Translation: Angelica Gorodischer

I reviewed Kalpa Imperial by the Argentine author Angelica Gorodischer for Belletrista - my review is here:

http://bit.ly/aojAid

In Club Read 2010, the question then arose: had any other of her works been translated into English?

A bit of googling did not find any other translations of full-length works by Angelica Gorodischer, but did turn up this interesting note from the website of Small Press, publishers of Kalpa Imperial:

(From http://smallbeerpress.com/about/)

"We are seriously interested in more translations — especially of Angelica Gorodischer. However, we are monolingual (sorry) which makes the editorial process difficult. If you are a grad student looking for a translation project which may be of interest to us, we recommend Gorodischer’s Trafalgar and Prodigies."

Is this the right place to post this call for translators? I'm not sure, but members of the Salon may, if not wanting to take on the project themselves, know someone else who might. I hope this is of interest, anyway.

1: Surely it should not be that hard to get works in Spanish translated. Funny that the press is having any trouble at all. Now if it were some obscure Eastern European language, or the tribal language of some small tribe in one of the "Stans" in former Soviet Union, it would be more understandable...

Does anyone here have a name of a good Spanish translator?

And finally, Ursula LeGuin translated these, I notice from the cover (nice review by the way TJ) - why couldn't she do some more? Or at least recommend someone else?

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA #2

And I wish I did not have to laugh or cry about it.

Yes, I in fact translate from two of those "obscure Eastern European languages", namely Czech and Slovak.

I have received most enthusiastic welcome and encouragement from authors I have approached, from agents, from the literary agency which represents most authors. The next response from them is to say, "Aah, if only you succeed in getting a publisher...it is virtually impossible..." And I have been approaching various publishers and magazines with, dare I say humbly, excellent translations of major works by major authors. The response has been chilling. Some languages are always fashionable. Some become briefly fashionable because of their exotic cachet. And some are just very difficult to place.

3: I just meant there would be fewer people like you than there are Spanish speakers, given so many countries speak Spanish. I found it hard to believe the press said they couldn't find a translator for a Spanish language novel.

I guess I felt that the press was being a little disingenuous.

I don't know about publishers responses to Eastern European lit in particular but I can't say it surprises me. Now on the other hand if someone from the Czech Republic or Slovakia won a Nobel for literature it would also not surprise me if you'd suddenly have a window of interest...

Of course, Anna, I understand.

The sad part of my tale of woe is that a large part of the oeuvre of Jaroslav Seifert, Nobel Prize winner, is to this point not published in English. I HAVE TRANSLATED ONES NOT AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH. I have been sending them out. And so far, at least, the work does not fit editorial needs.

But I continue to live in hope.

>6 MeditationesMartini: polu, you are breaking my heart. I know that sounds sarcastic, but I really mean it. It surprises me with the recent popularity of Kundera and the high profile of Vaclav Havel--I mean, not that I'm trying in any way to say that's all that Czech and Slovak literature is, but people are clearly reading Czech writers. I wonder about academic publishers - I guess they only deal with, well, academics.

>5 polutropos:, polutropos: Echoing the comment from booksfallapart, have you been getting this reaction from presses specialising in translations in particular, or from presses of all sizes, shapes and stripes?