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And now here’s the second half of Friday’s events. Remember, you can read the whole ALTA preview by clicking here.
Friday, October 5th
3:15 – 4:30 pm
Humor & Speculative Fiction
What are some of the challenges specific to translating humor in speculative fiction? Panelists will discuss examples from the works of Russian satirist Mikhail Bulgakov, French novelist Antoine Volodine, Haitian American short story author Ibi Zoboi, and French writer and illustrator Guillaume Bianco.
Sara Armengot: Moderator
Iván Salinas: “Irony and Alternate Worlds in the Post-Exotic Work of Antoine Volodine”
Edward Gauvin: “Billy Fog and the Pleasures of Doggerel”
Lori Nolasco: “The Loogaroo Laughed in Spite of Herself: Translating Ibi Zoboi’s Survival Epic The Fire in Your Sky into French and Spanish”
Lenka Pánková: “And the Canadians Didn’t Laugh: Culturally Conditioned Humor in Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita in Translation”
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Problems & Approaches in Translating Contemporary Polish Poetry
This panel explores problems particular to translating contemporary Polish and American poetry into English and Polish respectively. Topics will include interrogating the relative ignorance of the Polish language among translators now working in the U.S. and the UK; and the reciprocal influence between modern and contemporary Polish and Anglo-American poetry from the Soviet era and the New York School. A range of perspectives will be offered on these topics. Two panelists are native speakers of Polish who work in the U.S.; two are Americans with some knowledge of Polish; and the fifth is a Polish poet and scholar of American and Polish poetry.
Marit MacArthur: “Why (or Why Not) Collaborative Translation?”
Piotr Gwiazda: “Why (or Why Not) Collaborative Translation?”
Kacper Bartczak: “The New York School in Poland: Pragmatic Matters of Influence”
Piotr Florczyk: “Reading Polish Poetry in America”
William Martin: “On the Use and Abuse of Polish Poetry for America”
And remember, you can download the entire schedule here.
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. . .
Reviewed by Tiffany Nichols
When starting Hi, This Is Conchita and Other Stories, Santiago Roncagliolo’s second work to be translated into English, I was expecting Roncagliolo to explore the line between evil and religion that was front and center in Red April. Admittedly, I. . .
Reviewed by Josh Billings
Christa Wolf’s newly-translated City of Angels is a novel of atonement, and in this way the work of art that it resembles most to me is not another book, but the 2003 Sophia Coppola film Lost in Translation. Like that. . .
Reviewed by Grant Barber
French author—philosopher, poet, novelist—de Roblès writes something approaching the Great (Latin) American Novel, about Brazilian characters, one of whom is steeped in the life of the seventeenth century polymath (but almost always erroneous) Jesuit Athanasius Kircher. Eleazard von Wogau, a. . .
Reviewed by Brendan Riley
A rich, beautifully written, consistently surprising satire, Yan Lianke’s Lenin’s Kisses boasts an elaborate, engrossing plot with disarming twists and compelling characters both challenged and challenging. It leads the reader on a strange pilgrimage—often melancholy but certainly rewarding—through a China. . .
Reviewed by Emily Davis
Maybe I’ve been watching too much Doctor Who lately, and I’m therefore liable to see everything through science-fiction-colored glasses. But when the pages of The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira refer to “the totality of the present and of eternity”. . .
Three Percent is supported in part by the New York State Council on the Arts.
