2009 Translation Feature

Speaking across geographies, styles, and literary conventions, this month's online feature showcases some of the most interesting voices—old and new—in translation. Below find recent translations of fiction and poetry from around the world, doing the work that Susan Sontag calls "the circulatory system of the world’s literatures."

The Naked Eye
by Yoko Tawada
translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky

Omega Minor
by Paul Verhaeghen
translated by from the Dutch by the author

Questioning Samantha
by Guillermo Fadanelli
translated from the Spanish by Dick Cluster

Normance
by Louis-Ferdinand Céline
translated from the French by Marlon Jones

News from the Empire
by Fernando del Paso
translated from the Spanish by Stella T. Clark and Alfonso Gonzál

The Conqueror
by Jan Kjaerstad
translated from the Norwegian by Barbara Haveland

The Mighty Angel
by Jerzy Pilch
translated from the Polish by Bill Johnston

Death in Spring
by Mercè Rodoreda
translated from the Catalan by Martha Tennent

Inspired by live translation slams that proved to be audience favorites at the Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival, and again at PEN World Voices, PEN’s online Translation Slam aims to showcase the art of translation by juxtaposing in a public forum two “competing” translations of a single work.

For the inaugural installment, we asked translators to test their linguistic mettle on 暮色, a poem by Chinese writer Xi Chuan.

>> Check out the slam

Firefly Under the Tongue
by Coral Bracho
Translated from the Spanish by Forrest Gander

In the Time of Jaguars
by Manoel de Barros
translated from the Portuguese by Idra Novey

To a Vast and Blooming Sky
by Chika Sagawa
Translated from the Japanese by Sawako Nakayasu

Diary of a Wave Outside the Sea
by Dunya Mikhail
Translated from the Arabic by Elisabeth Winslow

Notes on the Melody of Things
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated from the German by Damion Searls