Alta Ifland's Blog: Notes on Books - Posts Tagged "non-fiction"
The French-American Foundation Translation Prizes
In an effort to increase their cultural visibility in the States, The French have been sponsoring for a number of years various translation prizes, and helped the winning translators find publishers. This year the reception celebrating the finalists and the winners was on Tuesday, May 24th, and since I was in the City for the BEA, I was more than happy to honor the invitation I’d received. David Bellos—celebrated translator of Ismail Kadare and Georges Pérec—was Master of Ceremonies.
There were two fiction and two non-fiction prizes: in the former category, the winners were Mitzi Angel for Jean-Christophe Valtat’s novella 03, and Lydia Davis for Flaubert’s Madame Bovary; in the latter category, Frederick Brown for Tocqueville’s Letters from America, and Jane Marie Todd for Dominique Charpin’s Reading and Writing in Babylon. Surprisingly, Mitzi Angel is not a professional translator; in fact, she has never translated before, but the book had a strong supporter in a Farrar, Straus and Giroux editor. Lydia Davis wasn’t there, so John Siciliano from Penguin accepted the prize on her behalf. I had met John before, when he was working with my other half, poet and translator Stephen Kessler, on the editing and translation of Borges’s Complete Sonnets. He is a charming, intelligent young man, and it gives me some hope to see that there are still people in his generation—he is barely thirty—who are so devoted to books and serious literature. Jane Marie Todd--whom I didn't know before--gave a great speech. She started with a list of all the things she doesn’t have as a translator: no regular paycheck, no library and interloan privileges, no promotion, no sabbatical, no title; and yet, she said, whenever she thinks of all the things she had to put up with while working in academia, she considers herself fortunate. Now she works at home in her pajamas, reads and translates whatever it pleases her and satisfies her intellectual curiosity, and she doesn’t need to specialize. I am not a hugger, but I felt like hugging her.
After this intellectual feast, we were offered wine and (some very good) champagne. Not to mention the delicious appetizers: they were international in origin (Chinese rolls, crab fried puffs, salmon sandwiches, Mediterranean feta pastries) but the chef must have been French. A fabulous reception!
There were two fiction and two non-fiction prizes: in the former category, the winners were Mitzi Angel for Jean-Christophe Valtat’s novella 03, and Lydia Davis for Flaubert’s Madame Bovary; in the latter category, Frederick Brown for Tocqueville’s Letters from America, and Jane Marie Todd for Dominique Charpin’s Reading and Writing in Babylon. Surprisingly, Mitzi Angel is not a professional translator; in fact, she has never translated before, but the book had a strong supporter in a Farrar, Straus and Giroux editor. Lydia Davis wasn’t there, so John Siciliano from Penguin accepted the prize on her behalf. I had met John before, when he was working with my other half, poet and translator Stephen Kessler, on the editing and translation of Borges’s Complete Sonnets. He is a charming, intelligent young man, and it gives me some hope to see that there are still people in his generation—he is barely thirty—who are so devoted to books and serious literature. Jane Marie Todd--whom I didn't know before--gave a great speech. She started with a list of all the things she doesn’t have as a translator: no regular paycheck, no library and interloan privileges, no promotion, no sabbatical, no title; and yet, she said, whenever she thinks of all the things she had to put up with while working in academia, she considers herself fortunate. Now she works at home in her pajamas, reads and translates whatever it pleases her and satisfies her intellectual curiosity, and she doesn’t need to specialize. I am not a hugger, but I felt like hugging her.
After this intellectual feast, we were offered wine and (some very good) champagne. Not to mention the delicious appetizers: they were international in origin (Chinese rolls, crab fried puffs, salmon sandwiches, Mediterranean feta pastries) but the chef must have been French. A fabulous reception!
Notes on Books
Book reviews and occasional notes and thoughts on world literature and writers by an American writer of Eastern European origin.
- Alta Ifland's profile
- 172 followers
