ALTA38: Translation & Traffic: Full Schedule

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2:00pm MST

Midnight’s Foster Children: Raising South Asian Books in English-speaking Homes

Panelists will share their favorite works from the Indian Subcontinent that have yet to be adopted by a translator into English: why they should be, why they haven’t been, and the likely joys and challenges associated with doing so. They will also address issues particular to moving English translations of literature that represents hundreds of languages and one-fifth of humanity into the daylight and onto the shelves.

Moderators

Jason Grunebaum

Panelists

Shabnam Nadiya

Mahmud Rahman

Daisy Rockwell

Arunava Sinha

Head, IBNlive.com & CricketNext.com

John Vater

Thursday October 29, 2015 2:00pm - 3:15pm MST
Canyon A

Roundtable

2:00pm MST

Teaching Translation Workshops

In this interactive workshop, participants will work together generate ideas and share best practices for teaching literary translation. By collecting our reflections on possible course objectives, theoretical and practical readings, workshop dynamics, assessment and evaluation, we will produce working documents to share with all of our members.

Moderators

Leah Leone

Thursday October 29, 2015 2:00pm - 3:15pm MST
Sabino

Roundtable

9:00am MST

Cash and Prizes: How Grants and Awards Contribute to a Sustainable U.S. Literary Culture

The PEN America literary awards, the PEN/Heim Translation Fund; the ALTA translation awards, prize and travel fellowships; the Best Translated Book Award; the NEA Literature Fellowships and Art Works grants: Besides rewarding and bestowing recognition on individual translators for excellence and achievement, how do these honors help support the healthy literary ecosystem that is essential for us to continue translating and publishing literary translations in the United States? Or do they? Are they sufficient? Do they work the way they should? How do they compare to analogous programs in other countries? Do we need more of them?

Moderators

Alex Zucker

Panelists

Margaret Carson

Erica Mena

Chad W. Post

Mohamed Sheriff

Friday October 30, 2015 9:00am - 10:30am MST
Pima

Roundtable

9:00am MST

Editors Roundtable: Poetry, Prose, Nonfiction

Editors from a variety of print and online presses and publications discuss the joys and horrors of publishing work in translation. They’ll discuss the process from start to finish—how books are acquired, to how they’re edited and then sold—providing valuable insights while also while illuminating the process for new translators. A great opportunity to peek behind the curtain and find out more about how editors think.

Moderators

Minna Proctor

Panelists

Kate Bernheimer

Kate Bernheimer has been called “one of the living masters of the fairy tale” (Tin House). She is the author of a novel trilogy and the story collections Horse, Flower, Bird and How a Mother Weaned Her Girl from Fairy Tales, and the editor of four anthologies, including the World Fantasy Award winning and bestselling My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me... Read More →

Chris Fishbach

Susan Harris

Editorial Director, Words Without Borders

Susan Harris is the editorial director of Words without Borders www.wordswithoutborders.org and coeditor, with Ilya Kaminsky, of Eco Anthology of Internatinoal Poetry.

David Shook

Editor, Phoneme Media

Kaija Straumanis

Friday October 30, 2015 9:00am - 10:30am MST
Sabino

Roundtable

2:00pm MST

The Great Canadian Roundabout? Literary Translation in Canada

What is the current status of literary translation in Canada? How does the emphasis on the two official languages (English and French) affect the funding and publication of translations into and from non-official languages? What kind of border traffic is there between the Canadian and US publishing worlds? Participants will discuss the above questions, and more, including dynamic exceptions to the English-French axis rule and future opportunities for increasing dialogue and literary exchange. An open discussion will follow.

Moderators

María José Giménez

A genderqueer born-and-raised Venezuelan poet, translator, editor, and connector with roots and community in places like Montreal, the Bay Area, María José Giménez celebrated in 2020 twenty years of freelancing and creative practice through translation, revision, copyediting and... Read More →

Panelists

Phyllis Aronoff

Stephen Henighan

Enter Name

Lida Nosrati

Howard Scott

Friday October 30, 2015 2:00pm - 3:15pm MST
Pima

Roundtable

2:00pm MST

The Perils of Punctuation

Punctuation may seem a humble topic in the house of literature, but it can be as individual to each author as any other stylistic element. What is more, before the translation process reaches a full stop, punctuation must be rendered in the new language along with all the words. In this session, five experienced and distinguished translators will address punctuation in German, Hebrew, Russian, Spanish and Turkish.

Moderators

Aviya Kushner

Panelists

Aron Aji

Susan Bernofsky

Lisa Bradford

Marian Schwartz

Friday October 30, 2015 2:00pm - 3:15pm MST
Sabino

Roundtable

3:45pm MST

Trafficking Noir

Akashic Books launched a series of Noir anthologies. Each book collects all-new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the city of the book. Over 20 of the more than 90 planned or published collections are translated from languages other than English. These playfully dark voices upend all sorts of assumptions about how to write, and translate, about a city. Because the collections include only previously unpublished writing they have become a useful reference for translators and publishers for interesting new voices. The roundtable brings together an editor (Zagreb Noir) and translators who have worked on the Zagreb, Moscow, Petersburg and Helsinki collections to talk about the series and the experience of working as a translator for the project.

Moderators

Ellen Elias-Bursac

Panelists

Yardenne Greenspan

Lola Rogers

Ivan Sršen

Laura Wideburg

Friday October 30, 2015 3:45pm - 5:00pm MST
Madera

Roundtable

2:15pm MST

Uruguay Rising: A Conversation Between the Translators

The prominence of Uruguayan poetry stretches from the Uruguayan-born Isidore Ducasse (1846-1870), an inspiration for the French surrealists, to the work of strong early women poets such as Juana de Ibarbourou (1885-1979) and Delmira Agustini (1886-1914). Julio Herrera y Reissig’s (1875-1910) work influenced the development of Spanish-language poets from César Vallejo to Pablo Neruda. In spite of this legacy, Uruguayan poetry has been scarcely translated. This panel features some of those artists who work to change this. Representing multiple generations of writers, the translators responsible for bringing Mario Benedetti (1920-2009), Circe Maia (1932-), Karen Wild Díaz (1984-), and many other contemporary voices to prominence will discuss their commitment and the challenges of their craft.

Moderators

Christopher Schafenacker

Panelists

Jesse Lee Kercheval

Louise B. Popkin

Ron Paul Salutsky

Saturday October 31, 2015 2:15pm - 3:30pm MST
Boardroom

Roundtable

2:15pm MST

When 3% Felt Like 30: a Roundtable on Literary Translation in the’60s and ’70s

While the percentage of literary translations was probably not much greater back then than it is today, the Sixties and Seventies were, in many ways, a golden age for literary translation. Many of the great translators of the period and the authors they represented, both classical and contemporary, East and West, were household names, the books they brought to life among the most popular and influential of the postwar era. How can we account for this popularity and influence? This is the question we hope to answer. We welcome you to join what will no doubt be a lively debate.

Moderators