- Open Letter Books
- Three Percent Problem
- Translated Book Award
- Translation Studies
- Translation Database
Following up on earlier announcements, Ed Nawotka writes about Kalima’s ambitious program in today’s International Herald Tribune.
Part of the United Arab Emirates’ Authority for Culture and Heritage, Kalima is a nonprofit enterprise with the goal of translating 100 titles a year into Arabic and distributing them throughout the Middle East. Which sounds like it will be quite a challenge:
Karim Nagy, Kalima’s chief executive, acknowledges the hurdles. The Arabic-speaking world comprises about 300 million people in more than 20 countries. Censorship laws vary, and often there is no strong bookselling community or distribution channel.
“First, we will worry about getting the books translated,” he said. “Then we will work to optimize their distribution.”
To put this program in perspective, Nawokta cites some interesting figures:
About 10,000 books have been translated into Arabic in the past millennium, according to a 2003 study by the United Nations Development Program. The demand has been small, partly owing to the historical tendency to focus most reading on religious texts and classical poetry. About 300 new translations appear each year, so Kalima’s planned 100 titles represents a substantial addition.
Along with Europa Editions new enterprise Sharq/Gharb, the Arab world is about to get in an influx of international literature.
Kalima is still in the process of acquiring rights to its first 100 books, but the current list includes Milton’s Paradise Regained, Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Collected Stories, Alan Greenspan’s The Age of Turbulence, and The Kite Runner.
The International Herald Tribune has a feature today on the production of Russian playwright Ivan Viripaev’s “Genesis No. 2” as directed by Bulgarian Galin Stoev, which sounds like a fascinating play.
Two men and a woman perform several roles against a backdrop of mirrors that reflect their outbursts and transformations. The setting is a psychiatric institute where a professor of mathematics named Antonina Velikanova has been interned, diagnosed with acute schizophrenia. She believes she is Lot’s wife, and converses with God – or her psychoanalyst.
The play opens on the narration of a letter Velikanova purportedly has written to Viripaev asking him to stage her script. Her name even appears next to his in the credits as co-author, and a character named Viripaev also appears on stage.
Too bad there’s no reference to touring America . . .
To keep on with my dislike of the term “Summer Reading,” and how it’s frequently used only in reference to aesthetically-suspect titles, I want to share these two articles from the International Herald Tribune as examples of what “summer reading” can be.
First off is a review of Less than One by Joseph Brodsky, followed by a review of Anna Akhmatova’s poetry.
Both are listed under the rubric “Summer Reading.” So take that Salon!
Reviewed by Jeremy Osner
“The small stone plaza was floating in the midday heat. The Christ of Elqui, kneeling on the ground, his gaze thrown back on high, the part in his hair dark under the Atacaman sun—he felt himself falling into an ecstasy.. . .
Reviewed by Brendan Riley
This slender, uncanny volume—the second, best-selling collection of stories by Russian author Ludmilla Petrushevskaya to appear in the U.S.—has already received considerable, well-deserved praise from many critics and high profile publications. Its seventeen short tales, averaging ten pages each, are. . .
Reviewed by Rachael Daum
The Urdu word basti refers to any space, intimate to worldly, and is often translated as “common place” or “a gathering place.” This book by Intizar Husain, who is widely regarded as one of the most important living Pakistani writers,. . .
Reviewed by Vincent Francone
The Whispering Muse, one of three books by Icelandic writer Sjón just published in North America, is nothing if not inventive. Stories within stories, shifting narration, leaps in time, and characters who transform from men to birds and back again—you’ve. . .
Reviewed by Camila Santos
Luis Negrón’s debut collection Mundo Cruel is a journey through Puerto Rico’s gay world. Published in 2010, the book is already in its fifth Spanish edition. Here in the U.S., the collection has been published by Seven Stories Press and. . .
Reviewed by Grant Barber
“South”
To have watched from one of your patios
the ancient stars
from the bank of shadow to have watched
the scattered lights
my ignorance has learned no names for
nor their places in constellations
to have heard the ring of. . .
Reviewed by Larissa Kyzer
When Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason first published LoveStar, his darkly comic parable of corporate power and media influence run amok, the world was in a very different place. (This was back before both Facebook and Twitter, if you can. . .
