National Translation Award

Scrolling through the Poets & Writers Submission Calendar, one contest captured my attention. Each year, the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) invites publishers to nominate book-length translations for this award. These books should have been published during the preceding calendar year. The winner receives $2,500. The criteria for judging the award are: (1) the significance of the literary contribution of the original as well as of the translation; and (2) the success of the translation in recreating the artistry of the original.
Although this award is not something that I would be eligible for (at least not anytime soon), it interests me because of my passion for languages. I find it fascinating to read different translations of the same book and, if possible, to also read the text in its original language and see how the works compare. Translation is a craft that is hard to master and, no matter how gifted the translator, something is nearly always lost in the process.
As mentioned in the criteria, submission to the National Translation Award must be a work of fiction, poetry, drama, or creative non-fiction. Literary criticism and philosophy are not eligible. Creative works are undoubtedly more difficult to translate, making this contest particularly challenging. The judges are board members of ALTA, and these members adhere to its goals of enhancing the status of literary translation, improving the quality of literary translation, and increasing the market for the publication of works in English translation. Skilled translators should be recognized and awarded for their craft. In addition to this, those features that make an exquisite translation must be brought out into the open so that the quality of literary translation as a whole can be improved.

Fugue

The most intriguing of these contests at a glance was Fugue. I clicked on the link to discover it's a prose/poetry contest hosted by the literary magazine of University of Idaho, which I think has the awesomest name--Fugue. I have no idea how a small college publication funds a prize of $1000 for each other their two winners. But I think it's a genius idea that contest entrants get a subscription to the magazine, so the contest advertises and gets their name out to the public.

Question of the Week: Pick a contest

This week we will not have class on Thursday. If you are stuck for a blog topic, consider this: which of the contests listed in the Poets and Writers Submission Calendar seems most interesting to you, and why? What's interesting about the contest? The journal? The submission rules? The judge(s)?

Prolificacy & The Book as Art

Where is everybody? I suppose it does get harder to maintain a blog when you are stuck between the crushing weight of midterms and the prospective freedom of spring break. Lucky enough not to have midterms, I managed to find a few blips in the mainstream media that may interest the class:

First, Geoff Nicholson's editorial in the New York Times entitled "Can't. Stop. Writing." Musing on authors labeled "prolific," Nicholson tries to determine where productivity can entail too much of a good thing. He quotes James Gibbons as saying "The truly prolific author, as distinct from the merely respectably productive one, is either a genre writer or a relic." The idea here is that in today's world literary respect and prolificacy are often mutually exclusive - unlike in the 19th century, where Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope got the best of both worlds.

Nicholson drops some pretty astounding numbers in respect to genre writers who broke world records with their output (we're talking close to a 1,000 books written in less than a lifetime). But he also considers some of the literary talents of the postmodern and contemporary era; Joyce Carol Oates, John Updike, and Anthony Burgess both have an impressive number of books under their names, and Thomas Pynchon has oh so few. Yet, I would argue, John Updike is a little more digestible than Thomas Pynchon. Imagine tomes such as Gravity's Rainbow and Against the Day appearing on bookshelves at a rate of 1 or 2 a year. Could the literary community read that quickly? I agree with Nicholson's final summation that creative output is almost out of the writer's control, at least when it reaches extreme levels. And I especially agree with Nicholson's theory that "perhaps the real reason we keep writing is the hope, naïve perhaps, that we’ll make a better job of it next time. Unless you’re a genius or a fool, you realize that everything you write, however 'successful,' is always a sort of failure. And so you try again."

Next up is an exhibit on books as art at the National Museum of Women in the Arts (at BC) that was pointed out to me by the Boston Globe. Apparently artists have taken to transforming books into miniature pieces of art - kind of like origami. I would be interested in seeing this exhibit, but I also wonder - how long before this mode is mass manufactured for sale in quirky little art stores, if it hasn't been already? The themes of the transformed books seem to have been incorporated into some of the pieces, though this idea could be taken to whole new levels - for example, a house for The House of the Seven Gables or an axe for Crime and Punishment. Or to return to our friend Thomas Pynchon, a mini V-2 rocket for Gravity's Rainbow. If these were manufactured, would the publishing industry be involved? I guess this is silly conjecture at this point, but the idea does seem lucrative. What if, instead of displaying your favorite books next to one another on a shelf, you had them sitting in their own displays as pieces of art?

Rambling blog

I agree that, in terms of our blog voices, we must be conscientious of several things: We have to balance the informality of expressing our opinions about the readings with the academic necessities of the class. On the same note, we should be able to honestly voice our opinions while keeping in mind the nature of the blog as a public forum. I think it is too easy for us to fall into the trap, which seems to be common of cyberspace in general, of thinking that our writing is contained within the sphere of class, disregarding the very real fact that anyone on the planet could read our musings. It’s for this reason that I find it interesting that people are drawing comparisons between the blog and diaries. There are some obvious differences, such as the fact that I would probably never write a journal entry about the publishing industry, but I think the similarities are more prominent. David’s remark that we are always on view is never truer than when we post a blog entry, but I would be lying if I said that I have ever written in a journal with the notion that it would exist in a vacuum. By this I mean that, in some sense, anything we write we have the intention of having someone else read. If not, what would be the point of writing it? It would seem extremely self-congratulatory to write something down, particularly something like a journal entry, if it is only for the sake of proving to yourself of having thought that. To put it more clearly, the thought is yours the moment you think it, so why write it down for any other purpose than to communicate it to someone else? In this sense, the blog accomplishes exactly what a diary or journal does, but on a more prolific and immediate scale. Coming to the point in an extremely roundabout way, I think we should treat this blog with as much formality as we would treat a journal: We are all English majors so I imagine that we all have at least a semi-perfectionist attitude towards language, so the same impulse that would compel me to erase a misspelling in a journal prohibits me from writing this blog as though it were a text message. Simultaneously, I think we should all feel comfortable enough with the each other, and also with the public nature of the internet (thanks to its anonymity), to express whatever thoughts we have about the class, readings, or anything else that catches our attention.
P.S. I couldn’t really think of anything coherent to write about this week, so I apologize if this post is rambling and pointless.

Dual-Purpose Post

First, my response to blogging vs. journal/diaries:

I think the difference between diaries and blogs should be viewed similarly to the difference between feelings (diaries) and thoughts (blogs).

Thought - the content of cognition, carefully considered idea

Feelings - cognition itself, emotional responses

Diary's are like feelings. They're private and unexplainable. Feelings and deep writing happen when we least expect them. We’re not really sure why we experience certain emotional drives, how to write about them without some insecurity, how those feelings will be received by others and if you can piece a cohesive thought together to package it up for display. That’s why diaries are so crucial. They’re a place to store your random ideas and feelings into a safe place, free of judgment. We don’t display every feeling we have in the same way we don’t care to share everything that we feel and put it into writing. However, for the thoughts and feelings we can make sense of and wrap up neatly, we put them on display through…

Thoughts and blogs. If thoughts are carefully considered ideas, then blogs are the place to display the products of your working mind, but only if your careful thinking finds them acceptable for your desired audience. This does not imply thoughts and blogs can’t be bad or offensive. “Carefully considered” just means you’ve put enough consideration into it so that the people YOU care about aren’t offended. Referencing my last blog entry… even Hitler had a fan club. Carefully considered doesn’t always imply “widely accepted”. But this public display of yourself is “carefully considered” in a way that diaries are not. Unless you have an annoying sibling who won’t stop searching for your journal, you’re probably writing things in there you actively hope other people will never see. I know I do. Hell, I write things in there I don’t even want to see again! That’s how spontaneous and scary private writing and emotions can be.

But how can people differentiate what’s acceptable between the two, because let’s face it, feelings and thoughts (while clearly defined) are still just two ends of a spectrum that has a massive gray area in between. Thoughts make their way into diaries and feelings find their way into blogs. Many people don’t see feelings and thoughts as very different, so let me provide the x-factor I believe truly divides the two: time.

Diaries (feelings) are immediate, and therefore choppy and inconsistent. They’re too fast and unpredictable to be thrown into “careful consideration” so we throw them into our diaries instead, at the next most convenient time… for FUTURE viewing. Diaries are meant to be analyzed later, to find patterns in your thoughts processes. They exist for benefit in the future, unlike…

Blogs, which exist for the benefit of the PRESENT. Because this has nothing to do with one person, there is no time to waste in sharing your thoughts. If you wait long enough to go back to it, you’ll miss the topic at hand and be late in responding, therefore providing a nearly irrelevant response. If no one knows it exists, it might as well not.

You can go back to your diary whenever you want, so you write short, quick bursts of feelings that nobody can see. Your blog, though, requires immediate careful consideration because of the nature behind its immediate consumption by others. Your audience is your driving force and time is not on your side. The problem with this is that there are two different kinds of driving forces: desired and required. Desired would be the blogs you chose (ex: a movie blog, blog for cynics, writer blog… none of which I write on, though) and required would be the blogs you have assigned (ex: class, work). What’s the difference? Incentive.

If I cared what people thought of my thoughts, and wanted validation for my thoughts, I’d post on movie blogs and writing blogs. I know I will one day, when I don’t have a college full of friends distracting me and providing me already with the feedback I’d receive online. Once I graduate and have fewer forms of feedback, I’ll seek it on a properly selected blog. Because there is no incentive to blog now, I don’t. When I have nobody to talk to and need someone to respond, I’ll have incentive to blog.

Class and work are similar in the sense that they constantly have incentive (or should, if not at least through grades/paychecks). If a class or job has gone through the lengths of setting up a blog, there is probably a reason, and you’re probably required.

This blog is an interesting sort of fusion. For me, it is both required (class) and desired (of personal interest). Only because it has recently lost a bit of its formality, in the sense that we’ve abandoned certain forced writings on readings for less formal, writing-general responses. I like that we can talk about things that interest us personally, as long as it also pertains to the writing nature of the class. If this were a required class blog in a Biology class, I think I’d fail the course quickly. So, with the closing of my “required” blog entry on a class discussion topic, I will add something a little more personal.

Part Two of my Post: The Dream Begins

I’ve been reading about and analyzing the Box Office for over 10 years through a number of different online movie sites. It’s pretty much the one area of interest of mine that I’ve fully utilized the internet for. In my quest to become a writer and movie maker, I’ve become sort of a critic. Only until recently has that critic been limited to my internal thoughts. After staying up this past Thursday night to go see the midnight showing of “Friday the 13^th”, I decided to finally write a mini-review and submit it to one of the sites I check multiple times a day: BoxOfficeProphets.com. It’s not a blogging site, but considering it combines two of my favorite hobbies, movies and writing (through reviewing) , I felt it to be both personal and relevant to the class. I thought it would be a good way to get at least one facet of my voice published, even if on a less-credible than print-publication medium. In any case, I received an email Saturday afternoon from one of the webmasters saying he enjoyed my review and personal statement submissions and was glad to bring me on as a part of BOP (basically he only thing good to come out of Valentine’s Day). It’s not a full-time staff writer’s position, but I will be given occasional assignments that might be posted to the site to start. I’m pretty excited, so after the first assignment of mine that gets posted I will add the link here on the blog. My personal and writing-relevant contribution to the class, if you will. This is of course on top of some of the more “required” entries, but at least I’m also trying to find a way to introduce some more “desired” entries in a way that you might find class-relevant and appealing.

The Kindle: Take Two