Those of you who teach probably know what it’s like to have assembled – over the course of years if not decades – all your favorite essays and articles to read with your students, and if you’re nothing at all like me, these documents might be collected, neatly labeled, in a series of file folders numbered with the weeks of the semester. Or maybe you’re like me, and they’re around here somewhere, didn’t I just see one of them in one of these piles? It’s helpful for people who share my talent for chaos to have all our work tools in one place, and the best place for articles and essays one might want to lay one’s hands on with minimal stress is between the covers of a book. With this in mind, I am delighted to announce the publication of an anthology of essays on translation that Esther Allen and I have been working on for the last couple of years: In Translation: Translators on Their Work And What It Means. The book will be coming out officially from Columbia University Press on May 24, but I’ve been hearing rumors that copies have already been sighted in bookstores around the country, so it’s probably already possible to pick one up locally. Or else you can get yours online: the Press is offering to sell the anthology at a 30% discount to readers of this blog if you order via the CUP website using the code INTALL. If you’re closer to England and would like to order the book from the U.K. distributor, Wiley, send in your order by e-mail mentioning the code INTALL to receive the discount.
Did I say yet that this book contains most of my favorite essays about literary translation, all of them written by actual translators who are also scholars, writers, thinkers and teachers of various sorts? Clare Cavanagh, Richard Sieburth, Alice Kaplan, Haruki Murakami, Lawrence Venuti, Forrest Gander, Eliot Weinberger, Jason Grunebaum, José Manuel Prieto, Christi A. Merrill, Catherine Porter, Maureen Freely, Ted Goossen, Michael Emmerich, David Bellos and Peter Cole, in no particular order. It’s a really good book, and designed to be pleasurably readable by anyone with an interest in international literature and its journey into English (or Japanese, Spanish, etc.), not just students enrolled in translation-themed seminars. It’s got an essay by me too, about revising translations, and one by Esther about the history of Spanish-language translation in NYC. You’ll find a complete table of contents on the CUP website. I hope you’ll have a look.
Oh, and mark your calendars for Thursday, June 6, when we’ll be holding an official launch for the book as part of the ceremony for the 2013 Gutekunst Prize. If you’re in town, please come raise a glass with us at the Goethe-Institut at 72 Spring St., 11th Floor, starting at 6:00 p.m.
Congratulations, Susan! I’m excited to see this come out.
I’ve just bought it. Thanks for the discount!