Lecture on self-translation and Shoah Literature

Fransiska Louwagie (Université de Louvain) will give a lecture on "Témoignage et réécriture: Les écrivains de la Shoah en français et l’autotraduction" on Monday, November 29 at 6:00 p.m. at the Barker Center, Room 133 in Cambridge. For more information see the Anthropology Graduate Program at Harvard University.

Self-translation from indigenous languages

Last week I attended the first international conference on self-translation in Pescara, Italy. There I had the chance to meet Julio-César Santoyo, who has been researching on self-translation for many years. During our talk, he made me aware of self-translation from indigenous languages, an aspect of self-translation I had completely ignored till that day. He was so kind to give me a copy of a presentation he gave last year in Canada on this topic as a starting point for my own research. Back in Germany I now started researching. It is a really fascinating field.
Today I would like to present you a Mayan writer and self-translator: Humberto Ak'abal. He was born in 1953 in Momostenango, Guatemala. He writes his poetry in Quiché and translates it into Spanisch. His poems are published in bilingual editions. Some of his work has been translated from the Spanish version into English, German and other languages.

For further reading and listening:

• Presentation of the author by Mariolein Sabarte Belacortu
• Presentation of the author and the book "Drum Stone", a trilingual edition of selected poems. With the possibility to see inside the book.
• Podcast from a lecture with his english translators given at the Ullapool Book Festival 2010
• Erich Hakl on his German translation "Trommel aus Stein" (in German)
• Article in L'Express (15/10/2010): Humberto Ak'abal: hymnes, lamentos et tambours de pierre (in French)
  

Alexakis book presentation in Tours, France

Vassilis Alexakis will present his new book Le premier mot this thursday, 18th November, at the Libraire La boîte à Livres in Tours, France.

Lectures by Thiong'o in November

The African self-translator Ngugi Wa Thiong'o will speak on several occasions in November 2010.

On November 20, 2010 at 3:30pm he will speak at the Chapman Conference Center in Miami about Dreams in a Time of War: A Childhood Memoir. This lecture is part of the Miami Book Fair international.

He will also give a lecture at the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum at Claremont McKenna College on Monday, November 29, 2010 from 6:45 pm till 8:00 pm.
For more information see the newsletter The Fortnightly.

Federman and Beckett...

both self-translators and friends. In his wonderful memorial essay samuel beckett: the gift of words, written shortly after Beckett's death, Raymond Federman shares his memories and gives us insight into their friendship and Becketts struggle with his self-translations. Please read the essay here..