I recall that as member of the PEN's TRANSLATION COMMITTEE the eye-opener what a the dreadful fusspots translators can be especially as a congregation. Fellow publisher Helen Wolf and I looking at each other, despair setting in, when during the third meeting to finalize the committee's statement of purpose they could not agree on the frigging commatization! See below my comments on text that are allegedly prize or support worthy. x michael r.
On Thu, Jul 28, 2016 at 12:16 PM, PEN Literary Awards <awards@pen.org>wrote:
Over $50,000 disbursed among 14 projects
Announcing PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant Winners
PEN America is delighted to announce the recipients of the 2016 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants. The Translation Fund, now celebrating its thirteenth year, received a large number of applications this year—171 total—spanning a wide array of languages of origin, genres, and eras. From this vast field of applicants, the Fund’s Advisory Board—Esther Allen, Peter Blackstock, Sara Khalili, Tynan Kogane, Allison Markin Powell, Antonio Romani, Chip Rossetti, and Alex Zucker—has selected fourteen projects, spanning 9 different languages, including Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian, Chinese, Czech, Hindi, Yiddish and more.Each project will receive a grant of $3,670 to assist in their completion. More information on each of the fourteen grantees and brief excerpts of their translations can be found below. Longer excerpts of their grant-winning projects can be found in our 2016 PEN/Heim Translation Series.
Gabriel Amor for his translation of Juana I by Ana Azourmanian. "What I need is a mouth," begins this poem cycle, voiced by the woman who held the title of Queen of Castile from 1504 to 1555. This work, by an Argentine poet, attorney, and legal scholar, seeks justice, not only for its imprisoned narrator, known as "La Loca" and ruled insane as a matter of political expedience, but for the millions of victims of the genocidal empire she putatively reigned over. (Available for publication)
What I need is a mouth.
I need a mouth the enamel of teeth your saliva.
Blood stops flowing to your lips.
I kiss the air, the locks of hair, the Virgin Mary.
I run ropes through the gates of your body. I pull on a
rope to open your pupils and let in the light.
She is mad.
They murmur among themselves.
I clean you. Licking muscle joined to bone joined to skin.
I want what I want what everyone calls god for me
a mouth.
NOTE ME CUP OF TEA
, FORCED
Ellen Cassedy for her strong translation of On the Landing: Selected Stories by Yenta Mash, a vivid and often humorous portrayal of Jewish and non-Jewish life in three very different 20th-century societies: Bessarabia (Moldova), the Soviet Union, and Israel. Cassedy’s is the first Yiddish project to receive support from the PEN/Heim Translation Fund. (Available for publication)Outside it was pitch black. The streetlights had been turned off in advance. All was still as a grave. Not a creature was about. Only the wagon, waiting in front of the house. The chief secured their door with a padlock, put the key in his pocket, and signaled to the peasant driver to get moving. When they reached the bridge, silhouettes of other wagons began to emerge from the darkness, all moving in the same direction. Apparently they were not the only ones.
THE ABOVE IS THE TYPICAL KIND OF CLICHE RIDDEN, SYNTACICALLY TOO, LYRUICAL KIND OF STUFF THAT COUNTS FOR GOOD WRITINGF!
A BUNCH OF TRUISMS DRESSED UP
Sharon Dolin for her translation of the award-winning Book of Minutes by Gemma Gorga, one of the most celebrated contemporary poets writing in Catalan. Dolin, with her exquisite and elegant translation, introduces to us this captivating collection of sixty prose poems that, in her words, enthrall with the enigmatic, oneiric beauty of the miniature. (Available for publication)[Small, hollow, metal sphere]"Small, hollow, metal sphere with a little ball inside that causes it to resonate at the slightest movement." Like any other book, the dictionary is also written in the first person singular. Each page about me, every word written, thinking of me—a definition for the indefinite, order for the disorder. I understood it while reading the entry for jingle-bell, and the entire universe was resonating inside me like a little ball, as if I, too, were a metal sphere. Bright and hollow.
IF THIS I THE BEST THAT CATOLONIA IS CAOPABLE OFF LET THAT TINKLE BELL SHATTER AT ONCE, THE SOONER THE SCHOONER
Kaiama L. Glover for her translation of Hadriana in All My Dreams by René Depestre, a prizewinning work of social satire. Written while the author was in exile and inspired by childhood memories of the village where he grew up, this classic of the Haitian literary tradition enchants the reader with the marvelous reality of Vodou culture, retelling the story of a beautiful young French girl who is transformed into a zombie on her wedding day. (Forthcoming from Akashic Books)I died on the night of the most beautiful day of my life: I died on the night of my marriage in the church of Saint Philippe and Saint Jacques. Everyone thought I had been struck down by the sacramental Yes that burst out of me. They claimed I was swept away by the fire of my consent, overcome by the depth of its power and truth – that I was done in by my own bridal passion. Truth be told, my false death had begun half an hour before I cried out in the church.
Anita Gopalan for her translation of Simsim by Geet Chaturvedi. First published in 2008, this lyrical, award-winning novella was recognized for its groundbreaking contribution to contemporary Hindi fiction. Focused on four central characters and a decaying library sitting on prime Mumbai real estate, Simsim narrates the clash between two Indias—one old and traditional, and the other driven by consumerism and corporate greed. (Available for publication)When softcopies could be created and kept in just a few DVDs, why let books occupy so much space? I wondered. During the old man’s absence, did these books move out of their places? Did they still wear their bindings and book covers, or wriggle out of them and like house sparrows flap and shake dust and termites off their bodies? Did they also dance to the tune of mourning? To the beats of despair? To the combined rhythm of insult and neglect?
Amanda Lee Koe for her translation of Ten Years of Marriage by Su Qing, seen as the ‘sovereign’ of the sorely overlooked movement of "Missy Writers" in mid-century Chinese literary modernism. The novel mixes autobiography and fiction, tracing the rites of passage of a young woman from marriage to motherhood to unhappy domestic life; its portrayal of female sexuality and commentary on the restrictive social conventions of the era made it a runaway bestseller when it was published in the 1940s. (Available for publication)Of course Mother assumed I was a virgin. She insisted I ride the flower sedan, that I was not to miss out on a prerogative so cherished. I thought that riding a flower sedan to the YMCA, where we were to be wed, was outlandish. But it was an awkward subject to bring up, for Mother would then be sure to jump to the conclusion that I had a stain upon my conscience and feared repercussions from the sedan deity. So it was that all went as per their wishes.
NOW WHAT IS DIFFICULT TO TRNANSLATE ABOUT THE AVOCE AND CERTAIN OTHER SELECTIONS, WHERE'S THE FIGGING CHALLENGE??
