Beyond Words: Translating the World

Banff Centre Press is proud to launch a new collection of essays on the art of translation: Beyond Words: Translating the World
Edited by Susan Ouriou.

Susan Ouriou sees literary translation as “a high wire act, a song sung in harmony, a dance of approximation, sub-version, a twin voice, good sabotage, a clearing of mist, an erotic engagement…“

Does a reader ever wonder how a tale like Cervantes’ Don Quixote or a poem like Lorna Crozier’s The Goldberg Variations arrives from their ‘home’ language – Spanish and English respectively - into the reader’s language of comprehensibility and comfort?

Behind these transformations are the magic, but mostly invisible, hands and minds of literary translators. Though readers may not dwell on the translators’ dance, it is surprising how often translators – those responsible for bringing such as Cervantes into English and Crozier into Spanish – think of their readers. Some of this magic - the crossing of literary work from one language into another - is celebrated in The Banff Centre Press’s latest release: Beyond Words: Translating the World. The book features twenty-one essays on the topic of literary translation. Its contributors are stellar translators from nine countries who work in a variety of languages and literary genres. The book is written primarily in English but also features pieces in French and Spanish.

Essays include Katherine Silver’s ‘The Erotic Place of Translation’, Paulo da Costa’s ‘The Music of Translation’, Françoise Roy’s ‘Poetry Translation: Mission Impossible or a Question of Skill’, and Enrique Servin Herrera’s ‘Literary Translation in to the Indigenous Languages of the Americas’.

Further roster of accomplished contributors includes:
• Edith Grossman – Translator of such works as Don Quixote, poetry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and works by major Latin American writers. Grossman is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
• Sheila Fischman – Author of more than 125 translations from French to English and an appointed member of the Order of Canada.
• Lazer Lederhendler – His nominated translation of The Immaculate Conception was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and won the Quebec Writer’s Federation Award for translation

Editor Susan Ouriou is a Governor General’s award-winning translator and fiction writer. She has translated over twenty novels by Quebec, Spanish and Mexican authors and has written a novel, Damselfish, and numerous short stories.

Beyond Words: Translating the World, will be of interest to translators, writers, editors, those interested in language, and university language programs. Because we live in a globally accessible world, it is crucial to further understand and experience the language, and subsequently the culture of other nations through the art of translation.

“Translators are the shadow heroes of literature, the often forgotten instruments that make it possible for different cultures to talk to one another, who have enabled us to understand that we all, from every part of the world, live in one world.” – Paul Auster as quoted in Susan Ouriou’s preface.

Contributors to Beyond Words: Translating the World Raymundo Isidro Alavez, Juliana Borrero, Odile Cisneros, Paulo da Costa, Nicolas Dickner, Sara Fruner, André Gabastou, Patricia Godbout, Enrique Servín Herrera, Lazer Lederhendler, Carmen Leñero, Suzanne Jill Levine, Alexis Levitin, Anne Malena, Hélène Rioux, Katherine Rout, Françoise Roy, Katherine Silver, Medeine Tribinevi?ius, Edith Grossman.

Beyond Words: Translating the World
ISBN 978-1-894-77338-6, $21.95, 6 x 9, 176 pages , paperbound Media Contact: Steven Ross Smith, 403-762-6640, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) Review Copies: Mary-Jo Anderson, 403-762-6410, Mary .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)