| |
 |
| |
ILE Director, Sinéad Mac Aodha, leafing
through Deirdre Madden’s Snakes’ Elbows in Hindi |
This February, Ireland
Literature Exchange (ILE) participated for the first time in the
New Delhi International Book Fair. Along with the recent first Irish
Literary Festival in Delhi, the fair marks the beginning of a new
cultural exchange between Ireland and India.
Given India’s own great
literary heritage, India’s increasingly prominent role in the global
economy and culture, and her burgeoning publishing sector, it was
timely for ILE to pay a first visit to India. Ireland’s has, of course,
many literary links of long-standing with India, not least Yeats’s
great friendship with India’s most revered poet and philosopher,
his fellow Nobel Laureate, Tagore. However, although many of Ireland’s
canonical writers – Joyce, Yeats, Beckett, Shaw – are familiar and
well appreciated names in India, not many contemporary Irish writers
are quite so well known there.
ILE has a proud record
of supporting over 1000 translations in 43 languages in 34 countries.
It recently awarded funding to the first Irish children’s book in
Hindi, Deirdre Madden’s Snakes' Elbows published
by Shabd Books in January 2008.
A central part of ILE’s remit is to
increase the readership and appreciation of contemporary Irish literature
throughout the world. And so, working in close co-operation with
the Irish Embassy, ILE helped to programme the first Irish Literary
Festival in New Delhi which took place at the India Habitat Centre
throughout January 2008. It seemed a natural complement to the visit
of over a dozen of Ireland’s leading writers to Delhi for ILE to
attend the fair, meet a broad cross section of Indian publishers,
and develop new opportunities for cultural exchange.
The New Delhi
Book Fair, which took place from February 2 to 10, was an exciting
experience for ILE, as it was its first proper introduction to the
world of Indian publishing. In the days preceding the fair, ILE’s
Director, Sinéad Mac Aodha, attended two important conferences in
Delhi, one organised by the Frankfurt Book Fair and the other by
the Indian and the British publishers’ associations. These conferences
provided key trade information in relation to the Indian publishing
sector and, of course, invaluable introductions to a number of publishers
in advance of the fair.
Ireland Literature Exchange took possession
of its stand in Hall 9 on Saturday, February 2, a date which augured
well for a promotion of Irish literature in India, being James Joyce’s
birthday! ILE was delighted to share its stand with the leading Irish
language publisher and writer, Micheál Ó Conghaile, whose publishing
house Cló Iar-Chonnachta was the first Irish publishing house to
attend the fair this year. Other international literary organisations
represented at the fair included the Abu Dhabi Book Fair, The Frankfurt
Book Fair, The Canadian High Commission, the Norwegian and the Catalan
literature promotion agency.
The ILE stand displayed a cross section
of 40 works of Irish literature in translation, including Nobel Laureates
W. B. Yeats’s Collected
Poems in German and Samuel Beckett’s novel Watt in
Hungarian, alongside Booker prize winning novels The Sea by
John Banville in Chinese and The Gathering by Anne Enrightin
Dutch. From the very first morning, the stand appeared to hold a
magnetic attraction for the Indian public which proved to be very
interested and well informed about Ireland and its literature. Questions
ranged from general enquiries about our infamously bad but mild,
wet weather; the political status of the country; and to very specialised
questions about specific authors such as Roddy Doyle and Neil Jordan.
Considerable interest was also expressed in Cló Iar-Chonnachta’s
extensive list of literary works published in the Irish language.
In the course of any given day Ms Mac Aodha and her colleague Rita
McCann met with publishers, translators, journalists, teachers, professors,
schoolchildren, and other members of the general public.
A number of key meetings with publishers have led to potential translation
projects in Bengali, Hindi, Tamil and Marathi. Since our return from
the fair, ILE has agreed to support translations of no less than seven
works of Irish literature into Hindi. We look forward to developing
many more literary relationships which will facilitate the appreciation
of Irish literature throughout India!
A new Irish writing showcase has opened in New Delhi this month
– Derek Mahon, Gerard Donovan, Anthony Cronin, Claire Kilroy, John
Boyne, Glenn Patterson, Anne Haverty, Oisín Mc Gann, Conor Kostick
and Micheál Ó Conghaile will read and discuss their work before an
Indian public. The literary programme is complemented by a concert
of songs from James Joyce’s era, Molly Bloom Says No by
the singer Judith Mok and by a multi-media presentation by Beckett’s
photographer John Minihan.
The festival, which is jointly organised by Ireland Literature Exchange
and the Irish Embassy in New Delhi, runs over four weeks at the India
Habitat Centre in New Delhi and presents a cross-section of the best
of contemporary Irish writing.
We are delighted by the reaction of the Indian public to the Irish
writers, said Sinéad Mac Aodha, director of Ireland Literature Exchange.
The press coverage has been extensive and each event seems to prompt
new and interesting questions from a very interested and engaged
audience. We are confident that Irish literature will be much better
known in India as a result of this showcase.
Several new Irish books are being published in Hindi the coming weeks
with the support of Ireland Literature Exchange including Snakes’ Elbows
by Deirdre Madden, Temptation by Dermot Bolger and A long, long way
by Sebastian Barry. There are also plans to publish a selection of
Frank O’Connor’s short stories.
Ireland Literature Exchange/Idirmhalartán Litríocht Éireann (ILE)
invites applications from literary translators from Spain, Argentina,
Russia and Eastern Europe (excluding Romania and Bulgaria*) who wish
to spend a period of up to four consecutive weeks in Ireland in 2007,
working on the translation of a work of modern Irish literature.
For further information, please click on the link below:
Download word doc
* These territories will receive special attention this year - a
call for bursaries will be sent out to these specific territories
in the latter half of 2007.
Applicants are advised to submit their applications
at least three months before publication of the translation.
The deadlines
for receipt of applications in 2007 are 10 January, 20 February,
03 May, 27 July and 31 October.
Ireland Literature Exchange, the organisation which promotes Irish
literature abroad, wishes to recruit an information assistant.
More Information
Ireland Literature Exchange/Idirmhalartán Litríocht Éireann (ILE)
invites applications from literary translators from Brazil and Argentina
who wish to spend a period of up to four consecutive weeks in Ireland
during November 2006 - April 2007, working on the translation of
a work of modern Irish literature.
Download
word doc.
Ireland Literature Exchange, the organisation which promotes Irish
literature abroad, wishes to recruit an information assistant.
More Information
Translators from Bulgaria, Romania, Estonia and Poland will meet
this month to read and discuss their translations of modern Irish
fiction, poetry and drama in a series of early evening events at
the Bank of Ireland Arts Centre.
Download word doc.
LE today announced that it is seeking applications for its Residential Translation Bursary programme. Experienced literary translators from Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovak Republic and Slovenia are eligible to apply.
For full details on the application process, visit ILE’s website at www.irelandliterature.com
The closing date for receipt of completed appilcations is April 28th 2006.
Download word doc.
Ireland Literature Exchange is now accepting applications for residential translation
bursaries from experienced Chinese literary translators.
The closing date for receipt of applications is March 27th 2006.
Further information click one of the following links. Chinese,
English [PDF] .
Welcome to the new Ireland Literature Exchange website. It
has been a really busy and exciting year for us here at ILE. First we
changed our physical environment - we moved into new offices in late November
2005 - and now we're changing our virtual one, with a newly constructed
website. We even have a new identity and image - our bright new logo depicts
our name, ILE, in ogham, the ancient Irish script.
In February, we celebrated ten years' hard work with a
birthday party in the National Library at which Minister of the Arts, John
O' Donoghue officiated. We're now looking forward to celebrating our 1000th
title in translation in 2006!
We've also been on the move internationally, promoting
our literature support programmes far and wide. ILE has attended 5
bookfairs this year (London, Paris, Bologna, Beijing and Frankfurt) and
attended other literature and translation events in Finland and Romania.
2006 was a very good year for Irish writing in translation.
With ILE's help, more than ninety works of Irish literature have been
brought to readers across the world in new
translations this year; some brand new works, several backlist titles and
some classics. Ireland's most recent Booker prize-winner John Banville had
his novel Athena published in French by
Laffont, with Shroud being
published in Dutch by Atlas Publishers. We're also delighted to see the
ILE-supported French translation of Colm Toibín's The Master published
by Laffont win the prestigious Prix
du Meilleur Livre Étranger. Many
congratulations to Colm, his translator Anna Gibson, and, of course his
publishers Laffont.
Other interesting titles which received grants have included new translations of Yeats’ poetry in German published
by Luchterhand Literatur Verlag and Lady Gregory's Kiltartan plays, published
in a beautiful edition by Trauben and translated by Rosangela Barone and
Melita Cataldi. Flann O'Brien's At
Swim Two Birds came out in a Romanian
translation by Adrian Oţoiu which took three years to complete. Selected
Poems by Michael Longley were published in
Hungarian and in Italian. Caroline Walsh's anthology of short stories, Arrows
in Flight, appeared in Serbian, as did
Joseph O'Connor's epic novel, Star of the Sea. Neil Jordan's Shade was
translated into Bulgarian by Iglika Vassileva. Aubrey Flegg's children's book
novel, Wings Over Delft came out in German and will also be available
in Slovene next year.
Translation in and out of the Irish language was a
regular feature of the year: Dara Ó Conala’s Night Ructions was translated into Romanian, while publishers
Coiscéim brought out a tri-lingual edition of the poetry of
Johann P. Tammen in a translation into Irish by Gabriel Rosenstock and
into English by Hans-Christian Oeser. ILE also supported its first ever
graphic book, with a beautiful Irish language edition of the Norwegian
book, Hull and Son, published by
Cois Life.
ILE has been
busy in other ways too. We've hosted four literary translators from Brazil and
Argentina this year and look forward to expanding this programme in 2006.
We'll be offering two bursaries to Chinese translators and have sent out a
call for applications with a closing date at the end of March. Other
bursaries for translators from Eastern Europe and South America will be
announced in the New Year. Keep watching our site for further updates in
relation to this programme.
Our newest programme of international author and translator
events has got off to a good start this year with writers visiting
Croatia, Estonia, Italy, Poland, Brazil and Slovenia. Other events
are planned for Argentina, China, France and Germany in 2006. We are
confident that this new programme will flourish in the years to come, as
international writers' festivals and publishers learn about this aspect of our work.
As you can see, it's been a busy year and we're looking
forward to an even busier 2006. On behalf of myself, my colleague Maire Ní
Dhonnchadha and the board of Ireland Literature Exchange, I’d like to wish you
all a very happy Christmas and a peaceful, book-filled New Year!
Sinéad Mac Aodha
Director
|
