August 2012
9 posts
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Check out the nifty Translation section of the NEA Blog:
http://artworks.arts.gov/?tag=nea-and-literary-translation
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My Favorite Untranslatable Words
It’s my last day as an Archipelago Books intern and I had a sudden urge to post a long, unnecessary list of my favorite untranslatable words, from the hilariously specific to the heartwarmingly universal. These and more at Better Than English. I’ll miss you Archipelago!
Mbuki-mvuki (Bantu)
To shuck off one’s clothes in order to dance.
Geborgenheit (German)
To feel completely safe;...
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“Say what we may of the inadequacy of translation, yet the work is and will...”
– J. W. Goethe
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“Translation is an impossible necessity.”
– Martha J. Cutter
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“Translators live off the differences between languages, all the while working...”
– Edmond Cary
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“Translation is the paradigm, the exemplar of all writing. It is translation that...”
– Harry Mathews
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“Translation is that which transforms everything so that nothing changes.”
– Günter Grass
“…[T]here is…a simplicity, an openness, and an innocence in his...”
– James Wood on Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle, for The New Yorker
Read it HERE!
July 2012
16 posts
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“The translator is not a necessary evil that interposes himself between the text...”
– Dr. Alicia María Zorrilla
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“Prayer is translation. A man translates himself into a child asking for all...”
– Leonard Cohen
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“Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken...”
– Voltaire
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How one translator proved Virginia Woolf wrong
“Humor is the first gift to perish in a foreign language.” -Virginia Woolf
Anyone who has read David Frick’s translation of Jerzy Pilch’s My First Suicide (Open Letter) knows that with a good translator, translated texts don’t have to lose anything, least of all their ability to make us laugh. This book is straight up hilarious, y’all.
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“God grant me
The serenity to accept
The things I cannot translate,
Courage...”
– Zoltán Pék
“Tell us something we didn’t know
before: how words mean things
we didn’t know...”
– Wyn Cooper, from “Mars Poetica” (via proustitute)
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“Disappointed dreams
our years pass in agony
the newspapers forget
but in our...”
– Miltos Sachtouris in Poems (1945-1971), translated from the Greek by Karen Emmerich
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“To be a successful translator you have to be either a saint or a fool....”
– Alastair Reid
The Millions reviews MY STRUGGLE →
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Post-Undergraduate Literary Translation Studies...
We, the wide-eyed and over-eager interns at Archipelago, are about to enter our senior years of college, and inevitably the question arises: when you’re interested in translation, where do you go from here? We wanted to look at literary translation studies options, but couldn’t manage to find a single comprehensive list on the Internet. So we made one ourselves.
US programs for literary...
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Famous Last Lines, as Told by Online Translators
We all know that the robot takeover is imminent. As a test of our future job security under the cold rule of machine, we here at Archipelago Books decided to test the abilities of our robot counterpart: the online translator. Using the programs, we translated from language to language and eventually back to English. The results, we must say, look promising. HAL 9000, I want a corner office and...
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“A translator is a professional schizophrenic, continuously wandering on the...”
– Zoltán Pék
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“The relationship of the translator to the writer is an erotic relationship...”
– Richard Howard
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Least Appropriate Summer Reads from Archipelago
For those who hate gossip and sex and crime and intrigue and dogs as central characters…
For those who can’t stand page-turning plots and to-the-point sentences…
For those who’d rather appreciate a well-bound hardcover than sop up tipsy spills of pre-noon drinks with their airport paperback-cum-cocktail napkin…
We, the ARCH INTERNS, have compiled a list of...
June 2012
19 posts
50 Shades Of Put It Away: The Worst Book Sex... →
housingworksbookstore:
This article taught me that there is a book called Bad Heir Day.
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Our favorite untranslatable words
Mbuki-mvuki, a word in the Bantu language spoken in the Niger-Congo region of Africa, means “to shuck off one’s clothes in order to dance” or “to shed one’s clothing spontaneously and dance naked in joy.” Word.
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“Beautiful translations are like beautiful women, that is to say, they are not...”
– George Steiner
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“Dread of space and dread of the crowd. At the foundation of both is the fear of...”
– Marina Tsvetaeva, Earthly Signs: Moscow Diaries, 1917-22, trans. Jamey Gambrell (via proustitute)
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“Translating is an intense, profound and provocative activity, at times intimate...”
– George Steiner
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“Translation is the medium through which American readers gain greater access to...”
– Cliff Becker (Late NEA Literature Director), May 16, 2005
He says a lot, for a Norwegian
“If I had known what was coming, I would never have been able to do what I did, because it’s been like hell, really hell,” he said. “But I’m still very glad that I did it.”
Knausgaard, in a fascinating article by Larry Rohter for the New York Times, describes his life after the six-part publication of My Struggle, and its connection with Hitler’s infamousMein Kampf.
Read it here.
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My hero: Yannis Ritsos by David Harsent
“The poet’s extraordinary productivity was achieved in the face of personal tragedy, persistent ill healthy and systematic persecution”
David Harsent, forThe GuardianUK, writes a moving piece on the legacy of Yannis Ritsos.
Read it here.
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May 2012
7 posts
Great review of MY STRUGGLE on Barnes & Noble Review.
Check out the book here.
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Elias Khoury speaks about AS THOUGH SHE WERE SLEEPING on Write On! Radio, KFAI Minneapolis / St. Paul.
We want to marry Milia too!
Joshua Cohen and Martha Cooley discussing Albert Cohen’s BOOK OF MY MOTHER at Community Bookstore, Brooklyn.
Out in time for Mother’s Day!
What a weekend of events!
Thank you to everyone who came out to the PEN World Voices events this weekend. Below are some pictures taken by Erling Maartmann-Moe, a Norwegian tourist who dropped by and snapped some photos.
Karl Ove Knausgaard prepares for the reading at Invisible Dog.
More after the jump:
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Karl Ove Knausgaard at the PEN Literary Safari in the Westbeth Center for the...
