The seminar hosted four sessions on Saturday that discussed the prospects and challenges facing publishers in Bangladesh and abroad.
The participants called for a South Asia publisher-reader forum for greater reach of books published in the region.
Moderating over a session, bdnews24.com Arts and Senior Editor poet Muhammad Nurul Huda said, “While there is a demand for transnational literature at the international level, various policy guided dos and donts limit publishers’ freedom.”
Less-qualified translation and less attention from Western publishers have made the Chinese literature less acknowledged as the world literature, a sinologist said in a recent interview.
Goran Malmqvist, a sinologist and Emeritus Professor at Stockholm University, told the LSE SU China Development Forum here on Saturday that the Chinese literature is less acknowledged as the world literature, though it was developed and matured earlier than that of the Western countries. Continue reading
An ambitious digital venture is underway at the office of Internet company Yeeyan.org in Sihui East, Beijing’s eastern suburb.
Yeeyan’s Project Gutenberg, which has been ongoing since 2012, is credited with the online translation of Charles Darwin’sThe Voyage of the Beagle. Yeeyan published the Chinese version in August in cooperation with the China Youth Publishing House. Continue reading
In considering Mo Yan’s award of the Nobel Prize for Literature and the popularity of Mai Jia’s novels overseas, the contribution of foreign translators cannot be ignored. Their excellent language capabilities and unique perspective tailored for western readers have helped introduce Chinese literature to the world.
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Experts debated how to upgrade the quality of translation at the three-day Translation and Communication of Chinese Culture Forum at Beijing Language and Culture University that closed recently.
Had it not been for great translators, doyens of literature wouldn’t have been household names, says Suresh Menon
I read recently that there are some 60 literary festivals in our country annually. Yet, how many of these dedicate a whole festival or a day of the festival or even a single session to a discussion on that most neglected aspect of literature: translation? We know who wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude, Hopscotch, Name of The Rose, The Unbearable Lightness of Being and a hundred other classics. But how many of us know who translated these works so we could enjoy them in a language we understand? Continue reading
Nine snowy days in Istanbul, 1591. This is the setting of Orhan Pamuk’s widely red novel, Benim Adım Kırmızı. The story revolves around Eküre, a beautiful woman with two sons, who decides to look for a new husband four years after her own never returns from war. Enter three potential suitors — and chaos. Mystery, love, murder and the supernatural, these are the elements which, when combined, make up an enigmatic plot which haunts the reader long after the book has been put down.
Written by Pamuk in 1998, the book was translated into English in 2001 and is now commonly known as My Name is Red. This book not only helped establish Pamuk’s international reputation, but also contributed towards the Nobel Prize in Literature the author received in 2006. Continue reading
In the second and final part of his article, K. Satchidanandan analyses the challenges faced by inter-language translation in India: The Hindu
Translation came to be institutionalised in independent India as a consequence of the State’s perception that emotional integration of India is possible only through the arts. Literature had a major role to play here. The idea of translation thus got linked to the idea of the nation. If nation, as Benedict Anderson says, is an ‘imagined community’, literature plays a role in creating and sustaining that community. India’s linguistic economy underwent a change after 1947 and mother tongues were perceived to be the chief markers of identity and carriers of tradition. Inter-language translation continues to be one of the chief activities of the Sahitya Akademi and National Book Trust, two public institutions created in the times of Jawaharlal Nehru’s liberal and forward-looking regime. Now we also have other national projects like the National Translation Mission, meant to translate knowledge-texts from English into Indian languages (and hopefully vice-versa), and Indian Literature Abroad meant to make significant Indian literary texts available in foreign languages.
Stories of love and longing from ancient Sanskrit literature, lesser known among modern readers have been rendered into English by retired diplomat and Haksar, acclaimed for his translation of the Kama Sutra.
In “The Seduction of Shiva: Tales of Life And Love” Haksar has compiled an eclectic stories of erotic love from ancient Sanskrit texts which academics have estimated to have been spread over a period of 1500 years, nearly a millennium from the present times.
Although Indian writers in English like Arundhati Roy, Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth and Salman Rushdie are read widely in Germany, there is great possibility of translating regional languages into German, says a visiting publisher. Continue reading
