Category Archives: Latest News

Thanks for Celebrating Our 10-year Anniversary!

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The 10-year anniversary of National Translation Month was a tremendous success! We’re very grateful to all the authors, translators, publishers, and organizations who celebrated with us, and to our 6,000+ followers on social media whom we sought to inspire and engage.

We’re leaving you with these parting shots we thought you’d appreciate:

• 14 Books in translation to read, recommended by LitHub
• Essays and interviews about translation at Catapult’s #WhatsTheWord
• Micro-reviews of poetry in translation part1 and part 2 at Action Books blog
• A journey through time and place by Claire Brown at Columbia University Press
• Our special features on Ukrainian poetry in translation part 1 and part 2
• Our most popular post ever: new translations from the Hausa language,
in premiere at NTM in September 2016

Stay tuned for news, events, collaborations, and publishing opportunities we’ll announce throughout the year. Join our mailing list, follow us on Twitter, or like us on Facebook. And, if you like what we’re doing, support our efforts with a small donation here. It will help us bring more literary translations to an even wider audience in the future.

The world lies open, and we hope you’ll take the time to read and explore it. And celebrate the craft of translation in September and beyond.

—Claudia Serea and Loren Kleinman

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

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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

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

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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

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SHATTERED/ SYMBOLIC GESTURE Multimedia Exhibition Opens in Bucharest, Romania

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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/.

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

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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

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National Translation Month Is 10! Time to Celebrate

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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

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