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What makes a translation great?

What makes a translation great?

“It’s easy to say what a bad translation is. The ones that are accidentally jagged like the person wielding the scissors was drunk. The ones where someone has misunderstood the original, or perhaps misinterpreted it. The ones where all individuality has been smoothed out. But how do we identify a successful translation? When have we done our job well? What is it we want to achieve, beyond mere fluidity?” […]

What makes a translation great?

Literary translation workshops (English, French and Norwegian into Italian) and editing workshops for translators (Fosdinovo, 22-24 July 2018)

From 22-24 July 2018 the sixth event in the ‘Traduttori in Movimento’ series will take place  at Fosdinovo Castle in Italy. The programme offers workshops for translators from English, French and Norwegian into Italian and a translation editing workshop. Translators from Italian into another language may also participate as observers. […]

International Translators’ Centre in Straelen invites translators of W.G. Sebald to a seminar (Deadline 26 April 2018)

ESLT Summer School 2018 ‘Training the Teacher of Literary Translation’ (Rome, 11-14 September 2018)

From 11 – 14 September 2018 the European School of Literary Translation will organise its second Summer school. The Summer school, which will take place at Link Campus University, will bring together 20 translators and educators from across Europe  and is aimed at literary translators (at any stage of their career) who are keen to develop their teaching skills and find out about innovations in the field. […]

Italian Translators’ Association STRADE addresses AmazonCrossing with an open letter

Italian Translators’ Association STRADE addresses AmazonCrossing with an open letter

A panel on how to become a literary translator, organised by Amazon Publishing on 10 March 2018 within the Milan book fair ‘Tempo di Libri’, was the occasion for Italian translators’ associations to follow up on a dialogue with AmazonCrossing about their contracts with translators.

This dialogue started in 2014, after a European campaign involving VdÜ, Strade, ATLF and CEATL. A meeting between the parties was organized at the 2014 Frankfurt book fair. This meeting brought some improvements in AmazonCrossing’s standard translation contract and the parties left with an agreement to continue discussions as CEATL still didn’t deem it satisfactory. […]

Italian Translators’ Association STRADE addresses AmazonCrossing with an open letter

Positive note in Dutch Cultural Policy 2018 – 2021

On 12 March 2018, the Dutch Minister of Education, Culture and Science, Ingrid van Engelshoven, presented the Cultural Policy for 2018 to 2021. Two positive points stand out: after years of austerity, the government will start making investments in culture again and secondly, reasonable remuneration for workers in the sector is explicitly mentioned. […]

International Translators’ Centre in Straelen invites translators of W.G. Sebald to a seminar (Deadline 26 April 2018)

Negotiations on new contract follow successful talks between the Swedish Writers’ Union and the Bonnier Publishing Group

In late November last year the Translators’ section of the Swedish Writers’ Union recommended its members to not sign any new deals with the Bonnier Group.

The Swedish Standard Contract was cancelled last summer and in late autumn Bonnier had presented a draft contract that was unacceptable to the literary translators. Among other things the draft took away the translator’s right to have ‘the last word’ in translations. […]

International Translators’ Centre in Straelen invites translators of W.G. Sebald to a seminar (Deadline 26 April 2018)

Three cases of plagiarism in Bulgaria

In the past year the Bulgarian Translators’ Union (BTU) has dealt with a number of cases of translation plagiarism.

Last March Prof. Ana Dimova, literary translator and BTU member, published an article entitled The (Un)known Joseph Roth: Translation or Transcript in the renowned literary newspaper Literaturen Vestnik. In the article she compared a recent translation of Joseph Roth’s stories into Bulgarian by Vladko Murdarov („Легенда за пияницата светец“, Black Flamingo, 2015) with her own translation of the same stories of thirty years previously („Гробницата на капуцините“. Избрани творби. Народна култура, 1986) and found the differences minimal. […]

Public event during CEATL’s AGM: Boundaries in literary translation (11 May 2018, Kopenhagen)

Bulgarian Translators’ Union honours translator Iglika Vassileva

At the end of 2017 the Bulgarian Translators’ Union organised an evening dedicated to literary translator Iglika Vassileva and her interpretation of the works of Virginia Woolf in Bulgarian. It was the twentieth anniversary of the first publication of Vassileva’s translation of  To the Lighthouse  and a birthday anniversary of the admired translator. […]