BCLT Events

BCLT Research Seminar

Classical Arrangements: Ancient Texts, Beyond Translation with Paschalis Nikolaou

Wednesday 9 October 2024, 4.00–5.30pm (BST), Online

This seminar considers diverse transmissions of ancient Greek and Latin texts into anglophone literatures, often straddling boundaries between what is normally expected from a translator, and adaptive, re-creative textual practices (courtesy, more often than not, of poets delving into translation and in dialogue with antiquity). Examples from the work of Anne Carson, Christopher Logue, Alice Oswald and others suggest several reasons for versioning, retranslation, hybridity, translation as experiment. They also prompt discussion of evolving tendencies in classical reception, aligned at times with the concerns and priorities of literary movements. In this sense, a range of English responses to Homer, Ovid and Sappho will be discussed. We will trace interesting dynamics in ‘group translation’, in works such as Horace, The Odes: New Translations by Contemporary Poets (2002) and Tales of Dionysus (2022), as well as the role that paratexts play in the often-poignant dialogue between scholarship, literary art, and performance.

Paschalis Nikolaou is Associate Professor in Literary Translation at the Ionian University, Greece. He is the author of The Return of Pytheas: Scenes from British and Greek Poetry in Dialogue (Shearsman Books, 2017) and Creative Classical Translation (CUP, 2023). His essays have appeared in several edited volumes, including a co-written chapter on ‘Translating Poetry’ for The Cambridge Handbook of Translation, ed. Kirsten Malmkjær (CUP, 2022). In the Spring of 2021, he held a Fulbright Fellowship in the Department of Classics at Ohio State University.

Register for the Paschalis Nikolaou Research Seminar

BCLT Research Seminar

Translating the Profession through the Lens of Patricia Crampton with Ian Giles

Wednesday 30 October 2024, 4.00–5.30pm (GMT), Online

This talk offers a lively exploration of the daily challenges and triumphs of translation in the second half of the 20th century, seen through the lens of the personal papers of distinguished translator Patricia Crampton (1925-2016). For Crampton, translation was not just about words, but about navigating relationships, meetings, and the evolving role of the translator. Drawing on her witty and illuminating correspondence with authors and editors, alongside her involvement in a variety of translator groupings including the Translators Association, this talk will offer an entertaining glimpse into the realities of working behind the scenes as a translator – as well as how much of it still resonates today.

Ian Giles is a translator of Swedish, Norwegian and Danish into English, with some thirty-five publications to his name. His doctoral research explored the sociocultural framework in which Scandinavian translated literature was read in Britain during the twentieth century. His research interests include the exploration of translator groupings and collectives, as well as the working terms and conditions for literary translators. He has served as the Chair of the Swedish-English Literary Translators’ Association (SELTA) since 2018 and as the Co-Chair of the Translators Association since 2023. Ian was a Visiting Fellow at BCLT and the British Archive of Contemporary Writing at UEA during the spring of 2024.

Register for Ian Giles' BCLT Research Seminar

BCLT Publishers Panel – How do I speak to a publisher?

Friday 22nd November 2024, 3-4pm (GMT), Online

This panel aims to answer the question that all emerging translators have when starting out, ‘How do I speak to a publisher?’ We will explore how publishers interact with literary translators, from initial contact to pitching, samples, readers reports and beyond. This panel is chaired by Arunava Sinha, with Susan Harris (Words without Borders), Cian Mc Court (Verso Books) and Gabriella Page-Fort (HarperOne Group).

Register to attend the Publishers Panel

The Other Moving Pieces in Literary Translation: Agents, Editors, and Funders

Saturday 23rd November 2024, 3-4pm (GMT), Online

How does a work of literature from one language and culture become a book in another language and culture stocked at your local bookshop? Join publisher Marigold Atkey from Daunt Books, associate agent Safae El-Ouahabi from RCW Literary Agency and translator Julia Sanches as they discuss how the Anglophone book-sausage is made.

Register to attend The Other Moving Pieces in Literary Translation

About 'Butter': In Conversation with Yuzuki Asoka

Thursday 10 October, 2024, In-person event at Lecture Theatre 1, University of East Anglia (UEA), Norwich, NR4 7TJ.
5:30pm BST - 7:00pm BST

Discussion followed by Q&A and book signing.
Free to attend, booking essential.

We are delighted to welcome award-winning author YUZUKI Asako to Norwich for a discussion about her tantalising thriller Butter, and its background.

Partially based on the real-life story of “Konkatsu Killer” KIJIMA Kanae, Butter follows investigative journalist MACHIDA Rika as she attempts to understand KAJII Manako, a convicted killer who maintains her innocence, through meeting with her in prison and cooking the recipes she offers. Infused throughout with social commentary on the misogyny and unfair beauty standards that continue to haunt contemporary Japanese society, the book immediately commanded critical acclaim upon its international release.

Moderated by Dr Hannah Osborne (Japan Foundation Lecturer in Japanese Literature, UEA).

This talk will be given in Japanese with English interpretation.

YUZUKI Asako was born in Tokyo in 1981. She won the All Yomimono Award for New Writers in 2008 for “Forget Me, Not Blue,” which was included in her debut work Shuten no ano ko in 2010. Yuzuki also won the Yamamoto Shugoro Prize in 2015 for Nile Perch no joshikai (Nile Perch Women’s Club). Among her many other hit works, BUTTER was published in 2017.

Hosted by the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures and the British Centre for Literary Translation (UEA).

Presented in collaboration with the Japan Foundation and in association with 4th Estate.

Register for this event

Poetry Reading and Q&A

Laura Wittner: Translation of the Route

Wednesday 23 October 2024, 5.30pm–7pm, Room TBC, University of East Anglia, Norwich. Please note this will NOT be a hybrid event.

Translation of the Route is the first collection by award-winning Argentine poet Laura Wittner to be available in English translation. In poems that are precise, frank and finely tuned, Wittner explores the specificities of daily life – thunder at night, coffee stains, fleeting conversations and the rest – as well as parental love, life after marriage, and the reignition of the self in middle age.

Laura Wittner is joined by her translator, the Mexican-Scottish poet Juana Adcock, for a dual-language reading from Translations of the Route, followed by a Q&A chaired by Cecilia Rossi.

Bios:

LAURA WITTNER is an award-winning poet and translator from Argentina. Her books of poetry include El pasillo del tren (1996), Los cosacos (1998), Las últimas mudanzas (2001), La tomadora de café (2005), Lluvias (2009), Balbuceos en una misma dirección (2011), La altura (2016), Lugares donde una no está (2017) and Traducción de la ruta (2020). She has also published more than 20 books for children, most recently Cual para tal (2022), ¿Y comieron perdices? (2023) and Se pide un deseo (2023), and a work of non-fiction, Se vive y se traduce (Entropía, 2021). As a literary translator Wittner has translated books by Leonard Cohen, David Markson, M. John Harrison, Cynan Jones, Claire-Louise Bennett, Katherine Mansfield and James Schuyler, among many others.

JUANA ADCOCK is a Mexican poet, translator and editor based in Scotland. She is the author of Manca (Tierra Adentro, 2014); Split (Blue Diode, 2019), which was a Poetry Book Society Choice and was included in the Guardian’s Best Poetry of 2019; Vestigial (Stewed Rhubarb, 2022); and I Sugar the Bones (Out-Spoken Press, 2024). She is co-editor of the anthology of poetry by Latin American women Temporary Archives (Arc Publications, 2022), and her translation of the Mè’phàà poet Hubert Matiúwàa’s The Dogs Dreamt received a PEN Translates award. She has also translated Lola Ancira’s The Sadness of Shadows (MTO Press, 2024).

This event is in collaboration with The Poetry Translation Centre. 

The Poetry Translation Centre gives the best contemporary poems from Africa, Asia and Latin America a new life in the English language, working with diaspora communities for whom poetry is of great importance. 2024 marks the PTC’s 20th anniversary. 

Register for free now

If you are attending this event we encourage you to walk, cycle, car-share or use public transport to get to and from the university. Travel information can be found here.