On October 4th 2021, Independent UK publishers of works in translation Fitzcarraldo Editions, Peirene Press, V&Q and Sinoist Books came together for five talks to celebrate International Translation Day!
9:00 - 10:00: Sinoist Books present Translation as Collaboration: personal experiences of co-translating Chinese with Nicky Harman and Jun Liu.
In this talk we’ll join award winning Chinese to English translator Nicky Harman and her collaborator Jun Liu as they describe their process in co-translating Jia Pingwa’s Sojourn Teahouse (soon to be published by Sinoist Books), and compare it to the process of solo-translating Broken Wings by the same author.
10:45 - 11:45: Fitzcarraldo Editions present Sophie Hughes in conversation with Maddie Rogers and Caitlin Van Buren on translating from Spanish.
Sophie Hughes has translated novels by several contemporary Latin American and Spanish authors, including Laia Jufresa, Rodrigo Hasbún and Alia Trabucco Zerán. She was shortlisted for the Booker International in 2019 and 2020.
12:30-13:30: V&Q Books present Ayça Türkoğlu and Katy Derbyshire in conversation with Selim Özdoğan.
How do you translate family anecdotes into a novel? How do two people translate one book? Are translators and writers literary anthropologists, explaining unfamiliar settings to their readers? Join the translators and the writer of The Blacksmith’s Daughter as they talk matters Turkish, German and Anglophone – all about a trilogy of novels tracing a woman’s life between Anatolia and Lower Saxony. May include sneak peaks from book two…
15:00 - 16:00: Peirene Press present Winter Flowers: Adriana Hunter in conversation with Maddie Rogers.
Award-winning translator from French, Adriana Hunter speaks to Maddie Rogers, publisher at Peirene Press and host of Borderless Book Club. Join them to hear about Adriana's illustrious career as a translator, her work with Peirene Press over the last decade, and her latest translation of Angélique Villeneuve's Winter Flowers (out October 7th from Peirene).
17:00 - 18:00: "Untranslatability": the most difficult problems in translation.
Join translators Adriana Hunter, Annie Rutherford, Christopher Payne and Sophie Hughes to discuss the most difficult challenges in translation and whether anything is genuinely untranslatable.