In a press release dated 2 February 2015, CEATL sounded the alarm on the fact that the publishing industry was part of the TTIP negotiating mandate, which might pose a threat to policies of protection and promotion of the book sector, notably to fixed book prices.
CEATL therefore welcomes the recommendations to the European Commission adopted on 8 July 2015 by the European Parliament regarding the TTIP, recommending to confirm that financial support to cultural industries and fixed book price systems will not be challenged by the obligations under the TTIP agreement. […]
On 7 July, we awoke to the breaking news that the UK’s leading international literary awards – the Man Booker International Prize and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize – are to be merged into a single, annual prize that will reward both authors and translators of foreign-language fiction. Since 2012, several Dutch organizations concerned with literature and literary translation have been carrying out a similar initiative in the Netherlands, where the European Literature Prize (Europese Literatuurprijs) rewards a novel written in a language used in one of the member states of the Council of Europe as well as its Dutch translation. These are only two examples, but there are probably more in other European countries. […]
The Booker Prize Foundation has announced that from 2016 the Man Booker International Prize will evolve, to encourage more publishing and reading of quality fiction in translation. From next year the prize, which will join forces with the current Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, will be awarded annually on the basis of a single book translated into English and published in the UK rather than every two years for a body of work, as has been the case until now. The move is designed to highlight the importance of translated fiction, with eight out of ten of the finalists for the award having been originally published in a language other than English. […]
The Dutch Vereniging van Letterkundigen (VvL, Society of Authors) has adopted General Terms and Conditions to be used by translators of books other than those able to negotiate the already existing model contract, which is based on a gentleman’s agreement between the VvL and the Dutch Literaire Uitgeversgroep (LUG, Literary Fiction Publishers’ Group). This requires some clarification. […]
The 19th Festivaletteratura, Italy’s most important literary festival, will be held from 9 to 13 September in Mantova (Mantua). As usual, this year’s programme features two translation slams. […]
The Europese Literatuurprijs [European Literature Award] for 2015 has been awarded to Een handvol sneeuw (Aller Tage Abend) by German writer Jenny Erpenbeck in the Dutch translation by Elly Schippers.
The Europese Literatuurprijs is awarded to a novel written in any of the member languages of the Council of Europe and to the Dutch translation of that novel. It has been established by the Academic Cultural Centre SPUI25, the Dutch Foundation for Literature, the weekly De Groene Amsterdammer and bookshop Athenaeum Boekhandel in an effort to celebrate Europe’s literary diversity and cultural richness. […]
Literary translators don’t exist. That’s what you’d often think from looking at the press, book reviews, book covers… You’d think books are magically written in all sorts of languages at the drop of a hat. Shakespeare wrote his sonnets in English, but they are read all over the world in Russian, German, Swedish, Catalan… So literary translators do exist. Help make us visible!
CEATL, the European Council of Literary Translators’ Associations (www.ceatl.eu), is calling on amateur photographers to create sparky and clever photographs reflecting the existence and importance of literary translators, their challenges, and their role in literature. Any topic can be used, as long as it is in some way related to literary translation. One digital picture per participant will be accepted, and a 200 Euro voucher for dinner and books will be awarded for the winner before International Translation Day, 30 September 2015. […]
Since 2005, Translation House Looren in Switzerland has been hosting literary translators, organising workshops in literary translation, and providing readings for the general public.
To mark its 10th anniversary, actors Claudia Carigiet and Jürg Kienberger have created a multilingual literary and musical program entitled Teufelsbrücken (‘Devil’s Bridges’). The programme will have its premiere on 5 September in Looren, and will then tour Switzerland until 17 December 2015. […]
This year the Collège européen des traducteurs littéraires de Seneffe (CTLS) in Belgium [http://www.ctls.be/] celebrates its twentieth anniversary of hosting literary translators from all over the world with a special programme, consisting of a round table discussion and an award ceremony. […]
The 2015 Prix lémanique for translation will be awarded to the translators Holger Fock and Jean-Yves Masson.
In addition to being President of CEATL Holger Fock is a German translator of literary fiction and non-fiction from French and has translated authors such as Patrick Deville, Andreï Makine, André Breton, Tahar Djaout and Théophile Gautier.
Jean-Yves Masson has translated into French work by many German-language writers, including Rainer Maria Rilke, Stefan George, Eduard Mörike, Arthur Schnitzler, Ödön von Horváth and Heinrich von Kleist. […]
This year’s Pranger Festival, a gathering of poets, critics and translators of poetry, was held from 30 June to 5 July in the towns of Rogaška Slatina, Šmarje pri Jelšah and Ljubljana in Slovenia.
Each year at the Festival three critics each choose three collections of Slovene poetry published in the previous year that they consider to be worth debating. Their choices can be either because of what they consider to be positive or a negative aspects of the collections or for other aesthetic or philosophical reasons. The authors of the nine selected collections of poetry and the translators of the books are invited to participate in the debates. The organisers and participants are particularly concerned to go beyond the realm of ‘pillorying’ (pranger in Slovene means ‘pillory’) and to cultivate a high level of respectful criticism. During the this year’s festival, several debates about poetry and related subjects, along with the selected books of poetry and some translations of them into Spanish were discussed. […]
The Society of Slovene Literary Translators has named affiliate professor and Slavic librarian Michael Biggins as the recipient of the Janko Lavrin Prize. The prize is awarded annually to honour an individual who has made a significant contribution to the translation of Slovene literature internationally. Michael Biggins is the English translator of more than fifteen major, book-length works of 20th- and 21st-century Slovene literature, including texts by Drago Jančar, Tomaž Šalamun and Vladimir Bartol. […]
