Posts filed under 'discussion'

Conversations in Absentia/Invisible Voices: the 2015 Indo-American Arts Council Literary Festival

November 23, 2015  |  in Dispatches  |  by Naheed Patel and Poorna Swami

"It creates a desperately needed space to discuss, underscore, and broadcast South Asian writing in one of the world’s largest literary capitals."

The first thing one notices at the venue of the 2nd annual Indo-American Arts Council Literary Festival is the number of Indians in various gradations of “Indian Attire”—from the skimpy Bollywood sari, to the elegant Kanjivaram, to the ubiquitous sherwani with a baseball cap. Such South Asian exuberance against the drab backdrop of Hunter College’s linoleum floors, dubious escalators, and gray dry-wall is enough to pique anyone’s interest, let alone a bunch of homesick Indian bibliophiles waiting to take selfies with their favorite writers.

An ambitious attempt on the part of the Indo-American Arts Council, led by director Aroon Shivdasani, the Festival gathers together prominent Subcontinental voices as diverse as Salman Rushdie, Suketu Mehta, Meena Alexander, Padma Lakshmi and Mira Nair, as well as emerging writers like Sharbari Ahmed, Raghu Karnad, Manreet Sodhi Someshwar, Mira Jacob, and Tanwi Nandini Islam.

Only two years old, the Festival is in its nascent stages, and perhaps that is why the panel discussions at times felt disjointed, as did its choice of panelists. The topics often veered sharply from the literary into an ersatz representation of South Asian identity—India’s rich, politicized literary landscape got less than its proper share of attention in what is supposed to be a festival of literature. The opening panel comprised of Salman Rushdie and Suketu Mehta in conversation with Amitava Kumar, although brimful of witty lines and pictorial anecdotes, often detoured from a discussion on writing by these accomplished authors into scattered riffs on their pasts, their political affiliations, and their sense of belonging to the “Old Boys’ Club” of Bombay writers. These digressions not only alienated younger audience members but also missed the opportunity to center the discussion on the writers’ craft. To make matters worse, there were not enough checks and balances to prevent an audience member from indulging in frivolous and self-promoting questions, only to waste precious panel time. Also, conspicuous by their absence at the Festival were diaspora writers such as Vandana Khanna, Srikant Reddy, and Nalini Jones, just to name a few, who would have added greater value to the panels, but who were, for reasons unknown, not included.

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It’s Time to Talk: On Translations from South Asian Languages

October 23, 2014  |  in Essays  |  by Mahmud Rahman

Mahmud Rahman concludes his insightful series by addressing your questions and responding to the discussion he sparked.

Read all posts in Mahmud Rahman’s investigation here.

In this final post, I want to respond to some issues that have come up among readers. Besides a few comments on the blog posts, this series also generated conversations that came to me via personal emails or messages on Sasialit, a mailing list about South Asian literature.

Huizhong Wu, a literature student at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote me:

I appreciate the insight you give about the lack of institutional support/interest both in the U.S. and in India (at least for translations to the U.S.) but I am curious about the question of audience, which I don’t think you’ve addressed in-depth yet. In your second article you noted that South Asian novels aren’t really widely taught and that the audience for the translations would be a small audience of academics—I’m curious then, who is the audience for translations in general (not South Asia-specific)? Even if other literatures do get translated more into English, is it still for a small academic audience (smash-hits aside)? And does the audience really dictate what academic/smaller presses publish?

If the collective audience for South Asian translations are academics, who will already go out of their way to pay attention to and seek out these books, is there significance in introducing six or ten more translations per year? Especially if the author already had a huge following in his/her home country.

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Notes from the Field: Ubud Writers and Readers Festival 2014

October 13, 2014  |  in Dispatches  |  by Tiffany Tsao

“Is it possible to celebrate linguistic diversity while using one language only—that same language of global hegemony—to do so?”

The Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, held annually in Bali, Indonesia, is Southeast Asia’s largest (and arguably its most well-known) literary festival. This year, the festival featured about 150 writers hailing from more than 25 different countries. Its eleventh iteration, however, proved an even more festive occasion than usual, overlapping with both Saraswati Day—a holy day in the Balinese Hindu calendar dedicated to Saraswati, the goddess of wisdom and knowledge—and a series of religious ceremonies held at the nearby Gunung Lebah Temple. The sun was hot, spirits were high, and the roads were packed as religious and literary pilgrims crisscrossed the small town of Ubud from morning to evening to attend their respective events.

Among the many recurring topics of conversation and debate at the festival was the growing global dominance of the English language. Japanese novelist Minae Mizumura confided her regrets about choosing to write in Japanese rather than English (she was capable of doing both, having spent twenty formative years in the United States), thus forgoing the opportunity to reach the wider audience that writing in English would have afforded her.

And yet, despite initial regrets, Mizumura affirmed her commitment to write in Japanese, noting not only that she has had a far greater impact on Japanese literature than she could have ever had on English literature, but also that she regards writing in a non-English language as a sort of personal moral obligation. Asking her audience to imagine a world in which the best and brightest spoke only English—a horrible, pitiful world, she opined—she regarded her writing as an attempt to save us from that awful fate. READ MORE…

Dispatch: International Translation Day 2014

October 6, 2014  |  in Dispatches  |  by Ellen Jones

Our criticism editor goes to UK’s annual celebration of translation

International Translation Day is the UK’s annual event for its translation community. Now in its fifth year, it is an opportunity for translators, writers, publishers, students, booksellers, librarians, and critics to gather and debate significant issues, developments in the industry, to network, learn, and exchange ideas. This year it was held in the conference centre at the British Library in London—quite the upgrade from Farringdon’s Free Word Centre—meaning more guests can benefit from the seminars on offer.

The day kicked off with a panel discussion on continuing professional development, chaired by the nervily impatient Jo Glanville, Director of English PEN. On the panel were non-fiction translator Michael Cunningham, who specialises in translating social policy documents; Lucille Desblache, Director of the Centre for Research in Translation and Transcultural Studies at the University of Roehampton; and Daniel Hahn, tireless champion of all things translation-related, newly elected chair of the Society of Authors, and recent translator of Paulo Scott’s wonderful novel Nowhere People (of note: Hahn somehow found the patience to greet a growing queue of acquaintances and admirers after the panel discussion, before dashing off to catch a flight to Dublin).  READ MORE…

Krumping in Translation: Interviewing Aditi Machado, Asymptote’s Poetry Editor

July 31, 2014  |  in Interviews  |  by Patty Nash

On reading translated poems: "It’s a dangerous, unsettling world—that’s why it’s fun."

Asymptote’s poetry editor Aditi Machado has curated across the gutter and five continents. In light of Asymptote’s July issue, I interviewed Aditi, and her responses run the gamut: what follows is an in-depth interview with insight into arranging an issue, poetry in translation, and embracing vulnerability when reading. 

Many think that reading poetry requires a specific literacy—is the same true for reading translation, or poetry in translation?

Reading anything requires specific forms of literacy, even reading a newspaper. With poetry, I think we’re less aware of skills we may already have or of those that may be gained. Additionally, we’re extremely sensitive about our lack in these skills—or, if we feel we do have them, we might be able to articulate how we learned them and how much further we have to go. It’s a special privilege, being literate about one’s literacy. READ MORE…

Cuban Literature, Translation, and Baseball with Leonardo Padura

April 14, 2014  |  in Dispatches  |  by Eric M. B. Becker

"What I say here in Brooklyn is exactly what I say in Havana.”

As the diplomatic stand-off between the United States and Cuba reaches its fifty-fifth year, an anxious audience packed into 61 Local in Brooklyn, New York to hear from Cuban writer Leonard Padura and his translator, Anna Kushner.

Online translation journal Words Without Borders gathered Padura, Kushner, and writer-editor Jonathan Blitzer to discuss the recently released Padura novel The Man Who Loved Dogs (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux 2013), translated by Kushner. The evening included a reading by Padura in the original Spanish, followed by Kushner reading the same passage in English. READ MORE…