{"id":281296,"date":"2011-01-03T19:30:00","date_gmt":"2011-01-03T19:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2011\/01\/03\/jan-2011-words-without-borders\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T16:28:22","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T16:28:22","slug":"jan-2011-words-without-borders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2011\/01\/03\/jan-2011-words-without-borders\/","title":{"rendered":"Jan 2011 Words Without Borders"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/wordswithoutborders.org\/\">January 2011 issue of <em>Words Without Borders<\/em><\/a> is now available, and has a number of really interesting pieces. This issue&#8217;s theme is &#8220;The Work Force,&#8221; which is elaborated on in the <a href=\"http:\/\/wordswithoutborders.org\/current-issue\/\">little intro to the issue:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Whether loathed or loved, work provides both livelihood and identity; and in times of economic depression and shrinking labor markets, jobs assume even greater importance, determining both personal and political stability. Whether reinventing themselves in a new economy or sticking it out in an old one, the characters here demonstrate the variety of the international work force. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Here&#8217;s a list of the pieces that most caught my eye:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>An <a href=\"http:\/\/wordswithoutborders.org\/article\/from-daewoo\/\">excerpt from Francois Bon&#8217;s <em>Daewoo<\/em><\/a> about the closing of a Daewoo plant.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The blue building was empty, the name of the factory had been changed, and tough shit for the men and women who had been tossed out\u2014&#8220;report to the occupational reclassification department,&#8221; which wouldn&#8217;t reclassify many people. (I&#8217;m writing in March 2004: this reclassification task, which began fifteen months ago, was finished three months ago and still no statistics are available.)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Layoffs continue, and if we&#8217;re talking about businesses\u2014their holy name, &#8220;business&#8220;\u2014 that employ less than fifty people, the layoffs are not even accounted for. At Fameck, the blue building is still there, looking sharp with its white gate, while the condition of cars parked in town attest to everyone else&#8217;s general health: not so great. But the serious cracks running across the surface of the old world today do not readily reveal the reasons that make them apparent.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>(Translated from the French by Alison Dundy and by Emmanuelle Ertel)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/wordswithoutborders.org\/article\/six-months-on-minimum-wage\/\">Six Months on Minimum Wage<\/a> by Andr\u00e9s Felipe Solano, who <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/index.php?id=2998\">was featured in our <em>Granta<\/em> series.<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The hundred people who work at the Tutto Colore clothing factory have hardly noticed me. I could have been an actor, but here I\u2019m invisible, like an extra. I\u2019d like to think that I\u2019m a spy with a good cover but the truth is that I\u2019m a guy who works in a warehouse; and I have been for a month, for ten hours per day. In the course of these four weeks at work I have repeated a handful of phrases that seldom vary: \u201cYes, Sir. No, Sir. I\u2019ll do it right now.\u201d I\u2019ve learned to move around the second floor, where I\u2019m stationed, with the agility of a sailfish.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Every day I warehouse garments on metal shelves that look like the skeleton of a space shuttle. I also take inventory of T-shirts and sweatsuits on a long table like the ones in high-school cafeterias and I take orders from my boss\u2014a neurotic man who won\u2019t let me and my coworkers listen to music\u2014with Benedictine humility. On the other floors in the factory, people knit their brows less. They relax, listening to rancheras, merengues, ballads. We work without a sound track. If we could mumble along to any song, whatever it would be, I\u2019m certain of two things: 1. The men I work with would stop obsessively discussing how to keep their women happy and 2. I wouldn\u2019t keep picking my life apart as if it were a Rubik\u2019s cube. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>(Translated from the Spanish by Samantha Schnee)    <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/wordswithoutborders.org\/article\/a-world-of-editing\/\">A World of Editing<\/a> by Harvill Secker editor Rebecca Carter<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The recent announcement of Shakespeare and Company\u2019s \u201cParis Literary Prize,\u201d to be awarded to the best novella by an unpublished writer, set me thinking about my inspiration to go into publishing: Shakespeare and Company\u2019s founder Sylvia Beach. (Like many teenagers with literary aspirations, I spent an intense few months working for the bookshop\u2019s current owner, George Whitman.) Beach\u2019s Paris bookshop and lending library was more than just a space where writers could meet and find inspiration; it became a publishing house as well when Sylvia stepped into the breach to produce the first edition of James Joyce\u2019s <em>Ulysses.<\/em> Sadly, without a mother in Princeton to whom I could cable \u201cOpening bookshop in Paris. Please send money,\u201d I was forced to take a more conventional route into publishing: I got a job as an editorial assistant at Chatto &amp; Windus, an imprint of Random House UK. And given that I was unexcitingly conventional, it was initially hard to see how I could inspire writers to want to work with me. I couldn\u2019t give them an exotic bookshop to hang out in, or\u2014at that point\u2014sign up their novels and trumpet them to influential friends in the media. The only thing of value I had to offer, I decided, was my willingness to read their books closely and carefully, and to make suggestions about how those books might be improved. Thus began my attempt to teach myself to be a good editor.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>An excerpt from <a href=\"http:\/\/wordswithoutborders.org\/article\/from-passage-of-tears\/\">Passage of Tears,<\/a> the new novel by Abdourahman A. Waberi. His first novel was on the <span class=\"caps\">BTBA<\/span> fiction longlist last year.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Notebook # 1. Monday, October 2.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>I\u2019ve already been back three days. I returned to Djibouti for professional reasons, not to feast at the table of nostalgia or reopen old wounds. I\u2019m twenty-nine, and I\u2019ve just signed a contract with a North American company; my remuneration will be substantial. I must hand in the results of my investigation, which cannot fail to satisfy its gargantuan appetite: a complete file, with notes, maps, sketches, and snapshots, to be delivered to the Denver office <span class=\"caps\">ASAP<\/span>. I have just under a week to wrap up the whole thing. I will be paid in Canadian dollars transferred to my account, based in Montreal\u2014like me. After that, I am no longer covered by the company. It will be at my own expense. At my own risk, their legal counsel Ariel Klein repeated to me, frowning with his one long eyebrow, as bushy as Frida Kahlo\u2019s. He wished me good luck, turned on his heel and walked away. I headed to the airport with my little trapper\u2019s suitcase.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>So here I am on assignment in the land of my birth, the land that would not or could not keep me. I have no talent for sadness, I admit. I don\u2019t like good-byes or returns; I hate all emotional demonstrations. The past interests me less than the future and my time is very precious. It has the color of a greenback. In the world I come from, time doesn\u2019t stretch out before you into the mist. Time is money. And money makes the world go round. Money is the stock market, with its flows of pixels, algorithms, figures, commodities, manufactured goods, rating indexes, ideas, sounds, images or simulation models that pop up on screens the world over. It is the life force of the universe, it\u2019s about killing the competition and grabbing the coveted market.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>(Translated from the French by David and Nicole Ball)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>And finally, Quim Monzo&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/wordswithoutborders.org\/article\/landscape-with-strikers\/\">Landscape with Strikers.<\/a> Monzo&#8217;s <em>Gasoline<\/em> came out last spring, and we&#8217;ll be publishing <em>Guadalajara<\/em> this summer, with <em>One Thousand Morons<\/em> to follow.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote>\n<p>At nine a.m. the few people standing around on the subway platform are watching the news on the screens provided by the Barcelona Channel. The trains comply scrupulously with the minimum-service laws. They are running half-empty and many seats are unoccupied, which would be unthinkable at this time of day any other day, when occupancy approaches that of sardines in a can.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>In front of the Goya Theater, at the top of Joaqu\u00edn Costa, there are fewer whores than usual. Perhaps in keeping with the minimum-service notice. The overwhelming majority of shops are closed: from supermarkets to cosmetics stores, including bakeries and auto-repair shops. On Sep\u00falveda a charcuterie uses the old ploy of keeping the metal gates half-open, so that if a client shows up they can serve him, but if a picketer shows up they appear to be closed. In contrast, the local bar is open, which even the strikers are grateful for. \u201cYou\u2019re very brave,\u201d one of them says to the owner of the establishment, as he drinks his beer. \u201cIt\u2019s not about bravery. If we don\u2019t work, we don\u2019t eat.\u201d On the sidewalks lie piles of uncollected garbage in enormous black bags, some of them split open. A beggar pisses on one of them, and when he\u2019s finished he lies back down on his piece of cardboard.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p>(Translated from the Catalan by Mary Ann Newman)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>As always, it&#8217;s worth checking out the whole issue . . . including the so-so review of <em>Zone.<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"ad_banner\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/publishingperspectives.com\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/images\/378.jpg\"  \/><\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The January 2011 issue of Words Without Borders is now available, and has a number of really interesting pieces. This issue&#8217;s theme is &#8220;The Work Force,&#8221; which is elaborated on in the little intro to the issue: Whether loathed or loved, work provides both livelihood and identity; and in times of economic depression and shrinking [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[20006,37166,35556,20046,37176,37156,29636,20036,3056,37186,1646,36996,146],"class_list":["post-281296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-abdourahman-waberi","tag-alison-dundy","tag-andres-felipe-solano","tag-david-ball","tag-emmanuelle-ertel","tag-francois-bon","tag-mary-ann-newman","tag-nicole-ball","tag-quim-monzo","tag-rebecca-carter","tag-review","tag-samantha-schnee","tag-words-without-borders"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281296"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":321496,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281296\/revisions\/321496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}