These profane, hilarious stories lit up my Central Asia lit class last. Highly recommend!!
Translated from Kazakh by
@turkoslaviaco
co-founder Mirgul Kali
To Hell With Poets, by Baqytgul Sarmekova, tr. by Mirgul Kali.
Vivid, hilarious & unsettling, the tragicomic characters of To Hell with Poets reflect the inner discord of the modern Kazakh.
#KazakhLit
#Kazakhstan
And we have a cover...So excited for the imminent publication of the brilliant Andriy Sodomora trans.
@roman904
+ me!
Readers of Ukrainian lit and students of the classics, take note:
📕NEWS
My translation w/
@Roman904
of Andriy Sodomora's THE TEARS + SMILES OF THINGS, a literary valentine to western Ukraine, is out now w/
@ASP_Boston
!
I❤️❤️❤️this book whose translation was bound-up with war and friendship. Get it for someone special:
No time for posting, busy proofreading Turkoslavia Journal Issue 2!!
Poetry and prose translated from Uyghur, BCMS, Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Polish, Russian, Uzbek, Bulgarian, Romanian, and Turkish coming so so soon...
@enaselimo
@ZohraSaed
My translator copies of THE TEARS AND SMILES OF THINGS arrived!! They're the rich color of Horace's cold Sabine wine in the evening sun, or a glass of red at Cafe Dzyga on a rainy Lviv afternoon...
Raising a glass to ANDRIY SODOMORA tonight!
#UkraineLit
Doily by
@enaselimo
:)
14 authors, 12 translators, and 11 languages from across the Turkic-Slavic world... TURKOSLAVIA JOURNAL ISSUE 2 is now available for your reading pleasure!!
Enjoy these beautifully translated works, and the art by in good cheer!
As a diehard Aitmatov fan, and instructor to 17 excited readers of Aitmatov in translation last semester, this is very very exciting news... Congrats and thanks, Dan!
My first Chinghiz Aitmatov translation is out! In digital and hardcopy! The White Cloud of Genghis Khan is a "novella to the novel" of The Day Lasts More Than A Hundred Years, one of the greatest books I've ever read (and it works well as a standalone novella too)! Link in bio 👀
Plunging hawks! Distant auls! Turkoslavia translators took on a sensual love poem by a Sufi Kazakh poet killed under Stalin. Read our translation and the whole SEX issue of
@thedialmag
!!
Brilliant, zany modernist Uzbek novel that is especially good on women’s perspectives. If you’ve never read any Uzbek or Central Asian lit, start here! Translation is exceptional.
This is a book that holds the essence of our nation's history. Although the translation of the novel was published in 2019, we would like to remember this masterpiece once again, which stands as one of the first Uzbek novels, depicting our culture, our struggles and our triumphs.
🎉We are delighted to announce the 2024 ALTA Emerging Translator Mentorship Program Mentees! Congratulations to these 17 exceptional emerging translators:
Ended my Central Asian lit course
@UCBerkely
with a bang last week reading two nasty, hilarious stories by Baqytgul Sarmekova. We talked dandruff flakes, we talked broken chandeliers... Book is coming with
@TiltedAxisPress
, trans from Kazakh by Mirgul Kali and I cannot wait.
Another translation memory from Turkoslavia Issue 1, an excerpt from the quietly scandalous Alma by Martyna Bunda, translated from Polish by Dawid Mobolaji
Yay for Teffi's OTHER WORLDS
@nyrbclassics
, a beautiful product of collective translation in which I was honored to have a hand! Glad it's making the lists
New on the blog,
@sjaszi
shares RESOURCES FOR TRANSLATING UZBEK, including a PDF of the best Uzbek-English dictionary, lovingly and laboriously scanned by her own hands!! Get it before the take-down request (jk, unlikely)
Let us know about other favs!!
⏱️ Just 3 DAYS LEFT to apply for the 2024 ALTA Emerging Translator Mentorship Program, which pairs up an emerging translator with an experienced translator -- at no cost to them! There are 17 mentorships available in 2024. Apply by 11:59pm PT on 11/30!
Here's a translation from Kazakh of a short story by Merey Kossyn, done by Turkoslavia co-founder Mirgul Kali
Just one of the magnificent offerings of
@apofenie
, whose new issue is coming very very soon!
Tomorrow
@apofenie
returns (!) after a 2 year hiatus. We explore the theme of “rekindling” as a way of envisaging, and perhaps even creating, possibilities for return, renewal, and recreation. To whet your appetites, here is one short story and one poem featured in the issue. 👇
Odessa-born poet, translator, and prose writer Semyon Izrailovich Lipkin was born Sept. 6, 1911. He received numerous honors for his translations of the non-Russian languages of the Soviet Union, including People's Poet of Kalmykia and Honored Cultural Worker of Uzbekistan
#kun_tarixi
Rus shoiri, tarjimon Lipkin Semyon Izrailovich 1911yil 6-sentabrda tavallud topgan. Qalmog’iston xalq shoiri (1968). O’zbekistonda xizmat ko’rsatgan madaniyat xodimi.
@bagdod_kutubxona
AT THE REGISTAN, by Nikolai Karakhan (1900-1970)
Modernism-meets-socialist realism (again, and again, and again) at Karakalpakstan's dreamy and unparalleled Nukus Museum
In addition to editing issue 2 of Turkoslavia journal, Mirgul Kali,
@enaselimo
, and I have been translating books, stories, articles, and poetry from Kazakh, BCMS, Russian, and Ukrainian! Learn more:
COMING SOON...
A very special collaboration btw Turkoslavia Journal and
@thedialmag
.
@enaselimo
, Mirgul Kali, and I try translating as a trio. It's something Central Asian and the theme is SEX🫢
Find it this Tues.
@thedialmag
and
We scholars of Soviet lit mourn today. People are sometimes shocked when I tell them I enjoy socialist realist art and writing. Clark allowed me to say so, showing how very much it encompassed, not only from the Russian POV, but taking her immense intellect to Eurasia
Katerina Clark, the foremost scholar of early Soviet fiction, passed away. I cannot stress how implausible this sentence sounds: seeing her riding her bicycle to campus every day and the speed with which she mastered Zoom during COVID was the symbol of immortality.
Introducing Turkoslavia Issue 2: Day 9
JUNKIES
“It all started at the Pioneer Palace.”
Yuriy Serebriansky translated from Russian by Ariadna Linn, with art by Tim Peters
@sjaszi
@ZohraSaed
In the story “Death of a Borzoi” Magauin uncovers latent rejection, hidden protest, and other social problems created during the sedentarization of the Kazakh steppe – all told through the eyes of a dog.
Full text:
Who could possibly resist Semyon Lipkin's gorgeous and thrilling novel Dekada, about translation politics, deportations of non-Russians under Stalin, and Muslim-Jewish relations in the USSR. Preparing the translation sample now...
@NEAarts
🥁🥁🥁 Exciting news! Our website now features a database of
#Turkish
literature in English translation. We'll keep it regularly updated. Take a peek and let us know if we missed anything. Please help us spread the word!
#turkishliterature
Taking my translations to
@aseeestudies
conf in style… Let me know if you’d like to look at one of these samples of translations in search of a publisher:)
Soviet Colonial Enterprise in Central Asia was another banger at
#ASEEES23
with great discussions of “Muslim atheism” and Dina Rubina’s Tashkent. Missed
@ZohraSaed
, but got to talk translation with writer/Tashkent School founder Eugeny Abdullaev (Suhbat Aflatuni). Had to brag
As we prepare Turkoslavia journal Issue 2, I'll be sharing some of the memorable works from Issue 1. Starting with... the entrancing "Mirza" by Ferit Edgü, translated from Turkish by
@tra_attached
collective, about an enigmatic building project
Along with Zaure Batayeva, Shelley translated a volume called “Amanat. Women’s Writing from Kazakhstan” (published in 2022). In this video, she talks about this volume, as well as her impressions of Kazakhstan and Kazakh writers.
@AbaiCenterDC
YESSS a new issue of
@PocketSamovar
, which includes this heartbreaker AND poems from the Altai regions to Afghanistan and its diasporas collected by
@ZohraSaed
The journal
@PocketSamovar
has just released an issue on conflict in the post-Soviet space. It includes my translation of a poem by Vladislav Ellis, a Ukrainian-born poet who was taken prisoner by the Germans and spent many years in a DP camp before finding a home in California.
Beautiful writer, beautiful book! Lviv has never been so lovely (or lonely) as in Andriy Sodomora’s The Tears and Smiles of Things coming soon from
@ASP_Boston
, translated by
@roman904
and me
Yay for
@shreedaisy
@kelsivanada
and the other wonderful
@NEAarts
Translation fellows for this year!!! I hope the grant brings you as much motivation and ecstatic and unfettered translation time as did for me, working on Semyon Lipkin's DEKADA!
Proud to announce a new book in the Ukrainian Studies series I edit for
@ASP_Boston
: the first English translation of Andrii Sodomora. The Tears and Smiles of Things is a selection of his lyrical essays, translated by
@roman904
and
@sjaszi
:
We're spending the morning with our Little Golden Book library, illustrated by the great Hungarian artist TIBOR GERGELY. The Seven Little Postmen has got to be my favorite––one of the postman’s letters is addressed to my dad!––but they are all so good and mostly still in print!
In the novel Unfortunate Jamal, Myrzhakyp Dulatov conceived an unusually complex and interesting female character. Beautiful in appearance, Zhamal is at the same time wayward, proud, resolute—just like the strong female characters of Kazakh epics.
Our own
@izidora
has won the
@Gulf_Coast
Journal's Prize in Translation for her work on
@ReneKarabash
's She Who Remains. "Bold & visionary... the novel unfurls a world of blood feuds and sworn virgins ... in a dreamlike narration that burns up the page..."
Among Clark's less famous writings, this is particularly worth reading. In 1986, six years after the novel came out, she published an article about it in _Slavic Review_. The article and the foreword are superb contextualizations that explain the novel's appeal at home and abroad
In the newest episode of Translators Note,
@ValzhynaMort
talks to
@JakeGoldwasser
about translation as a writing practice, the music of Belarusian, and listening to the language. Check it out!
Do my eyes deceive me?
@UCBerkeley
's Yuri Slezkine in the pages of
@Grantamag
? Surprising and delightful to see a brilliant academic take a creative turn.
We are delighted to announce the contributors to the latest edition of Granta.
From the public pools of New York to Niamey in the 1960s, a carol concert in Oslo to working-class Reims, Granta 166 reflects on a much derided yet indispensable topic: Generations.
Join us for our first event of 2024! This event will celebrate Gansel’s book TRANSLATION AS TRANSHUMANCE. The book celebrates moving between tongues, and muses on how translation becomes an exercise of empathy between those in exile.
An incredibly warm & energetic launch of New Yugoslav Studies Association at ASEEES this past week in Philly! Please get in touch at newyugoslavstudies
@gmail
.com if you'd like to join a comparative & collaborative project that reimagines the Yugoslav political project as method!
Academic articles are not too often poignant (??) but this one gets me––because it's about my great-grandmother, the writer and artist Anna Lesznai, and because of its subject matter––female friendship across political viewpoints. Very much worth a read:
I have some wonderful news to share: together with our incredible partners from Canada, the US, the UK, and Poland, we're launching Translating Ukraine Summer Institute!
Dates: June 3–15, 2024
Location: Wroclaw, Poland
Costs: None, as we'll cover transportation, lodging, meals,
A cool bit of animation from Soviet Uzbekistan featuring wild ducks, a crafty cat, and best of all, the gorgeous mosaics of Tashkent's post-earthquake high-rise apartment buildings...
The Anthea Bell Prize for Young Translators opens NEXT WEEK!
A free, national, creative translation prize for young people aged 11-18 in the UK, over 15,000 students took part last year.
Find out more & register 👉
My new book, Cold Kitchen, is now available to pre-order!
Celebrating the importance of curiosity, it is a book with food at its heart. From Poland to Tajikistan, rare cloudberries to winter melons, over the course of a year.
#CMSCOP14
(
@BonnConvention
) takes place in Samarkand next week , discussing the conservation of migratory species.
@IUCN
is hosting an event about the Cats of the Silk Road - find out more about it here:
One of the buildings in Kharkiv, a 1787 former storage of food, or as some say, weapons. Today its imposing walls host a well-known economy class supermarket.
Turkoslavia Issue 1 featured "The Witch," an eerie story about provincial childhood, self-translated from Croatian by Marina Gudelj. . More Gudelj stories coming trans.
@enaselimo
,
@LAReviewofBooks
and elsewhere.
Turkoslavia Issue 2 is coming too..!
The winner of the J. Thomas Shaw Prize for Outstanding Graduate Paper presented at this year’s Wisconsin Slavic Conference was Marsel Khamitov for his “Performing/Preserving the Empire: Nationalism and Translation in Semyon Lipkin’s Dekada.” Read more:
We don't do Black Friday sales.
But if you want to support radical indie publishing, you can get all of this past year's titles in our 2023 Print Bundle.
We've even included I’ll Go On in anticipation of e.yaewon's forthcoming translation of dd's Umbrella by Hwang Jungeun.
An anonymous 18th century poem in Turkoslavia Issue 1 had us arguing about "vulvar expressions," among other topics...
Check in with "Ramo and Saliha," translated from Bosnian by Denis Ferhatović, and stay tuned for Issue 2, coming this month!
The great Michael Hofmann on translating the great Joseph Roth:
. . . I liked that he always seems to be in a hurry. Almost all the books are small—short and sweet and soon over. That’s agreeable for a translator.
"Suddenly, on its sparkling white surface, I saw a woman’s black mitten. I stood for a good minute, riveted by the striking contrast of matte darkness and radiant white." -Andriy Sodomora
and soon in 2 favorite journals!
Really loved reading Other Worlds by Teffi. Had never heard of the book or author. Really enjoyed it right after the Tsvetaeva for their differences and occasional confluences. The Teffi was something like the opposite of magical realism: realist speculation?
#NYRBWomen24
Padgett Powell on Donald Barthelme:
"We entered into a special affair when I discovered by accident that if you demanded good fathering of him, he who spent a third of his time writing about bad fathering, a phrase he considered redundant, he would oblige you."
@Tin_House
@BorisDralyuk
@roman904
@globalrhizome
@ASP_Boston
Thanks, Boris! I was so happy with the image since the used book market and statue of Ivan Fyodorov (father of Eastern Slavonic printing) feature in one of the stories. The beautiful Lviv architecture on display also plays a big role in the collection.
It’s here! Featuring fiction, poetry, memoir; debut authors and returning favorites; the first entry in our Best Literary Translations anthology series; and our second-ever kids’ book. Our coming season’s catalog is available for you to peruse.
We’re thrilled to announce that Samantha Farmer has been awarded the inaugural Momentum Grant for Early-Career Translators, judged by
@antonhur
Anton Hur, for their translation of Jasna Jasna Žmak’s groundbreaking Croatian novel “My Dear You."
🥁🥁🥁It's with great pleasure that we announce the publication of our first book Stories of Exile (Gurbet Hikayeleri) by Refik Halid Karay. You can now order your copy from Amazon worldwide.
#refikhalidkaray
#translationattached
Another year in a world without David Berman. We think of him on his birthday and on the day he died. We think of him constantly because he spoke for and about us in ways we’ll spend the rest of our lives revisiting and unraveling. Thank you, rest in peace, happy birthday, fuck.
Oh the subtleties of grammar! Just learned, translating Semyon Lipkin's DEKADA, the difference btw "материалы о нем и на него"...
О нем - official documents or recommendations.
На него - secret police reports.
Just when you think you know a little...
Entering the US public domain in 2024: André Breton's surrealist novel *Nadja*.
More info behind window 17 of our advent-style countdown calendar for works entering the
#publicdomain
on Jan 1st:
#PDin2024
The stories behind translations are the best stories. They pull in so many things from personal biographies, to literary love affairs, to politics, to the hidden details of process. Here is a great one:
1/ Translating ‘Ulysses’ is an odyssey—especially in Kurdish, a language that Turkey has worked to erase for a century. Kawa Nemir’s Kurdish translation of the epic, Kaya Genç writes, is a feat of patience, invention, and resistance:
Call for Proposals: The Slavic Reference Service welcomes proposals for our 2024 Central Asia Research Forum.
To submit a proposal:
For those wishing to attend without presenting, you can register here:
Another look back at Turkoslavia Issue 1, poems by the Alina Dadaeva, trans. from Russian by Alex Niemi, who
@enaselimo
and I saw irl at
#ASEEES23
! . The first submission we got and accepted for the journal and we never looked back. Issue 2's coming...
Our fall edition has arrived! We are proud to present NOR 33, now in print.
Information for ordering your very own print edition can be found at
You won’t want to miss out on all this incredible work.
Thank you to everyone who made this edition possible!
One of my achievements in 2023 was learning basics of Uzbek Sign Language (USL) from prominent USL interpreters Gulnora Makhkamova & Ezoza Akhmedova. Learning this full-fledged language opened the pandora box of problems regarding its legal status and development in
#Uzbekistan
.
📢 Call to Persian Poetry Translators: Submit to the Mo Habib Translation Prize!
@melcuw
, in collaboration with
@DeepVellum
, enthusiastically calls for submissions of Persian poetry (50-250 texts, translated into English) through March 01, 2024. Info at: