• share information and experiences and develop contacts;
• take part in the programme of meetings, seminars, workshops;
• obtain information on and register with the World Directory of  Children’s Book Translators, the first world database of children’s  book translators available on-line free of charge throughout the year;
• obtain information and advice on the main topics of professional relevance, professional associations’ activities, translators’ residences and grant organisations, funding to translations for publishers.

Thanks to the collaboration with Bologna University SSLMIT whose students will practice simultaneous translation during the Centre’s meetings, and thanks to the Bologna Scuola Superiore per Mediatori Linguistici ‘Carlo Bo’, special attention will be paid to job training.

The Bologna Children’s Book Fair 2012 will take place from 19-22  March. The programme of the Translators’ Centre can be found here.

Associations of literary translators are cordially invited to send in information on their organisations and on their initiatives supporting literary translation. Material can be sent to:

Ms. Simona Mambrini
Via delle Tovaglie 12
40124 BOLOGNA
simona.mambrini@gmail.com

The residence, Villa Sarkia, is situated in Sysmä, a small town about two hours from the capital of Finland, Helsinki. Accommodation in the house is free of charge, but the guests are responsible for their travel expenses, and personal costs such as food etc. are not covered by the organisation.

For more information and details about the procedure for application, please check the organisation’s web site.

In 2007, soon after ÇEVBİR (Literary Translators’ Society Turkey) was established, Nesrin Altınova, who translated some thirty classics, reported that several of her translations were plagiarised by a number of publishing houses. One of them was Sefiller, the translation of Victor Hugo’s famous novel Les Misérables.

Subsequently, this title was included in a large scale study on plagiarism in Turkish translations carried out by a joint commission of ÇEVBİR and YAYBİR, the Turkish publishers’ association. In the case of Sefiller five editions by different publishing houses were traced – all of them based on Nesrin Altınova’s translation and none of them mentioning her name.

In 2008, ÇEVBİR started a court case against Engin, one of the publishing houses that plagiarised Nesrin Altınova’s Sefiller translation. The expertises requested by the court for every single edition involved considerable financial costs on behalf of ÇEVBİR, which is a serious obstacle to open more court cases. The translation of Sefiller thus functioned as a test case for the many plagiarised works of Turkish translators available on the Turkish book market.

In the summer of 2011, after a long juridical process, the Turkish court decided in favour of Nesrin Altınova. A last attempt to appeal resulted in a settlement, sentencing publishing house Engin to a penalty of 29,050 Turkish Lira (some 12,000 euro). The Sefiller case constitutes an important precedent in the many cases of plagiarised translations that are yet to be brought to court.

The closing date for applications is 2 July.

For more information and an application form (in French and German), please see the website of Passage & Co.

In its ruling, the Supreme Court considered that Loisto acted as a separate publisher, violating the Copyright Act by transferring rights from the original publisher without permission. The agreement on the transfer of rights between WSOY and Loisto was unlawful. WSOY violated the translation agreement by giving Loisto a translation for publication without permission to do so; as the book’s publisher Loisto, in turn, infringed the translator’s copyright by publishing the work. Taskukirja Loisto Oy was founded by the publishing houses WSOY, Otava, Tammi and Gummerus in 2000.

The Supreme Court decision strengthens the creator’s position in Finland and supports the development of creative industries. It is also hoped that the decision will contribute to achieving fairer practices in the publishing sector. Literary translators are largely underpaid professionals whose economic rights must be secured so that professional work in the sector in general would be possible.  Copyright compensations are a vital source of income to translators.

The Supreme Court’s ruling and the grounds for it can be found here.

For additional information you can contact Ms Liisa Leppänen, executive director of the Finnish Association of Translators and Interpreters.

The program supports translations from Eastern to Western, Western to Eastern, or between two Eastern European languages of canonical texts, as well as of contemporary key works in the Humanities, Social Sciences and Cultural Studies. Special emphasis is placed on translations of relevant works written by East European authors and/or by female scholars.

Deadline for application: March 25, 2012.

For more details please see the IWM’s website.

In the intervening three decades, Denissen translated amongst other things Boccaccio’s Decameron, prose from respected 20th-century authors such as Leonardo Sciascia, Curzio Malaparte and Umberto Eco and the poetry of Cesare Pavese.

The jury praises Denissen’s ‘precise knowledge of Italian in all its argots, registers and dialects’.

The award ceremony will take place during the national translation event ‘Nederland Vertaalt’ (The Netherlands Translates) on 25 February 2012.

The virtual library www.readme.cc is an international literary portal which presents and links works of contemporary literature and their authors without regard to linguistic and national frontiers.

In co-operation with the Literaturhaus in Vienna a multilingual collection of reviews and samples of contemporary Austrian literature is being built up. Journalists and academics specializing in literature present the latest publications, and sample texts provide a brief view of the works in question, with short sketches of the authors to complete the picture. At present this material is available in five languages: German, English, French, Czech and Hungarian.

The translations are intended to make new texts outside the mainstream accessible in other languages and to provide an incentive for publishers abroad to publish them.

The reviews and biographical material are provided by the Dokumentationsstelle für neuere österreichische Literatur (Documentation Centre for Modern Austrian Literature), the translations by the Übersetzergemeinschaft (Austrian Association of Literary and Scientific Translators), and the infrastructure by readme.cc.

My Little War was published in the United States in 2010 by Dalkey Archive Press, and is the first English translation of Louis Paul Boon’s 1947 debut novel. The translation was financially supported by the Flemish Literature Fund.

The other titles on the shortlist were: Marjolijn Februari – The Book Club (Paul Vincent); Leon de Winter – God’s Gym (Jeannette Ringold); Anna Enquist – Counterpoint (Jeannette Ringold); Dimitri Verhulst – Madame Verona Comes Down the Hill (David Colmer); Douwe Draaisma – Disturbances of the Mind (Barbara Fasting); and Margriet de Moor - The Storm (Carol Brown Janeway).

The Vondel Translation Prize is a biennial award for the best book translation into British or American English of a Dutch-language work of literature or cultural history. The award was established by the Society of Authors and is funded by the Dutch Foundation for Literature and the Flemish Literature Fund. The winner receives a prize of € 5000.

The prize will be presented on 6 February 2012 at Kings Place in London, together with a number of other European translation awards.

For further information, please contact:

Peter Bergsma, Translators’ House Amsterdam
p.bergsma@letterenfonds.nl

or

Victor Schiferli, Dutch Foundation for Literature
v.schiferli@letterenfonds.nl

ÇEVBİR – The Turkish Association of Literary Translators, condemns the arrests of intellectuals and the climate of intimidation

Turkey is currently witnessing a period as dark as that of the oppressive regimes which have left so many scars on its history. The Anti-Terrorist Law considers anyone or any organisation criticizing the existing system to be a potential terrorist. The expression of an opinion, or facilitating the expression of an opinion, is deemed a crime. Under this legislation, journalists, students, academics, writers, artists, translators, and lawyers are being detained. All segments of public opinion are alarmed by the unlawful and irrational arguments and evidence being put forward. Since the files of those illicitly detained are declared ‘secret’, the detainees are not even aware of the charges against them. They are thus deprived of the fundamental right to defend themselves. Almost from the outset, they are branded ‘criminals’. Subjected to long periods of detention, they undergo their ‘punishment’ before they are even brought to trial.

The present practices are not being implemented under martial law with its fascist rules, but under the regime of an ‘advanced democracy’, with leaders elected according to the principles of representative democracy. The Turkish state has eagerly embraced the idea of being the ‘role model for democratic government in the Middle East’, assigned to it by western states; it teaches lessons in ‘democracy’ to neighbouring countries ruled by dictators, and unequivocally condemns these states’ militarist practices. However, the way Turkey is treating its own people is reminiscent of the terror of the coup of 12 September 1980 and its aftermath. In publicly denouncing people from different segments in society as ‘terrorists’ without grounds, the government is becoming the principal instigator of terrorism. For years, the state has been incapable of bringing to court the murderers of Hrant Dink, a journalist-writer of Armenian origin, who was killed in broad daylight in the middle of the street in 2007; other murder cases are shrouded in silence, their perpetrators said to be ‘unknown’, even though the identities of the murderers are common knowledge. Just days ago, the Turkish state took the lives of 35 villagers, most of them still children, in Uludere, a town at the Iraqi border, in the name of ‘combating terrorism’. Yet when it comes to launching investigations and legal procedures on nebulous grounds, with the aim of silencing dissenting voices and imprisoning people almost en masse, Turkey does not hesitate a moment.

In a recent speech, the Minister of Interior Affairs referred to artists and intellectuals, academics, people working for NGOs, and citizens with a different religious or sexual orientation as potential criminals, thereby making them a target. This, combined with the exponential increase in the number of journalists and writers who have recently been detained and arrested, clearly shows that an atmosphere of intimidation is being created, with the aim of hindering all organisations and individuals active in the media and the publishing industry, in culture, art, civil society and the defence of rights, from executing their professions and activities.

ÇEVBİR, the Turkish Association of Literary Translators,

demands an immediate halt to the witch hunt against artists and intellectuals, human rights activists, and, ultimately, civil society as a whole – i.e. people who protect and create the values that societies have adopted for centuries by expressing truths that the authorities are attempting to stifle; it demands the complete abolition of the laws, regulations and practices that restrict and destroy freedom of the press, of opinion and of expression; and it reminds people everywhere that even if men and women are imprisoned, ideas and souls will always be free. We therefore adopt the smile that journalist Zeynep Kuray wore as she went to prison as the best response to the climate of fear and repression that is being fomented.

ÇEVBİR – Turkish Association of Literary Translators
İstanbul, 7 January 2012
www.cevbir.org
bilgi@cevbir.org

Bartho Kriek (b. 1950) has built up an impressive body of work over the past three decades and more, including translations of work by Kurt Vonnegut, Paul Auster, Philip Roth and two Nobel Prize Winners: Isaac Bashevis Singer and William Faulkner. The jury was particularly struck by his commitment and by the boldness and accuracy with which Kriek unlocks literature that is particularly difficult to translate. This applies especially to his recent translation of Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (Het geluid en de drift), a complex and polyphonic novel in which each narrative voice is translated with great feeling for style and register. He has further helped to make this extraordinary, dark novel accessible by writing an afterword, a description of sources and a guide for the reader. Kriek is currently completing a new translation of the – even more challenging – Absalom, Absalom!

Vincent Hunink (b. 1962) receives the Dutch Foundation for Literature’s Prize for Literary Non-Fiction. While pursuing an academic career at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, he has managed to bring a wide range of classical works within the reach of a broad readership. He has translated from Latin and Neo-Latin philosophy, rhetoric, history, travel accounts and didactic prose by well known (Cicero, Tacitus, Caesar, Seneca and Augustine) and less well-known authors, including recently The Roman History (Van Troje tot Tiberius. De geschiedenis van Rome) by Velleius Paterculus. The jury was impressed by the way in which he holds to his principle of ‘old but new’. Hunink has had the courage, for instance, to make the radical choice of translating Tacitus Histories (Historiën) with a succinctness that closely follows Tacitus’ Latin, while his choice of words is refreshingly contemporary. He also provides his translations with outstanding annotations and introductions.

Claudia Di Palermo (b. 1967) has been active since 1999 as a cultural intermediary between Italy and the Netherlands. She presented the Teleac television programme Giro d’Italia, a twelve part series about Italy and the Italian language. For more than twelve years she has been an advisor to Italian publishers on Dutch literature, currently as freelance rights manager at Uitgeverij Prometheus/Bert Bakker. Alongside her work as an intermediary she has built up a varied and impressive oeuvre as a literary translator of Dutch works into Italian, including titles by Abdelkader Benali, Jan Brokken, Karel Glastra van Loon, Arnon Grunberg, Frans Kellendonk, Margriet de Moor, Cees Nooteboom, Dimitri Verhulst and Jan Wolkers. She also regularly makes use of her expertise by working as an editor, for the Italian translation of In Europe (In Europa) by Geert Mak, for example, and as a moderator of translation workshops and a mentor to new literary translators.

The Dutch Foundation for Literature awards three prizes each year to literary translators who have distinguished themselves both by the outstanding quality of their translation work and by their dedication as ambassadors for a particular language area or genre, and/or literary translation in general. With these prizes the Foundation aims to turn the spotlight on the important but often underappreciated contribution that translators make as creative artists and as intermediaries between languages, literatures and cultures. Of the three oeuvre prizes, one is awarded to a literary translator of prose and/or poetry into Dutch, one to a translator of literary non-fiction into Dutch and one to a literary translator from Dutch into another language.

The jury for the Dutch Foundation for Literature’s prize for a translator out of Dutch was formed by the Foundation’s translation department; this year’s jury for the Foundation’s prizes for translators into Dutch consisted of Hans Driessen, Jeanne Holierhoek and Djûke Poppinga (chairman).

Stipendiatenhaus der Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen, Dresden-Hellerau: Four grants of six to eight weeks each in the period of March to December 2012. Each grant is endowed with € 1,500. In addition grant holders receive an allowance of € 250 for cost of food. Travel expenses are covered by the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony.

Seminarzentrum Gut Siggen der Alfred Toepfer Stiftung F.V.S.: Two grants of six to eight weeks each in the period of end of June to end of October 2012. These grants are also endowed with € 1,500 each and include full board and accommodation at the Seminarzentrum. Travel expenses are covered by the Alfred Toepfer Foundation.

The offer goes to professional translators of German fiction (novel, poetry, essay) with at least two published book translations as well as a signed contract for the translation they will be working on during their stay.

Application deadline: January 10, 2012
For further information and an online application form, please see the website of the Goethe Institute.

For questions please contact:

Andreas Schmohl
Goethe Institut Zentrale
Dachauer Straße 122,
D-80637 München
Tel: +49 89 15921-852
E-mail: schmohl@goethe.de

On October 28, 2011, Václav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, subsequently awarded Martin Hilský a Medal of Merit.

Drawing on the experience of its 32 member associations, CEATL notes a general disregard for literary translators’ rights, in addition to shamefully low remuneration. Although all European countries have signed the Berne Convention, in which translations are explicitly acknowledged as original literary works, in many countries translators are not considered authors. This disregard is also reflected in the fact that the translator’s name is generally omitted from the credits, at readings and other events, and is often ignored by the media (press, radio, TV, online). Sometimes the translator’s name is omitted even when their work is used.

In order to change these unsatisfactory conditions, CEATL’s member associations have drawn up a set of six rules with which all parties involved in literary translation should comply: translators, publishers, event organisers and critics. You will find this ‘Hexalogue’ below, in its original wording. We would be grateful if you would devote a few lines to CEATL’s publication of these rules. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any further questions.

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Hexalogue or Code of Good Practice

The Six Commandments of ‘fair-play’ in literary translation, adopted by CEATL’s General Assembly on 14 May, 2011. [pdf download]

1. Licensing of rights
The licensing of rights for the use of the translation shall be limited in time to a maximum of five years. It shall be subject to the restrictions and duration of the licensed rights of the original work. Each licensed right shall be mentioned in the contract.

2. Fees
The fee for the commissioned work shall be equitable, enabling the translator to make a decent living and to produce a translation of good literary quality.

3. Payment terms
On signature of the contract, the translator shall receive an advance payment of at least one third of the fee. The remainder shall be paid on delivery of the translation at the latest.

4. Obligation to publish
The publisher shall publish the translation within the period stipulated in the contract, and no later than two years after the delivery of the manuscript.

5. Share in profit
The translator shall receive a fair share of the profits from the exploitation of his/her work, in whatsoever form it may take, starting from the first copy.

6. Translator’s name
As author of the translation, the translator shall be named wherever the original author is named.

Competition is open to professionals from the EU, the UK or the USA, working on a creative project related to Russian culture, such as a museum exhibition project, a theatre performance, a film, photo exhibition, preparation of fiction or non-fiction books. The project should address a broad audience outside Russia. Residence in Russia should serve as an important stage in the realization of the applicant’s cultural project. Command of the Russian language is helpful but not required.

Applications should be received before January 22, 2012. For further information in English click here.

On the second day a large number of translation workshops will take place. In addition to workshops on language pairs that have been addressed before (French–Dutch, German–Dutch, English–Dutch, Italian–Dutch, Spanish–Dutch and Dutch–French, Dutch–German and Dutch–English), there will be new workshops for Norwegian–Dutch, Russian–Dutch, Dutch–Czech and Dutch–Turkish.

The symposium day will be attended by around 370 participants; some 200 translators have registered to take part in the workshops.

The Literary Translation Days are organised by the Vertalershuis Amsterdam/Amsterdam Translators’ House. For more information (in Dutch), see the website of the translators’ house.