NTM Premiere! SHAKESPEARE: HOMECOMING—Hunter College Students Translating Shakespeare back into English

Posted on September 19, 2022 by admin

Today, we’re delighted to showcase an unusual translation project proposed to us by the poet, translator, and educator, Basil Lvoff, who challenged his graduate students at Hunter College to translate back into English the famous Sonnet 87 by William Shakespeare. The result is an extremely interesting translation and linguistic experiment that we’re proud to present as a premiere for NTM. The translated versions are included alongside an insightful essay that outlines the parameters of the project, as well as commentary on each student’s translation. Many thanks to Basil Lvoff and his students for allowing us to publish their excellent work.

And join us on September 22 at 6:30-8 PM for an in-person event at Hunter College, West building, room 1337, featuring the alumni of Fall 2021 Russian-English Literary Translation course, hosted by Basil Lvoff!. You’ll hear the experimental translations of William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 87 back into the English language. There will be a discussion open to the public. More details here.

We’d love to hear what you think! Find us on twitter @TranslateMonth, share using #TranslationMonth, join our mailing list, submit a translation month event, or like our Facebook page. We hope you’ll join us and celebrate your favorite translations in September and beyond.

—Claudia Serea and Loren Kleinman

Click here to read SHAKESPEARE: HOMECOMING
Hunter College Students Translating Shakespeare back into English

Don’t Miss the Gaudy Boy Reading with the Poetry Book Prize Finalists!

Posted on September 16, 2022 by admin

Three More Days to the Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize Finalists’ Reading! You’re invited to hear Krishan Mistry, Miguel Barretto Garcia, Kenneth Constance Loe, Jim Pascual Agustin, and Marco Yan read from their exciting manuscripts. The reading will take place this upcoming Sunday, September 18th, 10 am ET.

This reading kicks off the 10th season of the Second Saturdays Reading Series. The prize judge Yeow Kai Chai will introduce the readers and announce the prize-winner after the reading. Register for the Zoom link here.

If you’re interested in submitting to the annual Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize, this reading is a great opportunity to hear what they like and believe in publishing.

Bonus reading: At NTM, we’re proud to have published last year two excerpts from the groundbreaking anthology Ulirát: The Best Contemporary Stories in Translation from the Philippines published in March 2021 by Gaudy Boy, a press that is doing great work in promoting translations from Asian authors. Congratulations to all the winners!

Click here to read Fungi by Rogelio Braga translated from the Filipino by Kristine Ong Muslim
Click here to read The Savant by Januar E. Yap translated from the Cebuano by John Bengan

NTM 10-year Retrospective: 2019 “Say Wallahi,” an excerpt from Ubah Cristina Ali Farah’s “Il comandante del fiume” translated from the Italian by Hope Campbell Gustafson

Posted on September 14, 2022 by admin

In today’s retrospective, we’re excited to share the work of another 2019 PEN Heim Translation Grant winner, Hope Campbell Gustafson, for her impressive translation of the novel Il comandante del fiume by the award-winning author of Italian-Somali descent, Ubah Cristina Ali Farah.

This powerful novel is the coming-of-age story of the teenager Yabar, and it deals with war, colonialism, terrorism, racism, Islam, relationships, trauma, memory, as well as the movement and mixing of people and cultures and languages. And a street mural in London, with its haunting eyes of a young migrant, is the perfect accompaniment for the text.

This is a compelling read that we hope will transport you into a new world. Tell us what you think using @TranslateMonth and #TranslationMonth!

—Claudia Serea and Loren Kleinman

Click HERE to read Say Wallahi, an excerpt from Ubah Cristina Ali Farah’s Il comandante del fiume translated from the Italian by Hope Campbell Gustafson

NTM 10-year Retrospective: 2016 Dark Flower—Nadia Anjuman Translated by Diana Arterian

Posted on September 13, 2022 by admin

Today, we’re taking a look back at one of the most powerful women voices from Afghanistan: selections from the brilliant and tragic Dark Flower by Nadia Anjuman, translated by Diana Arterian with Marina Omar we published in NTM 2016.

Nadia Anjuman was a rising poetry star who attended Herat University and published Dark Flower in 2005. Her book was read widely not only in Afghanistan, but also in Iran, Pakistan, and beyond, and gave a voice to millions of oppressed women trapped in fundamentalist societies. In November 2005, Anjuman’s husband beat her and Anjuman ultimately died from the injuries at her head. In 2007, Anjuman’s complete works were published in the original Persian-Dari by the Iranian Burnt Books Foundation. Dark Flower has been reprinted three times and sold over three thousand copies.

CLICK HERE TO READ Dark Flower—Nadia Anjuman Translated by Diana Arterian

—Claudia Serea and Loren Kleinman

SHATTERED/ SYMBOLIC GESTURE Multimedia Exhibition Opens in Bucharest, Romania

Posted on September 11, 2022 by admin

The National Museum of Romanian Literature invites you on Monday, September 12, 2022, at 19.00, to the inauguration of the exhibition SHATTERED/ SYMBOLIC GESTURE which will take place at the MNLR headquarters in Nicolae Crețulescu Street 8, in the presence of the poet Ana Blandiana.

The exhibition is part of the program of the National Poetry Book Fair, 11th edition—Bucharest International Poetry Festival, 12th edition.

“The SHATTERED project is the fruit of an idea of the visual artist Oana Maria Cajal and the result of a complex international collaboration. Inspired by Oana Cajal’s artistic vision, several poets from Ukraine, Romania, the United States and Canada contributed poems, and several musicians composed instrumental or vocal pieces, all reacting viscerally against the atrocities of Russia’s war in Ukraine. The concept is simple but original: artists respond to art with new creations while protesting the war. This multi-sensory exhibition hosted by the National Museum of Romanian Literature in Bucharest is the second in the series inaugurated at La MaMa Umbria International in Italy in June 2022. New openings and poetry readings are planned this fall in New York and other cultural centers. We hope that this symbolic gesture, this collaboration that continues to expand, will inspire audiences who will appreciate these artists’ message of solidarity and support for Ukraine’s cause, reaffirming the strength with which culture connects us and ensures the survival of all that is most human.”
—Claudia Serea, Romanian-American poet

Poets participating in the project: Ana Blandiana, Angela Baciu, Cristina A. Bejan, Catalina Florescu, Ioana Ieronim, Nora Iuga, Olena Jennings, Ruth Margraff, Dzvinia Orlowsky, Claudia Serea, Sylvie Simmons.
Composer, pianist: Michael Roth
Video director: Stefan Cajal
The exhibition series includes 24 Picto Impulses, New Media Art.
More info here: https://mnlr.ro/24776-2/.

National Translation Month reading at Multicultural Festival in Rutherford, NJ

Posted on September 11, 2022 by admin

Zorida Mohammed, Anton Yakovlev, and Claudia Serea

We had so much fun at the poetry reading at the NTM Celebration at Multicultural Festival on Friday, September 9! Zorida Mohammed, Anton Yakovlev, and Claudia Serea read translations from Urdu, Russian, and Romanian. Many thanks to the Rutherford Civil Rights Commission for making this reading happen.

And, if you’d like to see more of Anton Yakovlev translations of Sergei Esenin, check out this post, one of our most popular from 2016: CLICK HERE TO READ “Of merry thieves and desperate rascals”: Esenin translated from the Russian by Anton Yakovlev

—Claudia Serea and Loren Kleinman

National Translation Month reading at the Felician University Little Theater in Rutherford, NJ

Posted on September 8, 2022 by admin

Lovely reading on September 7, 2022, at the Felician University Little Theater in Rutherford! The Red Wheelbarrow Poets celebrated National Translation Month with an event featuring Nina Kossman and Vasyl Makhno, focusing on poetry against the war in Ukraine. Many thanks to our features and to all who attended and read in the open mic. We heard translations from Ukrainian, Russian, Romanian, Italian, Spanish, and Swedish.

Here is Nina Kossman reading her translation of Dmitry Blizniuk.

To see more translations from the Ukrainian, check out our Special Feature Part 1 and Part 2 published earlier this year at the start of the war in Ukraine. Please share and donate to help the cause of the Ukrainian people.

—Claudia Serea and Loren Kleinman

Trials and Temptations of a Translator by Tom d’Egidio

Posted on September 7, 2022 by admin

National #TranslationMonth continues today with “Trials and Temptations of a Translator,” a talk delivered by poet and translator Tom d’Egidio for the New York Browning Society at Westbeth in New York City, on September 29th 2021, as part of a National Translation Month celebration. It’s about translating Valerio Magrelli, a contemporary Roman poet, and we hope you’ll enjoy it as much as we did.

We’d love to hear what you think! Find us on twitter @TranslateMonth, share using #TranslationMonth, join our mailing list, submit a translation month event, or like our Facebook page. We hope you’ll join us and celebrate translations throughout September.

—Claudia Serea and Loren Kleinman

Click here to read “Trials and Temptations of a Translator,” a talk delivered by poet and translator Tom d’Egidio for the New York Browning Society at Westbeth in New York City, on September 29th 2021.

NTM 10-year Retrospective: 2013, The Beginning

Posted on September 6, 2022 by admin

Here is a look back at the time when NTM got started on the PCCC Writing Center blog in February 2013: a group of ghazals by Persian poet and mystic Hafez translated by the accomplished poet and academic Roger Sedarat. This was our 2nd post from February 2013, and one of our most popular ever, so we carried it through the archives when we moved to our current web site in 2014.

We’d love to hear what you think! Find us on twitter @TranslateMonth, share using #TranslationMonth, join our mailing list, submit a translation month event, or like our Facebook page. We hope you’ll join us and celebrate your favorite poems in translation throughout September.

—Claudia Serea and Loren Kleinman

Click here to read the ghazals by Persian poet and mystic Hafez translated by Roger Sedarat.

National Translation Month Is 10! Time to Celebrate

Posted on September 1, 2022 by admin

Welcome to National Translation Month 2022!! This year is even more special, as National Translation Month celebrates its 10-year anniversary with exciting selections of poetry and prose in translation, as well as virtual and in-person readings. We hope you’ll be delighted and surprised every day in September and join us in our month-long celebration.

It’s been quite a ride! Since 2013, we published poetry and prose from 53 countries, including work from lesser-known languages, underrepresented voices, and spotlights on writers from the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Africa. We featured established translators such as Nicky Harman, Diana Arterian, Cola Franzen, Margaret Jull Costa, Martín Espada, Sean Cotter, alongside emerging voices, and rising stars. We promoted classic authors, including Pablo Neruda, Osip Mandelshtam, Carmen Boullosa, and Karl Ove Knausgaard, together with hot new names like Nadia Anjuman, Xu Xiaobin, and Daniel Saldaña París. We partnered with numerous journals and organizations, including ALTA, Pen America, The Select Center in Singapore, The Harriman Institute at Columbia University, as well as many publishers of works in translation,promoting their work. We also organized an international reading series with events in 17 locations such as New York, Denver, San Francisco, Seattle, Richmond, and London. You can see our growing list of Friends of NTM and our In the Media page for all our partnerships and projects over the years. Follow us throughout the month to see our most popular posts and take a look back at our (and your!) favorites.

Celebrate with us! To participate in #TranslationMonth, visit our web site for ideas or submit your event by emailing us at nationaltranslationmonth@gmail.com. Find us on Twitter @TranslateMonth, share your favorite translations using #TranslationMonth, join our mailing list, and like our Facebook page.

Let’s get started with five new poems by one of the first award-winning poets of Roma ethnicity in Romania, Emil-Iulian Sude, beautifully translated by the accomplished poet and translator, Diana Manole,who also included an insightful translator’s note with additional details about the poet and the translation process.These visceral poems will grab and rattle you with their surreal details, leaving you shaken and wanting more. We look forward to Sude’s upcoming collection in Manole’s masterful translation.

Happy National Translation Month and happy reading!
—Claudia Serea and Loren Kleinman

Click here to read Emil-Iulian Sude’s selected poems from Paznic de noapte
(The Night Security Guard, Bucharest: Anticus Press, 2022)
translated from the Romanian by Diana Manole