Translating Cube: Six Sides of European Literature and Translation

 15 – 18 April 2015

Ljubljana (PROGRAMME)

Poetic Transgressions

Wednesday, 15 April 2015

19:30h

Opening: Claudia Dathe and Tanja Žigon

Being finagled and checked

Linguistically the Slovenian and Ukrainian languages are similar. During the event, participants of the EU-funded project TransStar Europe will each read a sentence, a quote or a poem either in Slovenian or Ukrainian in order to discover the differences and similarities between the two languages.

Despite the linguistic proximity there are many historical and cultural differences between Slovenia and Ukraine which will be presented in the second part of the event: participants of the EU-funded project TransStar Europe will introduce things that do not exist anywhere else, which in the past were common and are almost unknown in their country of origin. In this way cultural and linguistic diversity is emphasized.

Facilitator: Lydia Nagel

Location: Hotel Pri Mraku

Thursday, 16 April 2015

9:30h

Welcome and official statement by the Vice Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Gregor Perko

Prof. Dr. Schamma Schahadat, coordinator of the TransStar Europe and Translating Cube projects, University of Tübingen:

Opening ceremony of the photo exhibit entitled Camera Obscura – Places of Translation (the exhibit contains pinhole camera pictures and texts created within the framework of the project Translating Cube: Six Sides of European Literature and Translation)

Organisation: Alenka Lavrin and Tanja Žigon

Location: lobby of the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana

10:00 – 11:00h

Being exchanged: the Slovenian book market and the advancement of translation

Katja Stergar, who is a consultant at the Slovenian Book Agency and the Slovenian representative at Traduki, will give the talk on the Slovenian book market. The event will present a variety of assistance programs that help to advance translation activities from foreign languages into Slovenian and the other way around.

Location: Modra soba (Blue Parlor), Faculty of Arts (5th floor)

16:00 – 16:30h

Being played: what do we consider as untranslatable?

Small pieces of paper with translation problems will be collected and pinned onto a big board; all that is confusing, untranslatable or ambivalent is welcome and will subsequently be discussed.

Facilitation: Tjaša Šket

Location: corridor of the Department of Translatology at the Faculty of Arts in the different groups

16:30 – 17:30h

Being checked: prospective translators in discussion with established colleagues

Budding translators from the EU-funded project TransStar Europe will gather at the big board with Ostap Slyvynsky, Jurko Prokhasko and Štefan Vevar where they will discuss translation problems that have been collected on that same board. They will talk about their experiences and specifically broach on issues that arise when translating poetry. Anja Wutej and Franziska Mazi will open the event by reading from their translation of two chansons of the famous Slovenian poet Svetlana Makarovič.

Facilitation: Anja Wutej

Location: corridor of the Department of Translatology at the Faculty of Arts

19:30h

Being searched and found: poetry today

The discussion with the author and translator Raoul Schrott will touch on his translation of Illias by Homer and classical Arabic love poetry as well as on his book Gehirn und Gedicht. Wie wir unsere Wirklichkeit konstruieren [Mind and Poetry: How We Construct Our Reality] (with Arthur Jacobs, 2011) and the short story Das Schweigende Kind [The Child That Kept Silent] (2012).

Participants from the TransStar Europe project will read their own translations of poetry by Raoul Schrott into both Slovenian and Ukrainian: Mykola Lipisivitskij, Valentyna Bilokrynytska, Olha Kravchuk, Olga-Daryna Drachuk, Ana Dejanović, Irena Smodiš, Karmen Schödel.

Facilitator: Daniela Kocmut

Location: Opera Bar

Following the discussion there will be a reception and a jazz concert by the band Lothar Krist B3 from Hannover.

Friday, 17 April 2015

10:00 – 11:00h

Being exchanged: career as a literary translator

Discussion with Stana Anželj, Tina Štrancar and Sebastian Walcher.

Participants of the TransStar Europe project will lead a discussion with three former students of the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana who in a really short time have been able to establish themselves as literary translators in Slovenia. Topics covered in the discussion will be the terms and conditions for entry into as well as their experiences and working methods on the Slovenian market of literary translation. Also invited to the event are current students of the Department of Translatology.

Facilitation: Tina Štrancar

Location: Department of Translatology at the Faculty of Arts, room 31

11:30 – 13:00h

Being exchanged: dual talent

There will be a meeting with the publisher, author and literary translator Aleš Berger and the critic, cultural journalist and publisher Petra Vidali.

Aleš Berger is the publisher of the series entitled Kondor and nova lirika, the translator of J.L. Borges, Apollinaire, Char, Queneau, Prévert, Beckett, Lautréamont and also of the Asterix comic into Slovenian. He is the author of a number of works of prose and plays. Petra Vidali is the editor of the translation series at Litera publishing called babilon, where works of Genazino, Erpenbeck, Geiger, Mora and Haushofer amongst others were published. She works at Večer, a daily newspaper.

Facilitation: Irena Smodiš

Location: Department of Translatology at the Faculty of Arts, room 31

19:30h

Being read: life and death

The reading and discussion will be with the Austrian author and recipient of the Büchner prize, Josef Winkler, and the Ukrainian poet Ostap Slyvynsky. Roppongi, Wenn es soweit ist [When It’s Time] and Ich reiß mir eine Wimper aus [I Will Tear Out my Eye Lash] was translated into Slovenian by Josef Winkler. Ostap Slyvynsky is a translator from Bulgarian, Polish, Macedonian and Belarusian into Ukrainian and the author of four volumes of poetry. They will speak about the existential challenges of life, about Christian upbringing and about the current situation in their countries.

Participants from the TransStar Europe project will read from their own translations of texts by Josef Winkler and Ostap Slyvynsky: Janko Trupej, Alenka Lavrin, Yuliya Mykytyuk.

Facilitation: Amalija Maček and Claudia Dathe

Location: Literary Translators Association (Društvo slovenskih književnih prevajalcev)

Saturday , 18 April 2015

10:00 – 12:00h

Being checked: in Ljubljana many literary paths cross

Literary and cultural city tour with the translator Donald Reindl. During the tour participants will also visit Trubarjeva street and the book stores which are located there (Sanje, Modrijan, Mladinska knjiga).

19:00h

Being read: literature and politics

An evening with Katja Perat, Miklavž Komelj and Natalka Sniadanko.

Katja Perat attracted attention with her first poetry volume Najboljši so padli [The Best Have Fallen] and she will present her new volume Davek na dodano vrednost [Value Added Tax]. Miklavž Komelj has translated Pessoa, Vallejo, Barnes and Pasolini and is the author of a great number of poetry volumes as well as scholarly articles on art history. Just recently he published his volume of poetry entitled Noč je abstraktnejša od n [The Night is More Abstract Than N]. Natalka Sniadanko has translated Milosz, Grass, Kafka and Herbert into Ukrainian and has established herself with her first work entitled Collection of Passions. Her new book Frau Müller Does Not Intend to Pay More will soon be published in German.

Participants of the TransStar Europe project will read their own translations of texts by authors who will be present at the event: Daniela Trieb and Lydia Nagel.

Facilitation: Ana Dejanović

Location: Hostel Celica, Gallery

Following the event will be a concert of the a capella group Jazzy.si

free admission

Authors: Przemek Zajfert and participants: Projekts “TransStar Europa” and “Translating Cube – Six Sides of European Literature and Translation”

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Chairs and lecterns moved aside, guitars and trumpets being tuned – on Saturday evening the translators took a time off from their work and danced to the newest songs by Serhiy Zhadan and his band „Sobaky v kosmosi” (Dogs in Space).

The new album “Fight for her” is mainly dedicated to time-critical topics – with a good dose of humour and a lively musical arrangement. Those who are somehow familiar with Ukraine – the home country of the band – surely recognized its social phenomena and odious figures.

The audience shouted twice for an encore. When even those guests who don’t understand a word in Ukrainian jump and sing along, it is a definite success, isn’t it?

The award-winning Polish author Olga Tokarczuk presented her novel “Drive your Plough over the Bones of the Dead”, her first foray into the crime fiction genre. The author also spoke on the cooperation between authors and translators. The reading, which took place on the 25th of September 2014 in the House of Literature in Stuttgart was moderated by Alida Bremer, Stefan Heck served as the interpreter and actress Doris Wolters read from the novel (Photos).

Aller Liebe Anfang [The Beginning of all Love] is Judith Hermann’s first novel. Stella and Jason are married, they have one daughter, Ava, and live in a house at the edge of the city. One day a man, a stranger, appears at their door in order to have a talk with Stella, as he claims. The next day the stranger comes again and after that does not leave her alone anymore. Judith Hermann tells the story of a life believed to be safe and sound that suddenly falls apart and of the irrational feeling of being defenseless. She is considered to be a definitive and formative German-language narrator of the Berlin of the 1990s. She is widely reviewed and translated, especially in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. In the second part of the evening Judith Hermann will survey the European dimension of her texts together with her translator Yurko Prokhasko, who at the same time is one of the leading intellectuals of Ukraine.

Striking Things from Slovenian and Ukrainian Contemporary Literature

In the relaxed atmosphere of a private residence in Stuttgart, participants of the EU-funded project TransStar Europe will present excerpts from their literary translations of texts by great authors from the countries they come from. They will read texts of contemporary authors who tell their story in present day Europe. It is a story of identity and homelessness, uprootedness, foreigners and foreign lands, new beginnings and of borders, of the movement of borders and their transgression.

Shakespeare translator and scholar Frank Günther was a guest of the Translation Cube project in Stuttgart. On 26 September 2014 he gave a “translation performance”, in which he addressed the various problems and pitfalls that a Shakespeare translator encounters and has to deal with. He illustrated his points by referring to different German translations, and showed how certain lines in Shakespeare’s plays were changed in translation.

Translating Cube Stuttgart

Programme (PDF)

24 – 28 September 2014

„ALLER LIEBE ANFANG“ [The Beginning of all Love]: The Art of Literary Translation

International Translating Cube at Literaturhaus Stuttgart

Six exciting sides of European Literature and Translation, this is what translating cube stands for. Categories such as „Being Read“, „Being Played“, „Being Exchanged“, „Being Finagled“, „Being Checked“ and „Being Searched and Found“ will help the audience interactively experience events that place translation into an artistic and analytical limelight. In the cities of Stuttgart, Cracow, Ljubljana, Tübingen, Prague and Berlin authors, translators and experts will present the complex and polymorph nature of European literature, its spaces and entanglements.

Translators in contemporary Europe are able to excel as a result of their transcultural biographies, a different reading of texts, different life experiences as well as movements between cultures and traditions.

Wednesday, 24 September at 8 p.m.

Being Checked: Judith Hermann: Aller Liebe Anfang [The Beginning of all Love]

Special Guest: Yurko Prokhasko, Translator

Moderator: Uwe Kossack

Location: Literaturhaus Stuttgart

Aller Liebe Anfang [The Beginning of all Love] is Judith Hermann’s first novel. Stella and Jason are married, they have one daughter, Ava, and live in a house at the edge of the city. One day a man, a stranger, appears at their door in order to have a talk with Stella, as he claims. The next day the stranger comes again and after that does not leave her alone anymore. Judith Hermann tells the story of a life believed to be safe and sound that suddenly falls apart and of the irrational feeling of being defenseless. She is considered to be a definitive and formative German-language narrator of the Berlin of the 1990s. She is widely reviewed and translated, especially in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. In the second part of the evening Judith Hermann will survey the European dimension of her texts together with her translator Yurko Prokhasko, who at the same time is one of the leading intellectuals of Ukraine.
Thursday, 25 September at 8 p.m.

Being Read: Olga Tokarczuk

The Song of Bats

Moderator: Alida Bremer

Location: Literaturhaus Stuttgart

Olga Tokarczuk has received numerous awards for her writing and is considered to be one of the big names in Polish literature. With the novel The Song of Bats she ventures into the genre of thrillers, a genre that is new for her. The quirky narrator Janina Duszejko, the village English teacher, has two passions: astrology and animals. When one dead body after another is found in the neighborhood, she is always one step ahead of the police. In the process she knows how to skillfully use the inconspicuous appearance of an older woman with plastic bag in hand. Tokarczuk was born in 1962 and in 2008 she was awarded the most important Polish literary award, the Nike prize. The film adaption of The Song of Bats is planned as a German-Polish coproduction with Agnieszka Holland as director.

The writer, translator and literary mediator Alida Bremer talks with Olga Tokarczuk about her writing and her work, the transnational and European roots of her texts as well as the international attention she receives as a result of literary translation.

Friday, 26 September at 8 p.m.

Being played: The Art of Translation

An evening with Frank Günther

Location: Literaturhaus Stuttgart

With the help of words, photos, installations and film this event will search for the art of literary translation. In a word performance the translator and Shakespeare expert Frank Günther will provide fascinating insights into Shakespeare’s world, whose 450^th birthday will be celebrated this year. In an unconventional and lively manner he invites the audience to join him on a unique walk through Shakespeare’s works. Günther, who was born in 1947, has translated Shakespeare for over 40 years now. Subsequently, we will demonstrate the art of translation in associative formats: in video poetics on transcultural places of the Ukrainian lyricist Kateryna Babkina, in the text and translation installation of the novella Salzwasser [Salt Water] by Ulrike Almut Sandig, which was set to music by the author in cooperation with Sebastian Reuter, and in a photo show on places of translation by participants of the EU-funded project TransStar Europe.

Saturday 27 September starting at 8 p.m.

Being played: Serhiy Zhadan & “Sobaky v kosmosi” [Dogs in Space]

Location:  Literaturhaus Stuttgart

The „boldest voice of the younger generation of the Ukrainian literary scene“ (Neue Zürcher Zeitung), Serhiy Zhadan and the ska band Sobaky v kosmosi combine ska and reggae of political emigrants from Jamaica with psychedelic choir elements from Ukrainian folk music. During their concert in Stuttgart, the musicians will introduce their new album Fight for Them. Serhiy Zhadan, who was born in 1974, is the most important and most exciting representative of a younger generation of writers in Ukraine today. He comes from Eastern Ukraine which is characterised by heavy metal and mining metropolises and whose population was greatly influenced by the industrial myth of the Soviet period. In his works of prose called Depeche Mode, Anarchy in the UKR and Hymn of a Democratic Youth he tracks down this space and its people. He accompanies whores, mine workers, students, the down-and-out and many others on their search for a new identity in the confusion of the new times.

Sunday 28 September at 11 a.m.

Searched and Found: Striking Things from Slovenian and Ukrainian Contemporary Literature

Location: Reading in the Foyer of Petra Bewer and Peter Conradi

Moderator: Amalija Maček

In the relaxed atmosphere of a private residence in Stuttgart, participants of the EU-funded project TransStar Europe will present excerpts from their literary translations of texts by great authors from the countries they come from. They will read texts of contemporary authors who tell their story in present day Europe. It is a story of identity and homelessness, uprootedness, foreigners and foreign lands, new beginnings and of borders, of the movement of borders and their transgression.

The translating cube is shaped by participants of the EU-funded project TransStar Europe who come from eight different European countries. In the course of three years they will be educated and trained in literary translation and cultural management within the framework of the project and will also be able to collect international experience.

Coordinator: Slavic Studies Department of the University of Tübingen. Partners: Villa Decius Krakau, Literaturhaus Stuttgart, University of Ljubljana, Charles University of Prague and Literaturwerkstatt Berlin as well as the partners of the EU-funded project TransStar Europe.

You will find more detailed information on the six stations of the translating cube and on the EU-funded project TransStar Europe under:

http://transstar-europa.org/projekt/ubersetzungswurfel/

or

http://www.slavistik.uni-tuebingen.de/transstar.html

The project will be sponsored by the Federal Foundation for Culture, by the Program for Lifelong Learning of the European Union and the Robert Bosch Foundation.

Translating cube in Krakow (Videoreportage)

New German Prose

On Saturday four young translators read texts they freshly translated from German into Polish. Which location would have been better suited for this than Café Czułky Barbarzyńca. The audience listened surrounded by books of Lukas Laski, Zofia Zukharska, Karolina Matuszewska and Magdalena Stefańska. Sława Lisiecka, the workshop leader of the German-Polish TransStar group, moderated the event.

Read more.