Online Certification with Dalkey Archive

Beginning in January of 2010, Dalkey Archive Press at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign will initiate a new and ambitious certificate program designed to help translators at any point in their early careers, and that will result in the publication of their first book-length translation. This program represents a unique opportunity for young translators to gain invaluable experience as well as produce a translation that will aid them in gaining future work with Dalkey Archive and other publishers.

The program is intended for translators who are at a point in their careers where they are ready to undertake professional translation work but do not know where to go next, and especially for those who need a flexible schedule because of geographical limitations and other commitments.

During the course of the yearlong program, translators will have the opportunity to complete one book-length literary translation to be published by Dalkey Archive Press, with an emphasis on literary fiction; books to be translated will be selected by Dalkey Archive Press in consultation with the translator. Editors at Dalkey Archive Press will be assigned to train applicants via email on a one-to-one basis. Occasional meetings at Dalkey Archive Press’s offices or videoconferences may also be organized.

The program is highly competitive and is intended for promising translators who are at an early point in their careers, but who have already achieved the skill level to undertake professional translation work. Ten students will be selected based on the strength of their application materials, and the relevance of their background to the kind of literature that Dalkey Archive publishes.

Translators interested in applying should send the following materials to onlineapp@dalkeyarchive.com as early as possible: a CV, including employment history; a letter of intent detailing qualifications, knowledge of the historical roots of the literary aesthetic represented in Dalkey Archive book, a list of the applicant's favorite authors and those authors the applicant is most interested in translating, and evidence of a substantial reading background in the applicants’ chosen language(s); and 3 sample translations of fiction from the applicant’s language(s) of specialization.

Samples should consist of the first pages of a published novel or short story only, and should not be from books that have already been translated and published in English. Each sample should be 5 to 10 pages long. Do not include the original-language versions of your samples.

Complete applications, including all abovementioned materials, should be sent via email as a single .pdf file only (no other formats will be read) labeled with the applicant’s name (i.e., lastnamefirstname.pdf). Within this file, application materials should be ordered as follows: CV, letter of intent, 3 samples, 3 letters of recommendation. Letters of intent should not be sent in the body of the email, but should be part of the application file. No substantial information should be included in the body of the email.

Emphasis will be placed on readiness to benefit from this online program rather than on academic experience or degrees. Applicants who have in-depth knowledge of Dalkey Archive’s books and general aesthetic will be given preference. A $5,000 will be required at the time of acceptance. This fee will be partially or fully offset by grants awarded by funding agencies for enrollees who complete a publishable translation.

Admissions announcements will be made within two weeks of receipt of applications. Any questions or requests concerning the application process and program should be sent to Jeremy Davies at davies@dalkeyarchive.com.

"Found in Translation" reading at UMass

The public is invited to attend "Found in Translation," a program of staged readings by the graduate students of Harley Erdman's graduate workshop in theater translation with a discussion led by Jean Graham-Jones (CUNY) on Friday, Dec. 4, at 8 pm.

Jean Graham-Jones is a professor in the graduate program at CUNY, author of Exorcising History: Argentine Theater under Dictatorship, and editor/translator of Reason Obscured: Nine Plays by Ricardo Monti, one of Artentina's greatest living playwrights.

The reading will take place in the Rand Theater, in the UMass Amhert Fine Arts Center, 151 Presidents Drive, Amherst, MA. 01003 (click here for directions). The event is made possible by a Visioning Mini-Grant from the College of Humanities and Fine Arts. A reception will follow. For more information, please contact Penny Remsen at remsen@theater.umass.edu.

Demand for niche translation growing (as is the risk for gaffes)

During a March meeting in Geneva, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton presented a gag gift to her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov. It was a red button with a word written in Russian that State Department translators thought meant "reset." The idea was to remind Russia of America's hopes for resetting the nations' tense relations. But when Lavrov opened the box and peered inside, he told Clinton the word on the button, peregruzka, translated to "overcharge" -- not the message the U.S. wanted to send.

-- the best part of an article in the Los Angeles Times about the growing demand for niche translators with unusually specializaed technical knowledge

Pritchard on Gass on Rilke

William H. Gass, again in Reading Rilke, writes, “translating is reading, reading of the best, the most essential, kind,” and that a translator must find the poem that the poet “would have written had he been English.” Held against these standards, Snow’s translations in The Poetry of Rilke are largely a success. He transforms the originals into a fluent English — mostly eschewing archaism and ornamentation.

[from the new issue of The Critical Flame]

McWhorter on the world's dwindling stock of languages

... the going idea among linguists and anthropologists is that we must keep as many languages alive as possible, and that the death of each one is another step on a treadmill toward humankind’s cultural oblivion. This accounted for the melancholy tone, for example, of the obituaries for the Eyak language of southern Alaska last year when its last speaker died.

That death did mean, to be sure, that no one will again use the word demexch, which refers to a soft spot in the ice where it is good to fish. Never again will we hear the word 'ał for an evergreen branch, a word whose final sound is a whistling past the sides of the tongue that sounds like wind passing through just such a branch. And behind this small death is a larger context. Linguistic death is proceeding more rapidly even than species attrition. According to one estimate, a hundred years from now the 6,000 languages in use today will likely dwindle to 600. The question, though, is whether this is a problem.

On behalf of the editors of Pusteblume, with whom I've long discussed this issue, I can answer McWhorter's question affirmatively: the loss of languages is a problem. Whether this loss amounts to a problem depends upon the values of the person considering the loss. Some are untroubled by the destruction of texts, the attrition of cultural practices, and the homogenization that accompanies globalization. Even as we welcome improvements in, say, economic equality, we mourn the loss of what we consider to be irreplaceable. If languages were ready substitutes for one another -- if they were in practice replaceable -- the work of the translator would not be quite as subtle, demanding, and improbable as it is.

"Preservation [...] is what we do to berries in jam jars and salmon in cans. [...] Books and recordings can preserve languages, but only people and communities can keep them alive.” -- Nora Marks Dauenhauer and Richard Dauenhauer, Tlingit oral historians

Luisa Maffi writes, "it is a human right for language communities to keep or reclaim their languages, and that this right is in no way dependent on the evidence from these research questions." I'd say that the concept of human rights entails human responsibilities. If we want to live in a world of diverse traditions and experiences, where human rights are respected, we have to accept the responsibility to support the exercise of those rights. With regard to language, our responsibility is to show value for and provide support to the living use of endangered languages. In other words -- conversation, cultural engagement, classroom use and academic study, publication and translation. Every word in a language, and every grammatical tricks employed by that language to use that word, represents the solution to some problem of expression. We are all better off having access to more solutions, rather than fewer; and as such solutions are only the product of many generations of language evolution, we can most efficiently maintain the stock of linguistic solutions by preserving the living communities in which those languages are spoken.

In The Tree of Meaning, Robert Bringhurst reflects often on the value of languages and oral literature, and on the significance of their loss. In an essay from the collection, ""Oral Literature and the Unity of the Humanities", Bringhurst writes:

Every normal, healthy human being, once past the stage of infancy, speaks and contributes to a languages. And every normal, healthy human language -- no exceptions -- speaks and nourishes a literature. It is harder, most of the time, for human beings to restrain themselves from telling stories than it is for them to keep from shedding tears. Perhaps that is why human beings keep on going, even when anyone can see they ought to stop and weep."

This insight captures something of my feeling of the value lost when a language is lost.

Read more:

• Attrition of Native American languages
• MIT Indigenous Language Initiative
• Index of Linguistic Diversity at TerraLingua organization for biocultural diversity
• Michael Walsh, "Will Indigenous Languages Survive?"
• Alaska Native Language Center

Contest Announcement for Translators of Japanese

First Annual Jeremy Ingalls Poetry in Translation Award. A prize of $1,000.00 and publication of a single poem in Japanese and English by a woman, awarded to a woman translator. Judge: Sawako Nakayasu. Deadline: NOVEMBER 15, 2009. Winner will be announced in early 2010. For more information, please visit the website of Kore Press.

Two Lines seeks submissions

Information provided by Two Lines below:

DEADLINE: NOVEMBER 25, 2009


two lines World Writing in Translation publishes original translations into English of writing from any literary genre. Translations from any language will be considered, and works from outside Europe are especially sought.

· Previously unpublished work only.

· The translator cannot also be the author of the piece unless it is a co-translation.

· We generally publish one to four poems from a single submission, but we will read up to a maximum of ten pages.

· The average prose submission is about 2500 words, but we do publish shorter and longer pieces (1000–4000 words). Short stories are preferable to novel excerpts. However, novel excerpts will be considered if thoughtfully excerpted to stand as independent pieces (to the extent possible).

· In order to be considered, submissions must include a brief introduction (400–500 words) with information about the original author, the background of the piece, and unique issues that the translation process presented.

· All submissions must include a copy of the original text.



Translators are expected to acquire copyright permission for all work not in the public domain.



For electronic submissions, please save your documents as RTF (Rich Text Format) and send to submissions@ catranslation. org. For hard copy submissions, please mail to the postal address below. If you would like your materials returned, please send an appropriately- sized SASE.



two lines
35 Stillman Street, Suite 201
San Francisco, CA 94107

We highly encourage everyone who submits to two lines to read a copy before submitting. Translators will be notified of editorial decisions by February 2010. We offer a complimentary copy of two lines as well as a nominal honorarium to translators whose work is chosen for publication.