We’ve all got our cringe moments. This past week, the blog highlighted some of our favorite translated pieces from The New Yorker’s archive, but don’t be fooled into thinking the venerable magazine’s back stock is chock-full of equally dazzling gems. Gawker has highlighted ten of the worst offenders in the storied tradition of essayistic self-absorption.
Regardless of the quality of the #longreads, the fact that it’s available through a virtually unlimited online portal is pretty cool, and this computerization leads to some pretty impressive data collection—as in the New York Times’ digi-feature of the moment, an interactive app called “Chronicle,” graphing word occurrence since the paper’s inception. Elsewhere, the Times still tackles the (not so) tough technological beat: here’s a brief overview of the current poetry apps, and a quiz to determine your emoji fluency. While the New York-based publications appear to have the edge in tech-aptitude, British standby the Guardian attempts to broaden its base by crowdsourcing translation in a World-War-I-related multimedia endeavor.
Literature and politics often intersect—and we certain don’t fail to mention it in the roundup—but these inter-linguistic exchanges are only facilitated by interpreters who literally interlocute our multilingual, political world. One need only look to one of the world’s most volatile countries, Afghanistan, to see how the nation’s artists and writers react to the state of crisis. Ultimately, writers both dispute and create paradigms, as Tiphanie Yanique points out: there’s a serious problem with the systemic portrayal of the “crazy Caribbean woman” in literature.
Artists on translating: at BOMB, an interview with Keith Haring about languages. Asymptote friend, short and long fiction writer, and all-around superstar Lydia Davis has translated a book of antiquated British children’s literature, titled Bob, Son of Battle, modernizing the outdated classic. Speaking of children’s lit, remember Madeline, the little French orphan in one of two straight lines? She was created by a Belgian-German-American named Ludwig Bemelmans. Meanwhile, another literary work is revived, as Oscar Hijuelos’ manuscript for Twain and Stanley enter Paradise is slated for posthumous publishing.
Every season is awards season (perhaps it is more accurate to say that “post-award” is “pre-award”). After announcing the PEN Awards nominees, PEN has announced its winners, including superstars Karen Emmerich and Edmund Keeley in their translation of Greek writer Yannis Ritsos’ book of poetry Diaries of Exile and Joanne Turnbull and Nikolai Formozov for their translation of Russian writer Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s novel Autobiography of a Corpse. And in light of our recent issue’s highlight on Thai writing, check out the Thai-centric shortlist of the South East Asian (or “SEA”) awards, this year focusing on the short story.