2020 ALTA Awards

43rd Annual ALTA Sept. 30 – Oct. 18, 2020 Conference THE AMERICAN LITERARY TRANSLATORS ASSOCIATION 2020 ALTA Awards THE NATIONAL CENTER FOR ONLINE TRANSLATION CERTIFICATE INTERPRETATION has been one of the premier NCI now offers an online, non-credit Spanish/ providers of high quality interpreter training since English Translation Certificate with courses its inception in 1983. focused on legal translation, medical translation, and business translation. Contact us for more information: [email protected] More about the Certificate: nci.arizona.edu/online-translation-certificate WEBINARS Throughout the year, NCI offers a variety of COURT INTERPRETER TRAINING INSTITUTE webinars focused on essential aspects of (CITI) interpreting, from ethical considerations to Each summer, NCI offers its prestigious Court skill-building to specialized content such as Interpreter Training Institute (CITI). Now in its drug and weapons terminology. NCI offers both 38th year, the CITI is NCI’s most comprehensive Spanish/English webinars and language neutral training and is renowned nationally. The CITI webinars that are open to interpreters of all begins in June with online pre-testing followed languages. NCI’s webinar schedule changes by a series of webinars and online work, followed throughout the year, so check back often. You by two intensive weeks in July with the CITI’s can also join our mailing list to receive updates exceptional, federally certified instructors. It’s a as we post new trainings. once-in-a-lifetime experience! Webinar Schedule: More information about the CITI: nci.arizona.edu/workshop-schedule nci.arizona.edu/training/citi Congratulations to the translators on the 2020 Italian Prose in Translation Award shortlist! See what judges Jeanne Bonner, Richard Dixon, and Tony Italian Prose Shugaar had to say about each of the shortlisted titles (in alphabetical in Translation order by title). Award Shortlist Purchase these titles at the ALTA43 Virtual Bookfair. At The Wolf’s Table Beyond Babylon The Bishop’s Bedroom by Rosella Postorino by Igiaba Scego by Piero Chiara translated from Italian by translated from Italian by translated from Italian by Jill Foulston Leah D. Janeczko Aaron Robertson (New Vessel Press) (Flatiron Books) (Two Lines Press) In this sophisticated and at times Set in the final stages of World War II, Igiaba Scego’s sprawling modern moody murder mystery, two men meet this novel is inspired by the real-life epic of a novel tells us the story of two up in post-war Northern Italy and experience of a German woman who half-sisters, and in the process drops become friends as they sail around is conscripted to taste dishes to be us into contemporary Rome, a fasci- Lake Maggiore. The author, Piero served to Adolf Hitler. Rosa Sauer’s nating city of immigrants and refugees. Chiara, has expertly combined what the parents are dead, her husband is fight- Readers may see the Eternal City and late John Gardner considered fiction’s ing on the Eastern Front, and she is Italy through an entirely new lens—the two main storylines: a stranger comes sheltering with his parents when the SS lens of people who escaped all kinds to town, and a man goes on a journey. come knocking at her door. She and a of tragedies (in the case of one sister, In this case, the stranger is the owner handful of women, her fellow food-tast- Argentina’s Dirty War) to remake their of a small sailing vessel, while the man ers, are forced to eat food that some- lives in a new place. While weaving who goes on the journey is a wealthy one might have poisoned. Leah D. an engrossing story, Scego, who is of villa owner whose accounting of his Janeczko well renders the intensity of Somali descent, touches on myriad wartime adventures in Africa doesn’t the original text, capturing the drama of controversial issues facing Italy (and quite add up. Or is that the case? the women’s plight, their tensions, anxi- not only Italy), including colonialism, Chiara keeps us guessing and reading, eties, and despair, and has a fine ear racism, and sexism—and face them it with the combination of the stranger for dialogue that flows smoothly and must. Such a brimming, polyglot novel and the journey resulting in tragedy, compellingly. provided no end of challenges to trans- heartache, and disaffection. The novel lator Aaron Robertson, who provides an is eminently readable, thanks to the accessible English version of Scego’s spare and accurate—in everything from witty, frank Italian. mood to diction—translation by Jill Foulston, who matches Chiara’s peer- less knowledge of winds, tides, and other nautical concerns that pepper tthe narrative. 2020 ALTA Awards 3 —Italian Prose in Translation Award Shortlist Since 2015, the Italian Prose in Translation Award (IPTA) has recognized the importance of contemporary Italian prose and promoted the translation of Italian works into English. This prize is awarded annually to a translator of a recent work of Italian prose (fiction or literary nonfiction). Publishers are invited to submit titles for consideration at the beginning of the year. For more information, visit literarytranslators.org. I Am God Ithaca Forever: Penelope by Giacomo Sartori Speaks, A Novel translated from Italian by by Luigi Malerba Frederika Randall translated from Italian by (Restless Books) Douglas Grant Heise God has an existential crisis and falls (University of California Press) in love with the unlikeliest of humans. Odysseus’s return to his wife Penelope Why, he asks, with eight billion to look after his twenty-year absence is after, should I go for a geneticist who masterfully retold in this intriguing novel also happens to be a fanatical atheist? that pries open the gaps in Homer’s Being all-powerful is losing its appeal, narrative. Did she really fail to recog- but would life as a mortal be any better? nize him when he appeared before Through the eyes of our omniscient her dressed as a beggar? Malerba’s narrator, we look at the immensity of interpretation highlights Odysseus’s human insignificance, as he meditates vanity—and Penelope’s resentment— on beauty, goodness, the environ- when she realizes his first interest is to ment, the cosmos, and our miserable test her fidelity. He has been fighting attempts at religion. Sartori’s deliciously wars and seeking adventure, while hers absurd humor is magnificently trans- has been a life of solitude, a marriage lated by Frederika Randall, who catches on hold. Douglas Grant Heise brilliantly his mocking voice with great ingenuity, captures the voices of the returning delivering well-honed one-liners with victor and his emotional inadequacies, impeccable timing and all the skill of a and the long-suffering wife who isn’t standup comic. prepared to go along with his games. 2020 ALTA Awards 4 Congratulations to the translators on the 2020 Lucien Stryk Asian Transla- tion Prize shortlist! See what judges Noh Anothai, John Balcom, and E. J. Lucien Koh had to say about each of the shortlisted titles (in alphabetical order by Stryk Asian title). Purchase these titles at the ALTA43 Virtual Bookfair. Translation Prize Shortlist Hysteria Pioneers of Modern No Poetry: Selected Poems by Kim Yideum Japanese Poetry of Che Qianzi translated from Korean by Jake Levine, by Muro Saisei, Kaneko Mitsuhara, by Che Qianzi Soeun Seo, and Hedgie Choi Miyoshi Tatsuji, and Nagase Kiyoko translated from Chinese by (Action Books) translated from Japanese by Yunte Huang Takako Lento (Polymorph Editions) Kim Yideum’s Hysteria, translated by Jake Levine, Soeun Seo, and Hedgie (Cornell University Press) In the poem “Three Basic Colors,” an Choi, resists established Korean literary Pioneers of Modern Japanese Poetry, artist draws three lines in crayon on culture in the tradition of Korean femi- edited and translated by Takako Lento, a blank page: “Three straight lines,” nist poetics. Page by page, Yideum’s is a superb anthology of four major someone (a “big shot”) comments, poems against rationality, lyricism, and 20th-century poets: Muro Saisei, “Symbolizing three paths.” In response, polite society reckon with both politi- Kaneko Mitsuhara, Miyoshi Tatsuji, and the artist draws something new: “Fail- cal and personal revolutions. Accord- Nagase Kiyoko, who all made signifi- ing to understand / (what did he say?) / ingly, the rendering of her poems across cant contributions to the development I drew again, as I liked / Three circles.” languages is multifold, as Yideum’s of modern Japanese poetry. A substan- In his collection No Poetry, Che Qianzi words must be as intentionally irratio- tial selection of work by each poet is displays a similar playfulness with nal as historical oppression. These taut, presented in nuanced, idiomatic trans- convention (literary, orthographical) unsettled poems burst into flames in lation facing the original Japanese. The and expectation (logical, linear)—as the hands of the reader, a burning fuse translator succeeds in delivering engag- well as with geometric shapes, with the creating a clear path for contemporary ing renditions of the four distinct poets, layout of words on the page, with the Korean women’s poetry. with their diverse themes, voices, and very form of Chinese ideographs. This styles—in evoking, in short, the life of bilingual edition allows us to appreci- the original words. The collection is ate translator Yunte Huang’s finesse further enhanced by a general intro- at reflecting these verbal and visual duction that provides the literary and elements in English, allowing a voice to historical context of the poems, while take shape that is delightfully exper- each poet’s work is smartly staged with imental and idiosyncratic. Through a preface on his or her life and career. Huang’s skill, “no poetry” has not meant “no translation.” 2020 ALTA Awards 5 Titles eligible for the 2020 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize were book-length translations into English of Asian poetry, or of source texts —Lucien from Zen Buddhism (which must not consist solely of commentaries) Stryk Asian translated from Chinese, Hindi, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Sanskrit, Translation Tamil, Thai, or Vietnamese into English, published anywhere in the world in the previous calendar year (2019).

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