First up, has a nice profile of Danish translator K. E. Semmel, whose most recent publication is his translation of Naja Marie Aidt’s

How did you know you would become a translator? How did you become a translator?

I didn糖心传媒檛 really start out wanting to be a translator, I know that much. I started out wanting to be a fiction writer糖心传媒攁nd I still write fiction, it糖心传媒檚 what I do when I糖心传媒檓 not translating (I糖心传媒檝e been writing the same novel for eight years!). It wasn糖心传媒檛 until I was living and working in Denmark that I decided to translate. I really enjoy reading Danish literature, and puzzling out issues of translation. I found myself reading books in Danish and translating words and sentences in my head. At some point I thought: why not give it a try? So I found one writer whose work I really liked, Simon Fruelund, and got started. Oh, actually, there was something else that came first, I think: I went up to Danish poet Pia Tafdrup at a reading in Washington, DC and told her I really wanted to be a translator. She graciously let me translate a few of her travel essays, and they got published in various places (Aufgabe, dirtcakes). To be honest, I can糖心传媒檛 remember which came first. But from those two writers my translation life gathered momentum. I also owe debts of gratitude to Russian translator Marian Schwartz糖心传媒攚ho actually took time out of her schedule to talk to me, a nobody, on the telephone, and to encourage my translation work糖心传媒攁nd Danish writer Anne Mette Lundtoft, who recommended me to translate Norwegian novelist Karin Fossum糖心传媒檚 The Caller. [. . .]

What糖心传媒檚 your pet peeve about the translation/literary industry?

Probably the biggest pet peeve I have, though, is related to reader responses of translated texts. I糖心传媒檝e had people ask me what I think of Stieg Larsson糖心传媒檚 books in translation. I糖心传媒檝e not read those books, in either language, but invariably I糖心传媒檓 told that they糖心传媒檙e not well translated. They糖心传媒檙e bumpy. Or clumsy. Or whatever. I don糖心传媒檛 quite know what to say to that other than, Can you read Swedish? It糖心传媒檚 true that a smoothly flowing text will make you forget a book is translated, but the book may not have been so fluid in the original. It might糖心传媒檝e been bumpy or clumsy or whatever. The translator might have, in other words, chosen to hew closely to the original. Maybe the books weren糖心传媒檛 well written in Swedish? I have no idea. But the general assumption often seems to be糖心传媒攚hen readers dislike something糖心传媒攖hat the translator is at fault, and I find this troubling. The translator is often ignored if it糖心传媒檚 a great book, and pilloried if it糖心传媒檚 a 糖心传媒渂ad糖心传媒� book. How many times do you see, say, quotes by Tolstoy or some other famous, oft-cited foreign author without any attribution of the translator糖心传媒檚 role in the quote? Too many.

Fair enough! I wonder if Franzen’s German readers are all “hey, this book is flat and boring! Must be a bad translation” or if they realize that, well, it’s Franzen. (Sorry, that one’s gratuitous, but I can’t help myself right now after reading that followed by )

*

Over at the translator and Amanda DeMarco has a “Translator’s Note” in which, well, I’ll let her explain:

A translator must naturally take certain liberties with other people糖心传媒檚 words in order to wrest the most truth into the text. In this essay on translation, composed strictly of quotations, I have taken the liberty of replacing select words and phrases with 糖心传媒渢ranslation,糖心传媒� 糖心传媒渢ranslator,糖心传媒� and the various verb forms of 糖心传媒渢ranslate.糖心传媒�

I have also committed untold infidelities.

What follows is exactly that. Here are a couple of examples:

Precisely there where you are not 糖心传媒� that is the beginning of writing, but I hate traveling and explorers; the soul has to stay where it is. Translation makes the strange familiar. Essentially, it makes everyone a tourist in other people糖心传媒檚 reality and eventually in one糖心传媒檚 own. Remembering my country, I imagine it, and though every man is not only himself, all alone is all we are.

And I cannot explain the action of leveling, why a translation should all boil down to one uniform substance, a magma of interiors. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. Because all identification with characters, deeply conceived, is an impertinence 糖心传媒� an affront to the mystery that is human action and the human heart. The voices of the narrative come, go, disappear, overlap; we do not know who is speaking; the text speaks, that is all: no more image, nothing but language. What is inevitable in a work of art is the style. It is what is sequestered.

Tom picked week’s music selection— by Icona Pop —a song that Tom hears at the gym when he’s MMA training.

As always you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes by clicking . To subscribe with other podcast downloading software, such as Google’s , copy the following link.

by Albert Vigoleis Thelen, translated from the German by Donald O. White and published by Overlook

This piece is by Berlin book person, Amanda DeMarco, who is the brains behind a literary website with “reviews, interviews, articles, and opinion on German and French books and events.”

“All of the people in this book are alive or were at one time,” begins Albert Thelen’s foreword to The Island of Second Sight. However, they “appear subject to greater or lesser degrees of personal disjuncture, similarly the sequence of events has undergone chronological rearrangements that can even involve the obliteration of all sense of time. In case of doubt, let truth be told.” This is a book, then, with a troubled relationship to reality and an untroubled one to truth. That is, one that claims the ultimate authority of the storyteller.

Just as in his own life, the author’s alter-ego Vigoleis arrives on the island of Mallorca in 1931 with his wife Beatrice, and the pair flee the increasingly inhospitable political climate in 1936. The degree to which the intervening five years hew to Thelen’s biography is debatable; as is the book’s position in the cannon. Lauded as one of the great works of twentieth century literature, The Island of Second Sight is not only under-appreciated abroad (it was first translated into English 57 years after its original publication), but also at home, where its status is rather that of a cult classic, absurd for a book of its stature.

Vigoleis and Beatrice travel to Mallorca because they believe that Beatrice’s brother Zwingli is dying there. Instead they find that he’s been incapacitated by the unstoppable sexual powers of Pilar, a particularly beautiful Spanish prostitute. Thus begins the Vigoleis’s long engagement with putas, whom he greets with the same shoulder-shrugging cheer as the rest of the turpitude and degeneration he encounters on the island, as well as in his own mind: “The philosopher Scheler had been right after all, when he responded to the Archbishop of Cologne, who had accused him of unvirtuous conduct, by asking His Eminence if he had ever seen a signpost that had ever gone in the direction it pointed to.”

Before Vigoleis, too, succumbs to Pilar, she mercifully kicks the couple out and they drift from one absurd lodging and low-paid occupation to the next, two bohemians at the mercy of fortune, never far removed from the moans and wails of the cathouse. A growing gaggle of locals, emigr茅s, and vacationers populate the story as Vigoleis and Beatrice settle into Mallorcan life. Therise of fascism paints a thickening black streak through the story, whose shadiness is otherwise derived from the more quotidian excesses of various human appetites and failings.

In other reviews, you’ll read about Thelen’s quick-witted Nazi-mocking, including one magisterial scene in which Vigoleis, working as a tour guide (called a “F眉hrer” in German, literally a “leader”) deludes and delights a gaggle of German tourists by narrating their tour with lies that aggrandize the Teutonic tradition. The Island of Second Sight is also praised for its numerous literary allusions, as well as for the diverse intellectuals of the day that Vigoleis comes into contact with and lampoons.

None of these are the reason that The Island of Second Sight should win the Best Translated Book Award 2013. What does make it worthy of the prize is its sheer linguistic fecundity and the contribution it makes to the tradition of narrative. Vigoleis is one of the true great incarnations of the storyteller. He’s very nearly a shape-shifter, and he employs his art not only on rightist tourists, but also lonely heiresses, local functionaries, and first and foremost on the reader.

Vigoleis is so garrulous, clever, and original that you will willingly follow him down any cow-path he cares to tread. Which is every path that offers itself. At 736 pages, discursion is the novel’s mode, and it is hard to say what is plot and what is tangent. Multiple, extended scenes dedicated to the attempted and ultimately counterfeited nonconsensual consummation of the miscegenational union of a purebred Pekinese and a lapdog of impure lineage? Journeys back into childhood, into the Middle Ages? The story of the joke that cost Unamuno his life? Ever-deepening reflections on the failings of Catholicism? On the writings of Teixeira de Pascoaes, whose writings Thelen translated from the Portuguese in real life? On the philosophical significance of the donkey? Why not.

Perhaps even more interesting are the recursive discursions, that is, the ones that themselves reflect on the nature of narrative. Thelen refers to Vigoleis in the third person, except when he doesn’t, for example, when pulling back to comment on his own storytelling prowess, which hazily bleeds into Vigoleis’s as we reenter the stream of the plot. Rumor, translation, transcription, letter writing, note-taking, testifying, confessing, lying for personal gain, lying for sport糖心传媒攅very manner in which a story can be transmuted and transmitted has its day in The Island of Second Sight.

The text is as rife with neologisms as archaisms, rhetorical devices as well as low puns, enriched by a sprinkling of words from the six languages Thelen spoke. The book is a lexicographical treasure that particularly delights in the description of all that is base. Beatrice’s debauched brother Zwingli is even the editor of a poly-lingual dictionary of obscenities, to which Vigoleis is naturally a helpful contributor.

That translator Donald White has managed to capture the book’s riotous linguistic profusion is a small miracle. Let me cite one of the innumerable jewels that dot the novel: Vigoleis describes a period of uncharacteristic domestic harmony: “Wherever one looked, it was a scene of peace and concord. It was as if the word puta had been struck from our dictionary.” A paragraph later, Don Dar铆o, fellow lodger and exploiter of Vigoleis’s half-baked business ideas, disrupts this rare bliss. Why? “. . . it was only an American millionaire who had enraged my putative business partner.” Of course, if harmony is puta-free, then an angry man is putative.

This is a book whose form echoes the copiousness of the chaotic, shifting social order it depicts. Filthy, generous, good-natured, manipulative, The Island of Second Sight is an utterly, amply, completely human book, and that is why it deserves to win the BTBA.

Anyway, here’s a bit of Amanda DeMarco’s article:

Set to launch in early spring, the Jellybooks experience corrects some common mistakes in online book browsing, says Rhomberg: 糖心传媒淲e have spent many months trying to understand why physical bookshops still play such an important role in discovery.糖心传媒� For example, people really do use book covers in deciding what to read, so you won糖心传媒檛 see thumbnail reductions. Interestingly (but very right when you think about it), cost isn糖心传媒檛 much of a factor in choosing a book: 糖心传媒淲e found that price information plays very, very little role when users try to decide what makes for a great read. Clearly it matters when they have decided to buy a book at which point they will shop around (i.e. buy online and not in a physical store), but during the discovery process, price information is not a factor, so lets get rid of it.糖心传媒�

Once a user finds a book that looks interesting, they can download the first 10% to a personal cloud library account to read later on a device of their choice. These samples will be available two to six weeks before the title appears in stores. There糖心传媒檚 no DRM, and they can be shared with a link without restriction. [. . .]

Once you糖心传媒檝e started browsing, downloading, and sharing, Jellybooks will use the information it has gathered to offer you special 50-percent off 糖心传媒淪weet Deals糖心传媒� on books that fit well with your choices so far. Not every Jellybooks user will be notified about every sale. 糖心传媒淏ooks are quite personal and you don糖心传媒檛 want people to get the wrong perception that they糖心传媒檙e getting irrelevant stuff or too much stuff. So your reading and sharing behavior allows us to determine if you would be interested in getting the deal.糖心传媒�

Similar to Groupon, the deal only happens if enough people sign on to purchase, which means sharing is important for attaining the required number. If it糖心传媒檚 reached within the 12-hour span, the book is downloaded (Sweet Deals are currently e-books only) and your credit card is charged. One important difference from Groupon, Rhomberg notes, is that 糖心传媒渢he discount has to be earned by the group as a whole. With Groupon it often just automatically goes over. Here we don糖心传媒檛 want you to feel it糖心传媒檚 too automatic and so you糖心传媒檙e lazy糖心传媒n its nuances it糖心传媒檚 constructed to be a little more social and a little bit more about recommendations.糖心传媒�

Sounds like an interesting addition to the constantly growing list of discovery sites . . . I signed up to receive notification when this goes live and will definitely post about it once it has and I’ve had a chance to play with it.

Couple quick notes about Icelandic names: Since last names are patronymics—refer to the person’s father, such as Gisla-dottir, or Olafs-son—it’s common practice to refer to someone just by their first name. And in terms of characters, ‘脼’ can be replaced with ‘th,’ and ‘冒’ can be replaced by ‘d.’

糖心传媒淚t started here actually,糖心传媒� says 脼贸rd铆s G铆slad贸ttir. She and 脼orger冒ur E. Sigur冒ard贸ttir are talking with me in Kaffit谩r, Iceland糖心传媒檚 largest coffee shop chain, in downtown Reykjavik. It糖心传媒檚 a sunny Saturday afternoon and the place is packed with sweater-clad Icelanders chatting over steaming lattes. 脼贸rd铆s and 脼orger冒ur are the founders of 顿谤耻蝉濒耻产贸办补产濒辞驳驳,¹ Iceland糖心传媒檚 most popular book blog.

In December of 2008, 脼贸rd铆s and 脼orger冒ur sat down in Kaffit谩r and started talking about blogs. The two had been making radio programs about literature together, and they decided to branch out and do a blog, where they could write about whatever interested them instead of being restricted to an editorial program. 顿谤耻蝉濒耻产贸办补产濒辞驳驳 now has fourteen regular writers, all women ranging in age from 25 to 46, who together post one update per day.

糖心传媒淲e don糖心传媒檛 really think of it as criticism,糖心传媒� explains 脼贸rd铆s. The plan was always to be open to anything, so you糖心传媒檒l find reviews of chick lit next to literary fiction, recommendations for attractive bookshelves next to postings for readings, and since recently, interviews. Visually it糖心传媒檚 a simple blog, though 脼贸rd铆s says they糖心传媒檙e upgrading to a 糖心传媒渇ancier糖心传媒� WordPress version soon.

gets anywhere from 300糖心传媒�400 to 1,500糖心传媒�1,600 visits per day. 糖心传媒淚 think that糖心传媒檚 everyone who糖心传媒檚 interested in literature,糖心传媒� says 脼贸rd铆s, not joking. Considering that there are about 300,000 native speakers of Icelandic worldwide, it comes out to between 0.1% and 0.53% of all people who potentially could read it.

(It糖心传媒檚 worthwhile to note that playing the numbers game in Iceland is a mind-trap for outsiders trying to make comparisons with their home country. The population is so small that it does not scale, so figures should be regarded as a curiosity or a general indication of popularity. The 糖心传媒榯his would be read by 200,000 people a day if it were in English!糖心传媒� game doesn糖心传媒檛 work.)

脼贸rd铆s attributes the site糖心传媒檚 popularity to the lack of Icelandic alternatives: 糖心传媒淚f you糖心传媒檙e interested, there糖心传媒檚 not that much out there.糖心传媒� (This is a common form of Icelandic modesty糖心传媒斕切拇綐Oh it糖心传媒檚 so small here, there糖心传媒檚 no competition!糖心传媒樚切拇綌that should be taken with a grain of salt.) The site is read widely by Icelanders abroad looking to stay in touch with book culture at home糖心传媒攖here糖心传媒檚 a particularly large population in Germany that accounts for a couple hundred visits a week.

脼orger冒ur adds that Icelanders糖心传媒� unusual proclivity for Facebook helps online projects like really take off: 糖心传媒淚celand is one of a kind when it comes to Facebook.糖心传媒� I know, I know, how could anyone be more obsessed than us? According to 脼orger冒ur, it糖心传媒檚 a deeply networked society: 糖心传媒淎ll of Iceland is on Facebook and everyone is friends with everyone.糖心传媒�

has gotten big enough that several major Icelandic websites have wanted to host it. But according 脼贸rd铆s, the sites haven糖心传媒檛 been exactly what they wanted to be associated with: 糖心传媒淭he last offer we got was sort of from Iceland糖心传媒檚 yellow press.糖心传媒� 脼orger冒ur adds, 糖心传媒淲e have high standards in terms of the environment we糖心传媒檙e in. It糖心传媒檚 not just about getting more people to read.糖心传媒�

This was the point at which I really realized just how far Icelandic book culture diverged from either the American or German versions I糖心传媒檓 used to, how deeply integrated books were into their media. Can you imagine foxnews.com or bild.de absorbing a major literary website? No, no you cannot. 脼orger冒ur and 脼贸rd铆s insist the sites only want their traffic, which I don糖心传媒檛 doubt, but the fact that a sleazy news site can covet a lit blog糖心传媒檚 traffic is telling in itself.

As Iceland糖心传媒檚 premiere book bloggers, 脼orger冒ur and 脼贸rd铆s have a unique overview of Icelandic publishing culture. I asked them about some trends they糖心传媒檇 seen recently. In the wake of the financial crisis that rocked Iceland糖心传媒檚 economy in 2008, 糖心传媒渢here糖心传媒檚 less coming out,糖心传媒� notes 脼贸rd铆s.

But new genres have appeared, says 脼orger冒ur. Historical fiction based on the Sagas always existed, but 糖心传媒渢he trend anyone can see is people are writing suspense, mystery, and crime novels. We take our literature very seriously, so people didn糖心传媒檛 write mysteries before. It糖心传媒檚 something you just didn糖心传媒檛 do.糖心传媒� It糖心传媒檚 a shift occurring across the Nordic countries, and one significant enough to be visible to English-speakers via translation.

Though it糖心传媒檚 a significant cultural organ, is just a side interest for both women. 脼orger冒ur works for a radio station and 脼贸rd铆s is an award-winning poet and Swedish-Icelandic translator. 糖心传媒淔or us this blog is a hobby,糖心传媒� says 脼orger冒ur, 糖心传媒渂ut we糖心传媒檙e always thinking about it.糖心传媒�

¹ 顿谤耻蝉濒耻产贸办补产濒辞驳驳 means 糖心传媒淏ook Sluts,糖心传媒� but it actually comes from an Icelandic radio show, not the well-known American book blog of the same name.

Here’s how they describe the magazine on their

Readux is a Berlin-based literary website with reviews, interviews, articles, and opinion on German and French books and events.

For you, reader, Readux is a precious source of English-language information by people engaged in local book culture. For us, Readux is a chance to talk about the things we find most interesting or troubling in our reading lives, literary therapy for the lingually displaced. Hopefully, everyone walks away entertained.

Better than that though, is Amanda’s personal statement on why she started this site:

I lead my literary life in Berlin, so I wanted a platform where I could write about the fascinating (sometimes, to an American eye, profoundly weird) book culture I’m immersed in, much of which is otherwise completely inaccessible in English. And I knew other people who were interested in doing the same. Voil脿 Readux. Context is often what brings books to life; we do reviews, but we also give a lot of space to critical reception, interpretations, events, etc. Readux’s goal is to provide vivid impressions of books and their organic connection to society, written by people who are deeply engaged in local literary discussions.

This hasn’t been up all that long, but already they’ve kicked off a (which includes pieces on and the ), and reviews of a couple German books, including

Speaking of the Walser book—they’re currently running Click that link to see all the details and enter your name in the drawing.

Worth checking out on a regular basis.

On March 18 the Swiss parliament approved a fixed price system for books in German-speaking Switzerland, both for online and in-store sales as of next year. The debate over fixed book pricing is a complicated and volatile one in Europe. Various degrees of price control exist side by side, and countries vacillate on the legality and benefit of fixed price systems. In Germany all books, including e-books and books sold as apps, are included in the fixed price system. French law excludes books that don糖心传媒檛 closely correspond to a printed edition (apps), as well as foreign buyers and sellers. Britain hasn糖心传媒檛 had fixed book pricing since the Net Book Agreement was declared illegal in 1997.

I’ve written about the “fixed price scheme” several times before (even in 2007(!) in relation to the Swiss), but in case you’re not already familiar, under this law retailers are banned from discounting books. So if you want to buy The Pale King, it’s the same $27.99 at Barnes & Noble, your local indie store, and in the airport. (And, in some countries, on Amazon.com and other online retailers.) Based on the cited consequences of this law—more independent stores, more diverse selection, no discount battles on shitty best-sellers, etc.—I’m a big fan. And I know that’s quixotic, since half of Congress and 90% of corporate salarymen would shit themselves at the very idea of impeding the so-call free market. Which is dumb and deserving of another rant, but I’ll refrain and keep it on the Swiss:

Swiss publishing professionals often compare the effects of the repeal of fixed book pricing to those of the abolition of the Net Book Agreement in Britain: price wars over bestsellers, deep discounts of up to 30% by big booksellers like Thalia and Orell F眉ssli. Andreas Grob, Managing Director of Buchzentrum, a large distributor and wholesaler owned collectively by Swiss bookstores, has witnessed online sellers benefit while physical stores have experienced 糖心传媒渆ver-increasing problems.糖心传媒�

In Germany, where fixed book price law is strong, book prices have actually fallen in comparison with other goods over the past decade. Swiss book prices, in contrast, have risen over the past four years. 糖心传媒淓conomic theories say that free markets produce lower prices, but interestingly in the case of books that糖心传媒檚 not so,糖心传媒� commented Dani Landolf, director of The Swiss Publishers Association (SBVV).

While bestsellers get deep discounts, the majority of other books become more expensive to fund the price wars. Sabine D枚rlemann, president of Swiss Independent Publishers (SWIPS), expressed frustration that books from small publishers with tight budgets were assigned higher prices, which reduces sales though the publisher sees none of that extra money.

I love everything about this article, especially this bit:

The decision affirms the idea that books are not just like any other consumer product; their diversity and availability is desirable and demands protection. To have a variety of books, a variety of publishers is necessary; a large number of independent bookstores willing to stock titles from small and large presses alike is necessary for such a variety of publishers to thrive; and a fixed price system is needed to protect those bookstores, publishers, and ultimately authors. Or so the reasoning goes. For SWIPS, in the end the decision means that 糖心传媒渕ore money ends up with us,糖心传媒� said D枚rlemann.

Total win.