Upcoming Translation Events February 2022
Tuesday, February 1:
The Books of Jacob: Co-presented with Greenlight Bookstore and co-curated by Anderson Tepper, Brooklyn Public Library's February International Writers series features Olga Tokarczuk, author of The Books of Jacob, with translator and writer Jennifer Croft, as they discuss Tokarczuk’s magnum opus with Ruth Franklin. Online event. More information here. 4:00 - 5:30 p.m. (ET)
Wednesday, February 2:
Esther Allen and Andrés Barba join Community Bookstore for a discussion of Antonio Di Benedetto's The Silentiary, out in Allen's translation from New York Review Books Classics. Online event. More information here. 7:00 p.m. (ET)
Friday, February 4:
Black is the Journey, Africana the Name with Maboula Soumahoro and Kaiama L. Glover: Join professors Maboula Soumahoro and Kaiama L. Glover, both specialists of Africana and Diaspora Studies, for a discussion of Soumahoro’s recent book, Black is the Journey, Africana the Name (Polity Books, 2021), translated by Kaiama L. Glover. The conversation is part of the Entre Nous series, a partnership between Columbia Global Centers | Paris, The American Library in Paris, and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination. Online event. More information 1:30 p.m. (ET)
Antonio Di Benedetto in Conversation with Himself | Revision and Translation in the Trilogy of Expectation: A talk with Esther Allen, whose translation of Antonio Di Benedetto’s 1956 novel Zama won the 2017 National Translation Award. Allen was subsequently awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for the translation of the two other novels in what has come to be known as Di Benedetto’s Trilogy of Expectation. More information here. 2:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. (ET)
Thursday, February 10:
Don Mee Choi in conversation with Uljana Wolf and Sung Un Gang: Hosted by Literaturhaus Berlin, Don Mee Choi will talk about being a Picador Guest Professor in Leipzig, her book, DMZ Colony (Wave Books, 2020), and the art of translating lyrics with poet and translator Uljana Wolf and moderator Sung Un Gang. The event will be held in English and will be simultaneously interpreted into German by Lilian-Astrid Geese. More information here. 1:00 p.m. (ET)
Friday, February 11:
Eure Heimat ist unser Albtraum | Your Homeland Is Our Nightmare: Deutsches Haus at NYU presents a conversation among Hengameh Yaghoobifarah, Sharon Dodua Otoo, Sasha Marianna Salzmann, and Jon Cho-Polizzi, which will be moderated by Tiffany Florvil to celebrate the digital publication of the English-language translation of Your Homeland Is Our Nightmare with TRANSIT Journal. More information here. 3:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. (ET)
The Translator as Performer | Theater in Translation, Translation in Theater: The 2022 Boston University Lecture Series in Literary Translation presents Jeremy Tiang moderated by Anna Elliot. Tiang is a playwright, trained actor, novelist and translator who has translated over twenty-five books. More information here. 2:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. (ET)
Monday, February 14:
Racing Translation: Corine Tachtiris, Assistant Professor of Translation Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, considers translation as a raced practice, looking at the ways that white supremacy has shaped the conception and norms of translation in the West. More information here. 12:30 p.m. - 1:30 p.m. (ET)
Tuesday, February 15:
Jawbone with Sarah Booker: Mónica Ojeda joins us to present her ominous, multivocal new novel Jawbone, in conversation with the book's translator, Sarah Booker. More information here. 5:00 p.m. (ET)
Belladonna* Close Distances: Co-curated by Sawako Nakayasu and Zoe Tuck, this Belladonna* reading will feature Zahra Patterson, Anna Moschovakis, and 최 Lindsay. Online event. More information here. 7:30 p.m. (ET)
Friday, February 18:
Tracy K. Smith On Translating the Poems of Yi Lei: The 2022 Boston University Lecture Series in Literary Translation presents Tracy K. Smith, moderated by Anna Elliot. Smith is a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, memoirist, editor, translator and librettist, and co-translator (with Changtai Bi) of My Name Will Grow Wide Like A Tree: Selected Poems of Yi Lei, a finalist for the 2021 Griffin International Poetry Prize. More information here. 2:30 - 4:30 p.m. (ET)
Saturday, February 19:
Olga Tokarczuk presents The Books of Jacob: Nobel Prize-winner Olga Tokarczuk presents her novel The Books of Jacob, now available in English from Riverhead Books, in conversation with translator Jennifer Croft. More information here. 1:00 p.m. (ET)
PEN Translation Prize Finalists in Conversation: Join this year’s finalists for the PEN America Translation Prize for a roundtable discussion about their exceptional books. Translators Sean Cotter, Alta L. Price, Julia Sanches, Lara Vergnaud, and Jeffrey Zuckerman will be in conversation with Executive Director of the Center for the Art of Translation, Michael Holtmann. More information here. Online event. 2:00 p.m. (ET)
Tuesday, February 22:
Sundial House: Latin American & Iberian Literature in Translation: Claudia Ulloa Donoso (Perú) will join her translator, Lily Meyer, to present the new bilingual short-story collection Hielo para marcianos | Ice for Martians. Professor Cynthia Vich (Fordham University) will be the moderator. Online event. More information here. 5 p.m. (ET)
Wednesday, February 23:
Alejandro Zambra: Chilean Poet with Megan McDowell & Francisco Goldman: Alejandro Zambra joins Community Bookstore to present his new novel, Chilean Poet, in conversation with the book's translator, four-time Booker International Prize nominee Megan McDowell. The program is co-hosted in partnership with the Transnational Literature Series at Brookline Booksmith in Brookline, MA and Third Place Books in Seattle, WA. Online event. More information here. 8:00 p.m. (ET)
Thursday, February 24:
Reading & Book Presentation with Andrea Grill and Tess Lewis: Cherubino: Author Andrea Grill and translator Tess Lewis will present Grill’s latest novel Cherubino with a bilingual reading and book discussion, hosted by Andrea Capovilla (Ingeborg Bachmann Centre). The event is organised in cooperation with the Ingeborg Bachmann Centre for Austrian Literature & Culture at the Institute of Modern Languages Research. Online event. More information here. 2:00 p.m. (ET)
Translation in Theory and Imagination with Emily Apter and Katie Kitamura: Bringing together novelists and poets with literary theorists and literary historians, Creative Writing and Critical Thought is a series of lively and in-depth conversations about the state of literary practice and study in contemporary American culture. In this installment, novelist Katie Kitamura, writer of Intimacies—an electrifying story about an interpreter caught between many truths—joins Professor Emily Apter (Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability) for a conversation on the complexity and consequences of translation and the paradoxes and power of language. Co-sponsored by New Literary History and The Center for Fiction. Online event. More information here. 7:00 p.m. (ET)
Friday, February 25:
On Translating and Being Translated, Karen Emmerich and Ersi Sotiropoulos: The 2022 Boston University Lecture Series in Literary Translation presents Karen Emmerich, moderated by Anna Elliot. Emmerich is a translator of modern Greek poetry and prose, as well as Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University, where she directs the Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication. More information here. 2:30 - 4:30 p.m. (ET)
Saturday, February 26:
Virtual Book Talk with Randi Ward & Kim Simonsen: Join Scandinavia House for a Nordic Literature in Translation event with this year’s American-Scandinavian Foundation Translation Prizewinner, Randi Ward, and the author of the work in translation, Kim Simonsen. Now in its 43rd year, ASF’s Annual Translation Competition awards prizes for outstanding translations of poetry, fiction, drama, or literary prose written by a 20th- or 21st-century Nordic author. In 2021, the Nadia Christensen Prize was awarded to Randi Ward for her translation excerpt from Faroese of Kim Simonsen’s 2013 poetry collection Hvat hjálpir einum menniskja at vakna ein morgun hesumegin hetta áratúsundið (What good does it do for a person to wake up one morning this side of the new millennium). Online event. More information here. 1 p.m. (ET)
Monday, February 28:
Fradl Shtok and the Modern Jewish Canon | A Lecture by Allison Schachter: Associate Professor of Jewish Studies, Russian & East European Studies, Vanderbilt University, Allison Schachter, offers an account of the gendered politics of Yiddish translation in relationship to her project of translating the modernist Yiddish writer, Fradl Shtok. In this talk, Schachter will discuss the challenges and promises of translating Yiddish women writers, and making their projects legible. More information here. 12:30 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. (ET)
Winter Wit | Women in Translation Reading Series: PEN America presents a two-part reading series to support women’s voices in translation, the first session of which will include Olena Jennings (translator) and Iryna Shuvalova (Ukrainian), Samantha Schnee (translator) and Carmen Boullosa (Spanish), Marcela Sulak (translator) and Sharron Hass (Hebrew), and Jayde Will (translator) and Ligija Purinaša (Latgalian). More information here. 1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. (ET)
If you would like us to feature your upcoming translation event, you can send us an email via this link. Please note that we only publish events in which a literary translator is among the panelists/participants.