May 9th, 2012

An Editor’s Welcome: Laura Brown on Translation at fwriction : review

It gives me great delight to announce fwriction : review’s call for submissions for our new Translation section. I hope everyone read and enjoyed this week’s issue, an excerpt from Erwin Uhrmann’s novel, The War Beyond, translated by Shelley Frisch, as it marks our launch into publishing works of translation. 

World Literature is a style of writing that I have long admired. I remember in college reading a deteriorating copy of Asylum Arts’ Echoes of Baudelaire, with the original rhymed French printed on the left and its English translation on the right. I remember trying to decode “L’Invitation au voyage’s” precise meaning, my eyes darting from left to right to left again. 

In addition to publishing the English translation, to supplement the reading experience I will be asking each translator three questions pertinent both to the text and the art of translation, called the Translator Trio. Shelley Frisch, fwriction : review’s first translator, kick-starts this section, providing a unique insight into her process of translating The War Beyond. With the Trio, we want to call attention to the work and art and presence of the translator, an imperative in making these texts understood and known.

It also seems appropriate to announce our launch of translated writing on the heels of the PEN World Voices festival last week and my interview with the Chair of the PEN Translation Committee, Susan Bernofsky. It is with the same energy I found at PEN, in introducing foreign authors and advocating for their writing, that we welcome World Literature to our fwriction : review home.

Please review our new guidelines on translations before submitting. Any questions you may have, feel free to email me directly. We ask you to please spread this good news, and to please keep on reading.

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Laura Brown Translator Trio translation Shelley Frisch Susan Bernofsky lit submit
May 9th, 2012
Zoom “The graves,” I asked Nenad, “why are so many dates of death left blank?” I kneeled down at a grave to read the inscription on the stone. Once again, Nenad looked around frantically. The date of birth was engraved in red. “They’re still alive,” Nenad said, and flicked around in his pockets. “The date of death is entered when people die. When a family member dies, the birthdates of the spouse, the father, or the mother are engraved on the stone.” There were wedding photos, men who had most likely died during the war in the 1990s. And the relationship to a deceased person was inscribed. “He is already waiting for her,” I sneered. Nenad gave me a long hard look. Eventually he smiled. “What happens if someone gets remarried?” “Marriage is sacred in Serbia,” Nenad said. “It’s like the Mafia.” “During the war, tradition was important for many people.” The stone in front of me was shiny black. All these wars set in motion, all across the world. “Not for everyone.” Erwin Uhrmann, from The War Beyond, translated from the German by Shelley Frisch

“The graves,” I asked Nenad, “why are so many dates of death left blank?”

I kneeled down at a grave to read the inscription on the stone. Once again, Nenad looked around frantically. The date of birth was engraved in red.

“They’re still alive,” Nenad said, and flicked around in his pockets. “The date of death is entered when people die. When a family member dies, the birthdates of the spouse, the father, or the mother are engraved on the stone.”

There were wedding photos, men who had most likely died during the war in the 1990s. And the relationship to a deceased person was inscribed.

“He is already waiting for her,” I sneered.

Nenad gave me a long hard look. Eventually he smiled.

“What happens if someone gets remarried?”

“Marriage is sacred in Serbia,” Nenad said.

“It’s like the Mafia.”

“During the war, tradition was important for many people.”

The stone in front of me was shiny black. All these wars set in motion, all across the world.

“Not for everyone.”


Erwin Uhrmann, from The War Beyond, translated from the German by Shelley Frisch

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Erwin Uhrmann Shelley Frisch Fiction Month translation One More Time Wednesday lit prose
May 8th, 2012
My great-aunt was murdered by a nurse, at some point in the 1980s where there was a hole, a glittering hole brimming with neon light, tragedy, and glamour. And there, in a house with dark drapes, emerald-colored wall fabrics, and sheepskins on smooth parquet floors, is the place where I grew up. Racks of books, where I slid along the top shelf and flew by, pulling them with me, and they came tumbling down upon me. Somber music, smoky glass surfaces, and beige and brown gave me a sense of comfort and shielded me from the fear outside. Everything was fear. Fear and non-fear were black on black.
Erwin Uhrmann, from The War Beyond (translated by Shelley Frisch)
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Erwin Uhrmann Shelley Frisch lit translation fwriction : review fiction Fiction Month
May 7th, 2012
Translation is a highly addictive, and deeply satisfying, pursuit. It allows you to explore the linguistic dimensions of a vast array of subjects, and to throw yourself headlong into fields of inquiry you might never have engaged with otherwise, all the while tugging at the limits of your language.
Shelley Frisch, in discussion with Associate Editor Laura Brown for the first Translator Trio, regarding translation and her work on Erwin Uhrmann’s The War Beyond
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translation lit Shelley Frisch Laura Brown writing Erwin Uhrmann fwriction : review Translator Trio
May 4th, 2012
Some love for fwriction : review's new issue and other translation rockery

A big thanks to love german books for the shoutout about our new issue (Erwin Uhrmann’s novel excerpt), our first Translator Trio (with Shelley Frisch), and Laura Brown’s Writer Squared interview with Susan Bernofsky. You rock!

There’s an online literary journal I wasn’t aware of, which goes by the tongue-twisting name of fwriction : review. And now they have a piece of oppressive fiction set in Belgrade by the Austrian writer Erwin Uhrmann, translated by Shelley Frisch and taken from his novel Der lange Nachkrieg. Which would be lovely enough as it is, having come out of the recent Festival Neue Literatur in New York. But what makes me really very happy is that they also have two interviews on their accompanying blog…

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fwriction : review lit love german books Laura Brown Shelley Frisch Erwin Uhrmann translation Translator Trio Fiction Month
May 4th, 2012

Read the first issue of fwriction : review’s Fiction Month—Erwin Uhrmann’s novel excerpt from The War Beyond—on your mobile device!

In addition, check out our first Translator Trio, with Associate Editor Laura Brown in conversation with translator Shelley Frisch regarding her translation of Uhrmann’s writing.

Erwin Uhrmann lit fwriction : review mobile Fiction Month translation Shelley Frisch Laura Brown Translator Trio
May 3rd, 2012

Translator Trio: Shelley Frisch

For each translated work published by the journal, Associate Editor Laura Brown will ask three questions of the translator, in order to illuminate the joys garnered and bruises earned during the literary process of translation. First up, translator Shelley Frisch, whose translation from the German of Erwin Uhrmann's novel excerpt from 'The War Beyond' is currently live at the journal.
LB: What inspired you to become a translator?
SF: I came to translation by way of my academic studies of writers who fled Hitler’s Germany, and the role translation came to play in their assimilation to a new homeland. My first published translation was a piece in Simon Wiesenthal’s now-classic volume called 'The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness.' Simon Wiesenthal had solicited responses from intellectuals around the world as to what they would have done if they had found themselves in his situation during the Hitler years. The situation was this: while imprisoned in a concentration camp, Wiesenthal was confronted by a dying SS soldier who sought to confess to—and obtain absolution from—a Jew. Wiesenthal opted instead for silence. He later wondered: “Was my silence at the bedside of the dying Nazi right or wrong? This is a profound moral question… ask yourself the crucial question: ‘What would I have done?’” The 46 respondents in this collection included Cynthia Ozick, Dith Pran, the Dalai Lama, Primo Levi, and many others from around the world, including many contributors who wrote in German. Their responses ran the gamut.
After 'The Sunflower,' book projects started coming my way. Books about historical and literary figures who straddle cultures have become my stock in trade. My translations of their stories attempt to preserve the in-between quality of their identities as reflected in their linguistic expression.
Translation is a highly addictive, and deeply satisfying, pursuit. It allows you to explore the linguistic dimensions of a vast array of subjects, and to throw yourself headlong into fields of inquiry you might never have engaged with otherwise, all the while tugging at the limits of your language.
LB: How did you come to work on Erwin’s novel?
SF: I was contacted by the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York, which annually partners with other cultural institutions to sponsor the “Neue Literatur Festival” to present young writers from Germany, Switzerland, and Austria to American readers and publishers, and was asked whether I would agree to translate an excerpt of Erwin Uhrmann’s novel 'Der lange Nachkrieg' ('The War Beyond'). I leafed through the novel, and was intrigued by the protagonist’s pull to his real and imagined past, and the author’s inspired use of language. The excerpt was a joy to translate.
LB: Was there a particular section or sentence in Erwin’s piece that was particularly tricky to translate?
SF: Every sentence of every text resists translation, but the arguably trickiest part of any text is its title. Often, the translator’s working title is transformed once the publisher’s publicity department has weighed in with “marketable” alternatives to the working title. In the case of Erwin’s novel, the choice was left to me, but I contacted him so we could work it through together, and a delightful set of brainstorming sessions ensued over the balance between the psychological and military/political dimensions of the war implied by the book’s German title. At the eleventh hour, we had our “eureka moment,” a title, and a lot of fun in the process.
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Erwin Uhrmann Laura Brown Shelley Frisch fwriction : review lit translation Translator Trio
May 3rd, 2012

Erwin Uhrmann’s song selection—to accompany his translated fiction piece, an excerpt from the novel The War Beyond—for fwriction : review’s Waffle-Rocking Playlist

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Erwin Urhmann lit playlist Spotify fiction Fiction Month translation fwriction : review
April 24th, 2012
…that’s how I learn to write and to translate: by reading.
Susan Bernofsky, as interviewed by Laura Brown, for our Writer Squared series
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Susan Bernofsky lit translation Laura Brown Writer Squared fwriction : review reading writing
April 23rd, 2012

Uncharted Sentences: An Interview with Susan Bernofsky

Interviewed by Laura Brown

I first came to know and love Susan Bernofsky through her translation of Jenny Erpenbeck’s Visitation, a breathtaking novel spanning across generations of characters from the Weimar Republic to the fall of the Berlin Wall, anchored together by a piece of land just outside of Berlin. I went on to read her translation of Robert Walser’s The Tanners, Berlin Stories, and Erpenbeck’s The Old Child and Other Stories. Tawada is next on my list.

It’s a bit of an understatement to say I was starstruck when I met Bernofsky in person at this year’s Festival Neue Literatur, which she organized. The festival invited six German-speaking authors to New York, providing a chance to showcase their writing—through readings and in-depth discussions—not yet published in the US. What came across most poignantly when speaking with Bernofsky, both then and now, is her earnestness, her enthusiasm  for translation and world literature. Her love for and dedication to translation pulls readers in, holds them, makes them care for the work as deeply as Bernofsky.

In addition to her various translation projects, a biography of Walser she’s working on, and her own novel, Bernofsky teaches translation at Queens College CUNY. Perhaps, though, what is most striking is the amount of time she carves out to post on her own blog, Translationista. It’s a web portal of translation advocacy, a conduit for translators, writers, and readers to connect to the importance and beauty of world literature. Here, she shares with aspiring translators various grants available, translation programs to participate in, and gives glimpses into her own translating process. Lovers of world literature should certainly grab a Kaffee and set up shop outside Bernofsky’s virtual window.

She generously agreed to speak with me about her fascinating and meticulous translation process, how she became engaged with the German language in particular, and her predictions for who the next big translated authors could and should be.

Read More

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interview Writer Squared Susan Bernofsky Laura Brown lit fwriction : review translation
March 2nd, 2012
Are we finally getting the hang of foreign fiction?

Sam Jordison over at the Guardian Books Blog echoes our sentiments about the importance and power of translated works:

One thing I am wondering, however, is if we in the English-speaking world are becoming better at understanding the value of good translated literature. In that earlier article, I noted that “although around 60% of all translations are taken from the English language, English readers take only around 2-3% of their books from other languages”. I haven’t been able to find contradictory figures, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the imbalance is becoming less marked. Stieg Larsson continues to sell by the bucketload; Roberto Bolaño is ever more revered; new imprints such as Gallic Books, focusing exclusively on translation, are thriving. In the meantime, the exemplary New York Review Books has brought out so many translations of such high quality that a serious reader could take in nothing else for years and still feel entirely satisfied.

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Guardian Sam Jordison lit translation writing reading New York Review of Books New Directions
February 17th, 2012
FSG: Michael Cunningham on Translation

A wonderful piece on translation from Michael Cunningham.

fsgbooks:

“As the author of Las Horas, Die Stunden and De Uren — ostensibly the Spanish, German and Dutch translations of my book The Hours, but actually unique works in their own right — I’ve come to understand that all literature is a product of translation…

(Source: The New York Times)

Reblogged from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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translation lit Michael Cunningham FSG
February 13th, 2012
Translation makes me look at how a poem is put together in a different way, without the personal investment of the poem I’m writing myself, but equally closely technically.

Marilyn Hacker

(via asymptotejournal)

Reblogged from Asymptote
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translation lit Marilyn Hacker Asymptote
February 6th, 2012
Meanwhile you have rolled yourself a cigarette, say, and inserted it with great care between your well-practiced lips. With such an apparatus in your mouth, it is impossible to feel utterly without cheer, even if your soul happens to be torn in twain by sufferings. But is this the case? Most certainly not. Just wanted to give a quick description of the magic that a smoking white object of this sort is capable of working, year in and year out, on the human psyche. And what next?

“In the Electric Tram” by Robert Walser at the NYRblog, an excerpt from the recently released Berlin Stories, translated by Susan Bernofsky

Find NYRB Classics on Tumblr here.

(Bonus: Bernofsky also translated Walser’s novel The Tanners,    published by New Directions.)

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Susan Bernofsky Robert Walser lit translation New York Review of Books
January 30th, 2012
But they would sometimes stop before the complete disclosure of a thought and would then try to imagine a phrase that could express it anyway. She did not confess her passion for another man; he did not say that he had forgotten her.
Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert, translated by Lydia Davis
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Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert Lydia Davis lit reading translation
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