Best Literary Translations 2024

by Jane Hirshfield (Editor)

Best Literary Translations ( BLT ) is a new, annual anthology that celebrates world literatures in English translation and honors the literary journals that publish that work.
BLT features poetry and prose originally written in twenty-two languages, brought into English by thirty-eight of the most talented translators working today. The four co-editors chose a long list of finalists from the five hundred nominations. BLT's poems, short stories, essays, and hybrid works were drawn from submissions that spanned more than eighty countries and nearly sixty languages. Featuring work from the top literary journals with US-based editors, ranging from Asymptote to Words Without Borders , BLT honors some of the excellent literature created by a diverse range of authors and translators. This anthology redefines the canon of global literatures in English translation, showcasing the brave and brilliant work of contemporary translators and editors.
Guest-edited by Jane Hirshfield to include both contemporary and historical works for the inaugural edition; co-edited Noh Anothai, Wendy Call, Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún and Öykü Tekten.

Genres: Short Stories, Poetry

225 pages, Paperback

Published April 9, 2024

About the author

Jane Hirshfield is the author of nine collections of poetry, including the forthcoming Ledger (Knopf, March 2020), The Beauty (Knopf, 2015), longlisted for the National Book Award, Come Thief (Knopf, August 23, 2011), After (HarperCollins, 2006), which was named a “Best Book of 2006” by The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, and England’s Financial Times and shortlisted for England’s T.S. Eliot Award; and Given Sugar, Given Salt (finalist for the 2001 National Book Critics Circle Award); as well as two now-classic books of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry and Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World. She has also edited and co-translated three books collecting the work of women poets from the distant past, and one e-book on Basho and the development of haiku, The Heart of Haiku. Hirshfield’s other honors include The Poetry Center Book Award, the California Book Award, fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the 40th Annual Distinguished Achievement Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, an honor previously received by Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, and William Carlos Williams. Her work has been featured in ten editions of The Best American Poems and appears in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Times Literary Supplement/TLS, The American Poetry Review, Poetry, The New York Review of Books, Orion, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere. Hirshfield’s poems have also been featured many times on Garrison Keillor’s Writers Almanac as well as two Bill Moyers’ PBS television specials. She has presented her poems and taught at festivals and universities throughout the U.S., in China, Japan, the Middle East, the U.K., Poland, and Ireland. In 2019, she was elected into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Hirshfield's appearance schedule can be found at:

Reviews

[Bernie Gourley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This "best of" annual celebrates the unsung translator. Many of the original works are recent but some are old or even ancient; it is these translations to English that are in all cases recent. Spanish and Arabic translations are well-represented, but with respect to the twenty or so languages included, almost all are the sole representative for that particular source language. Poetry makes up the bulk of the collection (including prose poems,) but there are several pieces of short fiction and a piece of creative nonfiction or two.

Among my favorites were: "Grazing Land" (Greek,) "The Snail's Spiral" (Spanish,) "The Lion" (Kurdish,) "Deterioration" (Persian,) "Graceless" (Chinese,) "Our Village" (Tigrinya,) and "The Sea Krait" (Tagalog.) But, as one would expect of a carefully curated "best of" collection, there were no stinkers in the batch.

If you enjoy literature in translation, this book is well worth investigating.

[Elisabeth Lovelace · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the short stories and stories from around the world.

[Rach · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely compilation of stories and poems that I would not have access to without the help of translators around the world. It took me the whole summer to peruse but I would recommend this book to everyone. The prologue helped me understand the focus of this project and I especially appreciated the conversation about mimicking vs transcribing in translation, and what is really more loyal to the original text. As someone who only speaks English this really made me want to learn another language so I too can understand what the art of translation really involves.

[Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review here: https://northamericanreview.org/open-...