Translation Goals

I always think it’s a great idea to set translation goals for the year ahead.

As usual, I want to improve as a translator, and this means working on different texts, working with authors/editors, improving my linguistic knowledge, and going to conferences. That’s quite a lot to do, of course, so I’ll see what I can accomplish during 2014.

Another major goal is to continue read translations and to think about the work of translators.

What about you?

Translation and Food

I’ve long been fascinated by food and food writing/translation, as I’ve posted about here before.

So you can imagine how excited I was to read about this upcoming conference on food and translation. Some of you might be interested in attending and/or submitting a paper.

Call for Papers

You might be interested in this call for papers or in simply attending the conference: Crime in Translation Park Building, University of Portsmouth Saturday 9 November 2013 Plenary speakers: Dr Karen Seago (City University, London) Dr Yvonne Fowler (Aston University) A selection of papers will be published in Jostrans, issue 22, July 2014 The translation of crime fiction is all around us, from the current wave of Scandinavian and European crime novels, film and television to recent screen adaptations of classic crime fiction such as Sherlock Holmes. But it’s not only in fiction that translation meets crime. The police and the courts rely heavily on public service interpreters and translators. Translation itself is criminalised in various ways, e.g. in relation to copyright infringement, legal proceedings against translators of ‘problematic’ texts and various forms of piracy. The 2013 Portsmouth Translation Conference aims to bring the different facets of translation and crime together in an interdisciplinary one-day conference, allowing exchange of ideas between translators, criminologists, interpreters, literary scholars and translation researchers. We invite proposals for 20-minute papers and 60-minute practical workshops on any area connecting crime and translation or interpreting. We welcome approaches from practitioners as well as researchers. Topics may include (but are not limited to): The challenges of translating crime fiction Subtitling and dubbing thrillers Crime, translation and the law ‘True crime’ in translation The role of translation and interpreting in criminal justice Translation by and for criminals Translation as a crime Translation and forensic linguistics The representation of translation and interpreting in crime fiction and film Enquiries and/or 300-word abstracts should be sent to translation@port.ac.uk by 15 June 2013

Translators and (Their) Authors

As you read this, I’m on my way to Tel Aviv to attend the Translators and (Their) Authors conference at Tel Aviv University. I’ll be speaking about Swedish author Gösta Knutsson, who also translated work by Lewis Carroll.

Besides the fact that the conference itself sounded interesting, I was also keen to go because I’ve only been to Jerusalem, and I loved it and wanted a chance to see more of Israel.

I hope some of you will be at the conference and, if so, I look forward to seeing you there.

Nordic Translation Conference (Again!)

It’s your last chance to registerfor the Nordic Translation Conference. It takes place 4-6 April and we’re almost out of spaces, which is in a way quite exciting (I’m glad there’s so much interest!).

The keynote speakers are scholars Andrew Chesterman, Riitta Oittinen, Ástráður Eysteinsson, and Anna Mauranen. The Nordic authors who will read from their work at the conference are Yrsa Sigurdardóttir, Ninni Holmqvist, Morten Søndergaard,  Kristina Carlson, and Gaute Heivoll.

If you work with the Nordic languages, do come along!

Nordic Translation Conference

The second Nordic Translation Conference is going to take place in just a couple of months, on 4-6 April 2013 at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England (yes, the institution where I teach).

I’m really excited about the conference. This is the only international conference dedicated to the Nordic languages and literatures. The keynote speakers are scholars Andrew Chesterman, Riitta Oittinen, Ástráður Eysteinsson, and Anna Mauranen. The Nordic authors who will read from their work at the conference are Yrsa Sigurdardóttir, Ninni Holmqvist, Morten Søndergaard,  Kristina Carlson, and Gaute Heivoll. Besides all that, the conference includes workshops, lectures, exhibits, and musical performances.

I hope some of you will attend. To do so, follow the link to register on the conference website. See you in April.

Retranslating Children’s Literature

As you read this, I’m at a conference in Rouen, France, on retranslating children’s literature. I was intrigued by this conference because although there has now been more research on translating works for children, we aren’t discussing retranslating that much yet, and clearly how books are translated will change over time.

In the paper I’ll be giving, I will talk about how translations of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from English to Swedish were quite different between the 1940s and 1970s from the way they were before and after that period. So I think of those decades are a rather more conservative, protectionist time, and I’ll explain why.

If anyone else has researched retranslations, what have you found and why do you think that is? It’s a fascinating topic and I look forward to learning more about it.

Call for Papers

Reading the Target: Translation as Translation University of East Anglia School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing School of Language and Communication Studies 23rd and 24th March 2013 The fifth Postgraduate Translation Symposium at the University of East Anglia aims to examine translation as a form of literature in its own right: since Lawrence Venuti’s influential work on the translator’s visibility (1995), much progress has been made in the academic study of translation in this regard, but many critics and publishers remain reluctant to acknowledge the translator’s involvement in the creation of a new text or the status of these texts as anything more than a duplicate in another language. The symposium aims to explore the following questions: what are the effects of cultural contexts, literary systems and philosophical and ideological cues on the appreciation of translated literature? What are the power structures and hierarchies that translated literature must negotiate in order to achieve acceptance? What are the benefits to a culture that acknowledges the presence of translations within its literary canon? We invite submissions for presentations by postgraduate research students and academics across a wide range of disciplines. Fields of particular interest include, but are not limited to, the following: - Performance and adaptations - Cross-genre translation - The diversity of overt forms of translation - Concepts of authorship in translation - The translation of poetry - The role of translation in religious texts - Pseudo-translation - Ethical and political considerations in translation - The visibility of translation in modern forms of text and media (Subtitling, Films, Games) Please send proposals of no more than 250 words (with bibliographical references and a short biographical note) for 20-minute papers to translationsymposium@uea.ac.uk by Friday 7 December 2012. Please address all correspondence to: Lina Fisher translationsymposium@uea.ac.uk University of East Anglia School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing Norwich NR4 7TJ The Organising Committee: Nozomi Abe, Moira Eagling, Lina Fisher, James Hadley

Literary Translation Summer School

Every year, the British Centre for Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia (where I work) hosts the Literary Translation Summer School. Here are the details about this year’s event.

22 – 27 July 2012
University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

Bringing together writers and translators for a week of literary translation
workshops, panel discussions, lectures and readings.

Workshops translating from Dutch, French, German, Japanese,
Norwegian and Spanish into English

Writers–in-residence: Daniel Gascón, Nino Haratischwili, Furukawa Hideo,
Martin Page, Gustaaf Peek, Kjersti Skomsvold

Workshop leaders: David Colmer, Kari Dickson, Katy Derbyshire, Michael Emmerich,
Adriana Hunter, Anne McLean

Further information from www.bclt.org.uk email bclt@uea.ac.uk

British Centre for Literary Translation, School of Literature, Drama and Creative
Writing, University of East Anglia, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK
Tel: 01603 592785; Fax: 01603 592737

Nordic Translation Conference

In 2008, I organized the first ever Nordic Translation Conference. I’m working together with Dr. Gudrun Rawoens on organizing the second one now. Here is the first call for papers.

Nordic Translation Conference 2013

Call for Papers

The second Nordic Translation Conference will take place on 4, 5, and 6 April 2013 at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich, England.

This quinquennial event is solely dedicated to the particular challenges and pleasures of translating between and among the Nordic countries, which are often closely related culturally, if not always linguistically. It is open to academics, students, translators, publishers, and others who work with the Nordic languages. The first such conference took place in London at the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies in 2008 and it resulted in the book Northern Lights: Translation in the Nordic Countries (Peter Lang, 2009).

The keynote speakers in 2013 will include Andrew Chesterman, Riitta Oittinen, and Anna Mauranen. As in 2008, there will be workshops, talks, panels, and dual-language readings. Both academics and practising translators are encouraged to attend and present at the conference.

The conference will look at literary and non-literary translation of all kinds, including interpreting and subtitling, both between various Nordic languages and also between English and the Nordic languages. Nordic here includes Danish, Faroese, Finnish, Greenlandic, Icelandic, Norwegian, any of the Sámi dialects, and Swedish. Topics can include, but are not limited to, specific linguistic issues involved in translation/interpretation between two or more languages, analysis of particular texts/genres, professional issues, translating texts by or about minority groups, the translator/interpreter’s role, and the effect of cultural similarities/differences among Nordic countries.

In addition, the conference will include several workshops on relevant topics, such as working with specific languages or kinds of texts, using computer tools, finding reference materials, and so on. Those interested in running workshops are also invited to submit proposals.

Please send proposals (250-400 words) for workshops by 1 June 2012 and for conference papers by 15 August 2012 to B.J. Epstein and Gudrun Rawoens by e-mail at conference@nordictranslation.net or by regular mail to B.J. Epstein at the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, University of East Anglia, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, England, NR4 7TJ. Along with the proposal, please include a brief biographical note.

Conference details are available at http://www.nordictranslation.net. For ease of communication, English should be the primary conference language.

Translation Course at Arvon

A few years back, I went on a wonderful writing course at Lumb Bank, one of the Arvon foundation’s centers. It was a beautiful location and I really enjoyed my week there. Now, for the first time, Arvon is running a translation course, with Michael Henry Heim, Anthea Bell, and Sasha Dugdale. It should be fantastic and I hope some of you can attend it.

FIT Conference Redux

Last month, I wrote about how I was looking forward to the FIT translation conference in San Francisco. Unfortunately, I must report back that it was probably the worst conference I ever attended. Were any of you there? What did you think?

Here are a few of the reasons why I was disappointed:

--The organization of the conference was very poor. For example, no lunch was provided. Although many attendees had breakfast at their own hotels, the organizers chose to provide a continental breakfast at the conference. Presumably the cost of this is why they did not offer lunch. Instead, we had one and a half hours to find a reasonably priced lunch in the neighborhood, which created a stressful lunch time when we could have been networking and discussing. Considering the cost of the conference ($500), lunch really should have been included. I have never attended a full-day conference that did not include lunch.

--Another organizational issue is in regard to technology. I gave a presentation and was shocked to learn that laptops were not provided. When I complained, I was told that this was because it was “too expensive” to rent laptops and that it was already costly enough for the organizers to rent the screens. Again, given the high price of this conference, I was stunned that such basic amenities were not provided. I was told to borrow a laptop from someone in the audience. Obviously, this is not appropriate, especially given that many attendees brought their computers with the aim of taking notes on them.

--This was also the first conference I attended where there were no chairs for the sessions. Chairs are essential parts of talks, I believe, because they ensure that everything goes smoothly. They introduce the speakers, help run question sessions, and ensure that the audience does not get out of control. I was in talks where speakers never bothered to say who they were or where they were from, where audience members simply shouted out questions or comments in the middle of the presentations, and where questions were posed rudely or in the form of a boastful monologue. All of this could have been avoided by the simple organizational tool of having chairs.

--Similarly, there were a number of talks that had no question sessions at all, including the keynote lectures. We attend conferences to learn and part of the learning process is dialogue. It is very unusual to attend a talk that does not include time for questions. This, too, was an organizational issue that could have been rectified.

--The keynotes were distinctly lacking in import and relevance. I got the impression that the speakers had been invited for reasons other than their expertise in translation, because they did not have much to say about translation. It is unacceptable to attend a major international conference and to feel that attending keynote talks was actually a waste of time.

--Quite a few of the sessions were cancelled, sometimes five or ten minutes after they were due to start. While it is not the fault of the organizers that people were unable or unwilling to attend the conference, it is rather suspect, and it shows poor organization that the audience was not informed of the cancellation until it was too late to slip into another session.

--There were scarcely any exhibitions and there were no poster presentations. Along with all the other lacks, this contributed to an overall feeling of a weak conference with little to offer attendees.

--When I asked for an evaluation form, so I could offer some of this feedback immediately after the conference, I was told that the organizers had “decided [they] didn’t want any feedback”. Again, this is a rather odd decision, and suggests a deep sense of apathy in regard to the conference and no concern about the attendees.

--I emailed some feedback to the organizers and got a response that suggested that they had scarcely read my email and didn’t really care what anyone thought anyway. My impression was that they had gotten their money and that was all that mattered.

So while I really enjoyed the FIT congress in Shanghai in 2008, I was deeply disappointed in the FIT congress in San Francisco in 2011. Given the lack of concern on the part of the organizers, this has made me decide that I won’t attend another FIT event again, and that’s pretty sad, since FIT is supposed to be an umbrella organization that really looks out for translators and promotes our translation work.

Incidentally, I’m not the only one to feel this way – many people I spoke to during the conference expressed these disappointments and a few said they were going to write letters to the organizers too. It’s just too bad that the organizers show no remorse or concern.

FIT Conference

Once again, it’s time for the triennial FIT conference and this year it’s in San Francisco. I’m really looking forward to it, because I enjoyed the last congress, in Shanghai in 2008. I especially enjoyed the mixture of people who attended – academics and full-time translators, people from agencies, students, politicians, etc. I found that stimulating.

I’ll be giving a talk on translating thrillers (and of course I’ll discuss Stieg Larsson’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy) – detective fiction is quite different from my previous work on children’s literature, and I’ve been having fun doing the research.

Perhaps I’ll see some of BNW’s readers there!

Selma Lagerlöf 2011: Text, Translation, Film

Here’s another literary event that might interest you, this one on the translation of Nobel Prize-winning author Selma Lagerlöf.

London Book Fair

It’s that time again – time for the London Book Fair. While it’s mostly a trade event, and not the book paradise bibliophiles might imagine, it is certainly worth going to. For the second year in a room, there will be a translation center, with talks on translation offered every day. Besides those events, I also like the cooking demonstrations (as I am an avid cook myself) and the display of cookbooks from all over the world, plus I enjoy meeting fellow translators as well as editors from publishing companies who publish translated literature. Hope to see some of you there!

The Entrepreneurial Linguist

The translating twins, Dagmar and Judy Jenner, who also run a great blog, have recently published a book, The Entrepreneurial Linguist.

The premise of their book is that translators need to run their business as though it were, well, a business. Too many of us translators view ourselves as freelancers rather than businesspeople and we act accordingly, so the Jenner twins provide a lot of helpful advice and practical suggestions for how we can act more business-like. They discuss what it means to have a business and how said business can work best for both the owner and the customers.

They start the book with the basics, such as what you should buy for your office and how you can save money on necessary goods. Then they use case studies, as is done in business school, to look at what a customer wants, what the translator and business-owner wants, and how a compromise can be reached. They also look at a variety of related topics, such as how a translator can make use of blogging and Facebook, how to negotiate and decide prices, marketing and media coverage, how to find and work with customers, why conferences and other types of professional development are useful, how to keep a good work-life balance, how to avoid isolation as a translator, why volunteer work is good to do, how to work towards and reach goals, and much more.

This is not a book about the linguistic aspects of translation or about translation theory or other such issues. Instead, The Entrepreneurial Linguist is a very detailed and thorough book about how to “run a business like a business,” even if your business is just a small one. It’s a perfect book for people just starting out in the field, but it also has useful information for more experienced translators. The Jenner twins have hit a very important point: translators must be professional, if we want to be successful and to have other people respect our profession, and this book gives tips on how to accomplish that.

SUISS Edwin Morgan Translation Fellowship

I was sent the following information on a fellowship:

The Scottish Arts Council offers again this year the Edwin Morgan
Translation Fellowship for a professional literary translator of
British literature (preferably Scottish) into their native language.
The fellowship is worth £3525 as it covers the course and
accommodation fee to attend the course "Text and Context: British and
Irish Literature from 1900 to the Present' at the Scottish
Universities' International Summer School at Edinburgh University.
Attached further information.

We would appreciate it if you could make your members aware of this
opportunity by advertising it on your website and maybe forwarding
the information to relevant members. The closing date for the
Fellowship is 12th April and the Text and Context application form
can be downloaded from our website.

Your help is much appreciated.

Scottish Universities' International Summer School
Text and Context:
British and Irish Literature from 1900 to the Present

SUISS Edwin Morgan Translation Fellowship
(supported by the Scottish Arts Council)

During his long and prestigious career, Edwin Morgan has revolutionized contemporary Scottish literature, not least with his six decades of work in translation. Perhaps most celebrated is his translation of the poetry of Mayakovsky into Scots, but he has also worked extensively from, amongst others, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese and Hungarian poems and plays. Edwin Morgan has been a friend of SUISS for many years, giving readings and meeting students, and his work forms an important and popular part of our literature course.

Thanks to a generous donation from the Scottish Arts Council, SUISS is able to offer a free place on the 2010 six-week ‘Text and Context: British and Irish Literature from 1900 to the Present’ course. The Fellowship will be payable in Edinburgh and will cover the costs of all tuition, accommodation, most meals, the social and cultural programme, and includes full use of the facilities of the library of Edinburgh University and the National Library of Scotland. Please note that the Fellowship does not include travel expenses or spending money.

Applications for this Fellowship are invited from professional translators with an interest in twentieth-century and contemporary Scottish writing. The closing date for the award is 12th April 2010. Applicants should indicate on the application form that they would like to be considered for the Edwin Morgan Translation Fellowship, and include a letter explaining their reasons for applying, together with any details of past and/or prospective publications. We also require one of your referees to support the fellowship application, which is normally from the candidate’s publisher.

Further information can be found on the SUISS website, which also contains the facility to download an application form. A brochure, application form and credit information can also be obtained from:

The Administrator
Scottish Universities’ Telephone: 0044 131-650 4369
International Summer School Fax: 0044 131-662 0275
21 Buccleuch Place E-mail: SUISS@ed.ac.uk
EDINBURGH
EH8 9LN
Scotland (UK) http://www.summer-school.hss.ed.ac.uk/suiss

Call for Papers

There is a conference here at the University of East Anglia in the spring and you can still submit a paper proposal. Here is the information:

DISORDERING THE DISCIPLINES: TRANSLATION AND INTERDISCIPLINARITY

Graduate Symposium in Translation Studies Friday 26th and Saturday 27th March 2010
Elizabeth Fry Building
University of East Anglia

This postgraduate symposium, the fourth in a biannual series hosted by
the School of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of
East Anglia, aims to advance the state of knowledge in the academic
study of translation. Its objective is to facilitate the exchange of
expertise in the theory and practice of translation within and without
the discipline based on the thesis that translation is a fluid concept
that crosses and penetrates into several disciplines.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: Dr. Karin Littau, University of Essex; Dr. Thomas
Greaves, School of Philosophy, University of East Anglia; Dr. George
Szirtes, School of Literature and Creative Writing, University of East
Anglia; Professor Jean Boase-Beier, School of Literature and
Creative Writing, University of East Anglia.

Extended deadline for receipt of abstracts: Friday 20th November 2009

Please send to: translation.interdisciplinarity@uea.ac.uk

Or by post to: Translation and Interdisciplinarity Symposium, School
of Literature and Creative Writing, Faculty of Arts and Humanities,
University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, England.

Call for Papers

The following information is from Swansea University, where I just finished my Ph.D. I hope to see some of you at this conference!

Call for Papers



The Author-Translator in the European Literary Tradition

Swansea University, 28 June – 1 July 2010



Confirmed keynote speakers include:

Susan Bassnett, David Constantine, Lawrence Venuti



The recent ‘creative turn’ in translation studies has challenged notions of translation as a derivative and uncreative activity which is inferior to ‘original’ writing. Commentators have drawn attention to the creative processes involved in the translation of texts, and suggested a rethinking of translation as a form of creative writing. Hence there is growing critical and theoretical interest in translations undertaken by literary authors.

This conference focuses on acts of translation by creative writers. Literary scholarship has tended to overlook this aspect of an author’s output, yet since the time of Cicero, authors across Europe have been engaged not only in composing their own works but in rendering texts from one language into another. Indeed, many of Europe’s greatest writers have devoted time to translation – from Chaucer to Heaney, from Diderot and Goethe to Seferis and Pasternak – and have produced some remarkable texts. Others (Beckett, Joyce, Nabokov) have translated their own work from one language into another. As attentive readers and skilful word­smiths, writers may be particularly well equipped to meet the creative demands of literary translation; many trans­lations of poetry are, after all, undertaken by poets themselves. Moreover, translation can have a major impact on an author’s own writing and on the development of native literary traditions.

The conference seeks to reassess the importance of translation for European writers – both well-known and less familiar – from antiquity to the present day. It will explore why authors translate, what they translate, and how they translate, as well as the links between an author’s translation work and his or her own writing. It will bring together scholars in English studies and modern languages, classics and medieval studies, comparative literature and translation studies. Possible topics include:



· individual author-translators: motivations, career trajectories, comparative thematics and stylistics

· the author-translator in context: literary societies, movements, national traditions

· the problematic creativity of the author-translator

· self-reflective pronouncements and manifestos

· the author-translator as critic of others’ translations

· self-translation: strengths and weaknesses

· authors, adaptations, re-translation and relay translation

· the reception and influence of the work of author-translators

· theoretical interfaces



Proposals are invited for individual papers (max. 20 minutes) or panels (of 3 speakers). The conference language is English. It is anticipated that selected papers from the conference will be published. Please send a 250-word abstract by 30 September 2009 to the organisers, Hilary Brown and Duncan Large (author-translator@swan.ac.uk):



Author-Translator Conference

Department of Modern Languages

Swansea University

GB-Swansea SA2 8PP

http://www.author-translator.net/

Translation Book Launch

In case you are near Swansea (in southern Wales) and are free on Monday, feel free to come to this event. There will be food, wine, and, best of all, translated books and books on translation! See the following information:

You are warmly invited to a Swansea University translation studies book launch and showcase, with light refreshments, to be hosted by Waterstone’s and the School of Arts on campus next Monday (15 June) from 1.00.

Last year a very successful Nordic Translation Conference was organised by PhD student BJ Epstein at the Institute for Germanic and Romance Studies in London. BJ has now edited the proceedings and they have been published by Peter Lang with the title:

Northern Lights: Translation in the Nordic Countries
see http://www.peterlang.com/Index.cfm?vLang=E&vSiteID=1&vSiteName=BookDetail.cfm&VID=11849)

The book launch is to celebrate the publication, as well as the recent award of BJ's doctorate.

It will also be an opportunity to come and see some of the wealth of work in translation studies published in recent years by Swansea academics, mostly from the School of Arts. Literary translations from a range of languages and research publications in different areas of this fast-evolving field will be on display.