Vanina Marsot’s novel about an accidental translator living in Paris is about language — French and American English. But how do you translate a novel about translation?
The Digital Book in Practice: Valentine’s 14 Languages, Multiple Formats, Wireless Delivery
By Alex de Campi BROOKLYN: Imagine a graphic novel series, released every month simultaneously in 14 languages and across all major wireless platforms (Kindle, e-Reader, Android phone, iPhone), hopefully soon via the Web and, eventually, in collected print editions. Every month, you pay 99 cents and get 70-75 screens of action, adventure and suspense. In its first fortnight after launch, in …
German Book Office Fiction Rights List – Fall 2009
This season’s list includes a bestselling titles from independent and large publishers in Germany, as well as a German Book Prize winner. Download the rights list PDF for further information about each title, including synopses and rights contacts. Twice a year, the German Book Office New York (GBO) presents its Rights Lists of adult fiction titles to North American publishers, …
Tell Us Translators, Are You Underpaid?
By Edward Nawotka Our lead article today discusses how a translator sued a German publishing group for paying her 15 Euros per page to translate two novels from English into German, a sum she felt was too low. As a consequence, the German Federal Court of Justice ruled that translators are now entitled to claim a percentage of the proceeds …
Translators say, “Show Me the Monnaie“
By Siobhan O’Leary BERLIN: Thousands of translators across Europe and the rest of the world spend their days and nights scanning their dictionaries and thesauruses for le mot juste, making their living working on everything from novels to air conditioner repair manuals. And while translators, particularly of literary texts, are ultimately tasked with the responsibility of matching the precision and …
Memories of the Future by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
Memories of the Future by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, translated from the Russian by Joanne Turnbull Reviewed by Gwendolyn Dawson This collection of seven loosely interconnected short stories, by turns whimsical and menacing, examines Soviet Moscow in the 1920s. In these stories Krzhizhanovsky primarily focuses on the lives of displaced intellectuals — those who, after World War I and the Russian Revolution …
Should All Nobel Prize Winners Be Translated?
By Edward Nawotka If the Nobel Prize is the most prestigious literary prize in the world, one that virtually guarantees a degree of literary celebrity throughout the author’s lifetime, doesn’t it go without saying that all the authors works should be translated, at the very least, into English? As discussed here before, English is for many editors and publishers, the …
The “Lost” Books of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
By Daniel Kalder When Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died at aged 89 in August 2008, his reputation had been in flux for a long time. Even so, while most obituaries acknowledged the power and significance of The Gulag Archipelago and his novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, he was nevertheless dogged to the grave by accusations of anti-Semitism, reactionary …
Which Chinese Books Do You Want Translated?
By Edward Nawotka Today’s lead article discusses the launch of the Peony Literary Agency in Hong Kong and Beijing. The firm already represents a number of bestselling Chinese writers that have yet to attract a Western publisher, most notably, Han Han (he was deemed the sixth richest writer in China), but has yet to be translated. Another is the novel …
Is the Cliche of the Culturally Insulated American a Myth?
By Edward Nawotka Today’s lead article by Emily Williams looks at the question of why so few foreign writers make it into print in the US. It’s by know become well known that approximately 3% of books published in the US are translations (and I would guess that number would be significantly smaller as soon as you factor in self-published …