New Books in German Emerging Translators Programme (14 January deadline)

A great-looking opportunity for aspiring literary translators from German to English:

New Books in German invites applications for its 2011 Emerging Translators Programme.

Six emerging German-English translators will take part in the project. Each translator will be commissioned to produce a sample translation of a book from the Spring 2011 issue of New Books in German. The translations will be commissioned at the beginning of February 2011, and completed by May 2011. Participants will be invited to a workshop in London in April, run by an experienced translator, where the group will work together on each sample translation.

Applicants are invited to send a short C.V. and a translation of the short story ‘Gran Partita’ from Andreas Neeser, Unsicherer Grund (reviewed in NBG 28), by January 14th.

Further Details

The Sample Translations:

The length of each sample is to be confirmed, but is likely to be in the region of 4,000 words. Each translator will be paid a fee for the sample, agreed in advance with New Books in German. An extract of each finished sample will be made available on the NBG website. English language publishers will then be able to request the full sample translation.

The Workshop:

To apply for the project you must be able to attend the workshop in London on Saturday 2 April 2011. Lunch and coffee/tea will be provided free of charge during the workshop. Limited travel grants for the workshop will be available for participants from outside London (likely to be in the region of £50). We regret that accommodation cannot be provided.

How to Apply:

Applications are invited from UK- and Ireland-based translators of German into English, who have not yet published (or been contracted to publish) a book-length literary translation. Applications should include a short C.V. and a translation into English of Andreas Neeser’s short story ‘Gran Partita’. Please email nbg at london.goethe.org to request a copy of the story.

Both texts should be Microsoft Word documents, and emailed to: nbg at london.goethe.org

The deadline for complete applications is 5pm on Friday 14 January.

Translation competitions (German-English, Russian-Italian, any-English)

Just came across this 'concorso per traduttori esordienti' from Russian to Italian. The website says that 'L'Associazione Premio Gorky dà il via al concorso rivolto ai giovani talenti della traduzione letteraria. Il concorso vuole diventare un buon auspicio per i traduttori emergenti'. See here for the Russian text to be translated (by the end of February) and here for the rules.

Readers in the US translating from German might be interested in this competition for aspiring German to English literary translators (deadline 28 February 2011).

Also, a deadline reminder for the Dryden Prize for unpublished literary translations from any language into English, jointly organised by the British Comparative Literature Association and the British Centre for Literary Translation. The deadline for 2011 is 14 February (postal entries only).

Review of Flaubert translated by Lydia Davis

A rich, interesting review by Julian Barnes in the London Review of Books of Lydia Davis's new translation of Flaubert's Madame Bovary. The review gets right into the nitty-gritty of the text.

For more by and on Davis as a translator of Flaubert, see here. On her previous translations see this exchange about her translation of Proust in the New York Review of Books. For a thought-provoking example of intertextuality in Davis's work not directly related to translation, see here.

CFP: Extratext, paratext and metatext in translation, Newcastle September 2011

An interesting CFP:

We are pleased to announce an International Conference to be held on 8th - 9th September 2011 at Newcastle University School of Modern Languages. This is one of a series of events which will be held to celebrate the centenary of Modern Languages at Newcastle University. The theme of the conference is

'Text, Extra-text, Meta-text, and Para-text in Translation and Interpreting'

For this ground-breaking conference we invite papers on the implications of the texts (including graphics) which surround and support translations and interpreting. We welcome contrastive, comparative, analytical and critical studies of any aspect of text, extra-text, meta-text, and para-text attached to or applied to translation and interpreting.  This includes preface, foreword, epilogue, postscript, footnotes, endnotes, bio-notes, internal and external illustration, blurb, review, and publicity, layout, book jackets, and illustrations which accompany and affect translation or interpreting. Any language pair will be considered, and any areas we have not thought of will be doubly welcome. We envisage four parallel panels: 1. Extra-text in Translation; 2. Meta-text in Translation; 3. Para-text in Translation; 4. Extra-text, Meta-text and Para-text in Interpreting.

Please send your abstract of not more than 250 words to Valerie.Pellatt at ncl.ac.uk by March 31st 2011.
More information at http://www.ncl.ac.uk/sml/2010conference/main.htm.

5 fellowships in translation research training: deadline 31 January 2011

This may be of interest to doctoral and postdoctoral researchers in Translation Studies:

TIME (Translation Research Training: An integrated and intersectoral model for Europe)  is offering 4 Early Stage Researcher (ESR) Fellowships (2011-2014) and 1 Experienced Researcher (ER) Fellowship (2011-2013)

Coordinator: Reine Meylaerts (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium)

Partners: Yves Gambier (University of Turku, Finland), Anthony Pym (Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Spain) and Christina Schaeffner (Aston University, UK)

Associated partners: Amnesty International Vlaanderen, Lionbridge International, Logoscript and Observatoire social européen

Subprojects

*   Subproject 1: Translation Technologies: For a Humanization of Efficiencies and Usability
*   Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Tarragona, Spain)
*   Subproject 2: Multimedia and Multimodal Translation: Accessibility and Reception [a+b]
*   University of Turku (Finland)
*   Subproject 3: Translating for the Minorities: Linguistic Diversity and Integration in Europe
*   K.U.Leuven (Belgium)
*   Subproject 4: Transformation through Translation: Media Representation of Political Discourse in Europe
*   Aston University (UK)

Applications for one of the positions should consist of:

·         Reading carefully the criteria for eligibility (http://www.kuleuven.be/cetra/TIME/eligibility.html)
·         Filling in the application form (http://www.kuleuven.be/cetra/TIME/applicationform.html)
·         A letter of motivation
·         A curriculum vitae
·         A letter of recommendation and/or the name and contact details of at least two academic references

You can send your CV, letter of motivation, letter of recommendation and/or the names and contact details of at least two academic references by email to steven.dewallens at hubrussel.be.

Application deadline: 31 January 2011

Further information
Candidates:
·         are invited to visit http://www.kuleuven.be/cetra/TIME/index.html and are asked to read carefully the criteria for eligibility;
·         can contact Reine Meylaerts (reine.meylaerts at arts.kuleuven.be), Yves Gambier (gambier at utu.fi), Anthony Pym (anthony.pym at urv.net) or Christina Schaeffner (c.schaeffner at aston.ac.uk) for further information.

Translation taster, short course and summer school, London 2011

This just came round, and may be of interest. Research students may be able to apply for a subsidy to attend:

We are told that:

This is to announce a new research-training initiative, funded by the AHRC, the School of Advanced Study at the University of London [SAS] and the University of Westminster. It is a collaboration between the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies [IGRS], Westminster University and the Translators Association of the Society of Authors, UK.

The project offers training for native Anglophones who have an advanced knowledge of one or more other languages (research students and others) to develop their translation skills under the tutorship of professionals in the field: seven translators and an editor. The courses take three forms:

·         Online training, freely available on the SAS VLE, moodle ? these courses (Arabic, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish & Editing Skills) will be uploaded in spring 2011;

·         A Taster Event (8-9 April 2011) at the IGRS, London: classes in French, German, Russian & Spanish;

·         A Summer School (18-23 July 2011) at the IGRS, London: classes in Arabic, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish & Editing Skills.

To apply for the Taster Event and/or the Summer School, follow the url below. Please observe the deadlines as places are limited to 80, and UK student subsidies limited to 20, at each event.

Following completion of any of these courses, you may apply to take an examination and, if successful, be entered on a Database of Academic Translators & Editors [DATE], which will be set up in 2011-12.

For details and application forms, see http://igrs.sas.ac.uk/postgraduate/use-your-language-use-your-english.html.

For a copy of the project poster, email either igrs at sas.ac.uk or naomi.segal at sas.ac.uk.

The editing skills initiative is a particularly good idea imho. 

Anthony Burgess Foundation PhD bursary (deadline 31 January 2011)

Have just seen a bursary announcement (details below) for future PhD researchers interested in the work of Anthony Burgess. Since Burgess was also a prolific translator from several languages, this may also be of interest to TS researchers:

Applications are invited for a fully-funded PhD bursary to support a student researching the literature or music of Anthony Burgess. The bursary, which is tenable anywhere in the world, will be awarded to a scholar who is beginning his or her studies in the academic year 2011-12.

Applicants should submit a detailed project proposal and two academic references (in English). To be eligible for the bursary, applicants should already have been offered a place on an accredited university PhD programme.

For further information, please write to director at anthonyburgess.org

The closing date for applications is 31 January 2011.