Thursday, January 04, 2007

Banff Centre Residencies - deadline coming up

The deadline is coming up soon, January 12, to apply for a literary translation residency at the Banff International Literary Translation Centre.

The primary focus of the residency program is to afford literary translators a period of uninterrupted work on a current project, within an international community of translators. Translators may request a joint residency (of up to one week) with a writer, allowing the translator to consult and deepen his or her knowledge of the writer’s intentions and the context of the work being translated. Consultation with the program director and experienced translators in residence as faculty will be available. Three or four times a week participants gather for readings by invited writers and informal presentations by faculty, or simply to exchange information and discuss their work in progress.

The program is open to literary translators from Canada, Mexico and the United States translating from any language, and to international translators working on literature from the Americas (both the North and South American continents).

It looks like a great resource for literary translators and authors who want to work closely with their translators. Note that the guidelines require applicants to have already published at least one book.

You can download the application information from the Banff site. Good luck!

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Cherokee Translation of Thirteen Moons

Charles Frazier's Thirteen Moons is scheduled to be translated into Cherokee, according to an interview with Frazier that appeared in the Seattle P-I last month.
It is supposed to be one of the first major translations into Cherokee in over 100 years. The article did not mention who the translator would be, and I am curious to know what the process would be like.
I think it would be a great service if ALTA could become more involved with Native languages spoken in this hemisphere and see if there is a way to support translators working to and from Native languages. It would be fantastic if there would be a panel on Native languages at upcoming ALTA conferences. It was something I could only dream about when I was hosting the conference last year, and I hope that those of you who are thinking of hosting in the coming years would be able to find a way to forge the connections that would make this a reality.