of you. If you take this job it’ll tank your career and your name will be a punchline.” Did I listen to them?

As I said yesterday, it’s extremely rare, whether it’s in life or in business, that you have the opportunity to make another big impression. That’s what we’re experiencing together, in real time. Take a moment to put it all into perspective.

It’s OK to day-drink. I am.

17 years ago, Twitter made a lasting imprint on the world. The platform changed the speed at which people accessed information. It created a new dynamic for how people communicated, debated, and responded to things happening in the world. Twitter introduced a new way for people, public figures, and brands to build long lasting relationships. In one way or another, everyone here is a driving force in that change. But equally all our users and partners constantly challenged us to dream bigger, to innovate faster, and to fulfill our great potential.

Twitter was a simple concept with profound impact.

With X we will go even further to transform the global town square — and impress the world all over again.

It’s not just you. I have no idea what’s going on either.

Our company uniquely has the drive to make this possible.

Fucking Elon.

Many companies say they want to move fast — but we enjoy moving at the speed of light, and when we do, that’s X.

According to Einstein’s theory of special relativity, as an object approaches the speed of light, the object’s mass becomes infinite and so too does the energy required to move it. But this holds true, in degree, for all objects in motion, and a mind-bending aspect of special relativity is that the faster an object is moving, the more slowly it experiences time. If you were able to move at the speed of light, time wouldn’t pass at all. It would be like being damned for eternity, forever caught in the current moment, while the world moves on for everyone else.

I think about this.

At our core, we have an inventor mindset — constantly learning, testing out new approaches, changing to get it right and ultimately succeeding.

We are hemorrhaging cash and our advertisers are still fleeing.

With X, we serve our entire community of users and customers by working tirelessly to preserve free expression and choice, create limitless interactivity, and create a marketplace that enables the economic success of all its participants.

I used to run all advertising for NBCUniversal. Now I’m running an $8/month multi-level marketing scheme where the only users who’ve signed up are men who own a collection of MAGA hats.

The best news is we’re well underway.

There is no hope.

Everyone should be proud of the pace of innovation over the last nine months — from long form content, to creator monetization, and tremendous advancements in brand safety protections.

Have you seen the ads we’re running these days? Last week we were filling everyone’s timeline with ads for discount boner pill chewing gum, the punchline of which ads is that you’ll bang your lady so hard she’ll need the aid of a walker afterward. That’s a video we promoted to everyone. This week it’s anime for foot fetishists. That’s what we put in everyone’s feed, every three tweets. Or X’s, or whatever we’re now calling them. I used to book hundred-million-dollar Olympic sponsorship deals with companies like Coca-Cola and Proctor & Gamble. (Thank god for Apple.)

Our usage is at an all time high

Our owner is high as a kite.

and we’ll continue to delight our entire community with new experiences in audio, video, messaging, payments, banking — creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities.

Our focus group testing suggests that while interest in trusting this platform — which, let’s face it, is not exactly known for its reliability — for banking, of all things, is, as you’d expect, pretty low overall, it’s surprisingly high amongst people who know who Catturd is.

Please don’t take this moment for granted.

Please quit. Get out. I beg you. Leave while you can put on your resume that you worked for “Twitter”.

You’re writing history, and there’s no limit to our transformation.

As if this rebranding disaster isn’t enough, our infrastructure is crumbling. Facebook took Threads from 0 to 100 million users in under a week, without a hitch, at the same time we imposed comical rate limits on usage. I mean can you even believe that shit? I still can’t. I said to him, “Elon, we are an ad-based business. Our revenue is directly commensurate to usage. This is like running a casino and turning the slot machines off to save on the electricity bill. It makes no sense.” And Elon was like “Bots!”

And everyone, is invited to build X with us.

I think I, saw on a TV show once that a hostage was able, to signal to authorities the need for help without alerting, their captors by placing commas randomly in their sentences.

Elon and I will be working across every team and partner to bring X to the world. That includes keeping our entire community up to date, ensuring that we all have the information we need to move forward.

I found out about this name change when you did, at midnight on Saturday, and I have no idea what that fucker is going to do next or when he’s going to do it. You know this. You know that I know that you know this. But I’m going to persist with the charade that these decisions are being made by a team that I’m a leader of, because to do otherwise would be even more humiliating.

Now, let’s go make that next big impression on the world, together.

Linda

I’m so sorry.

Linda

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Wednesday, July 26, 2023

Western Sydney councillor holds meeting in Mandarin without English translation - Sky News Australia - Translation

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English to Portuguese, Spanish, German, Italian, French Translation

Saturday, July 29, 2023

Book Nook: Nothing lost in this translation of Mai San Judge’s Ardali - The Indian Express - Translation

Friday, July 28, 2023

Here's how to read stories and novels originally written in Esperanto - The Washington Post - Translation

Thursday, July 27, 2023

Yilin Wang on The Poetry of Qiu Jin and the Important Work of Translation - Book Riot - Translation

The Overlooked Poetry of Qiu Jin

Qiu Jin’s Legacy

The Art of Translation

Name the Translator

The Best New Korean Literature In Translation - Book Riot - Translation

Best New Korean Literature in Translation

Walking Practice by Dolki Min, translated by Victoria Caudle

I Went to See My Father by Kyung-Sook Shin, translated by Anton Hur

Greek Lessons by Han Kang, translated by Deborah Smith and Emily Yae Won

Whale by Cheon Myeong-kwan, translated by Chi-Young Kim

Phantom Pain Wings by Kim Hyesoon, translated by Don Mee Choi

Counterweight by Djuna, translated by Anton Hur

At Night He Lifts Weights: Stories by Kang Young-sook, translated by Janet Hong

The Owl Cries by Hye-young Pyun, translated by Sora Kim-Russell

The Annotated Nightstand: What Translator Emilie Moorhouse is Reading Now and Next - Literary Hub - Translation

Translation From Hostage Code to English of X Corp CEO Linda Yaccarino's Company-Wide Memo - Daring Fireball - Translation

Wednesday, July 26, 2023

Western Sydney councillor holds meeting in Mandarin without English translation - Sky News Australia - Translation

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