Literature Across Frontiers Translating Minoritized Languages in Europe

Together with Alexandra Büchler, the Director of Literature Across Frontiers, a Wales-based institution for the promotion of literary translation across the “smaller” languages of Europe, three literary translators of minorized languages will talk about the strategies and the obstacles for survival.

They will discuss the wins and the losses, the past and the future, and the parallels to be drawn with other minorized languages in the world.

…

Moderator

Amaia Gabantxo is a writer, a singer, and an award-winning literary translator of Basque literature. She teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is currently translating Unai Elorriaga’s Old Dogs, Old Bones for Archipelago Books, and editing and translating an anthology of Basque female poets that Parthian will publish in 2022.

Presenters

Kareem Abdulrahman is a Kurdish translator and journalist. He worked for over eight years with the BBC, where translation from Kurdish was part of his job. His translation of Bakhtiyar Ali’s I Stared at the Night of the City, the first Kurdish novel to be translated into English, was published in 2016. His next translation,The Last Pomegranate, also by Ali, is due to be published by Archipelago Books next year. He is the head of editorial at Insight Iraq, a monitoring and analysis service focusing on Kurdish affairs and Iraq. He lives in London. Alexandra Büchler is Founding Director of Literature Across Frontiers (LAF): European Platform for Literary Exchange, Translation and Policy Debate. Translator, editor, and cultural manager for over thirty years, she has been instrumental in setting up a number of literary translation initiatives in Europe and the UK, including the Literary Translation Centre at the London Book Fair. She has convened conferences, seminars and facilitated translation workshops, and has around thirty publications in translation to her name, including prose, poetry, drama, and non-fiction, mostly between her native Czech and English. She edited a series of bilingual poetry anthologies at Arc Publications between 2006 and 2016. Elin Haf Gruffydd Jones is Professor at University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Board member of Literature Across Frontiers and Wales Literature Exchange, and an expert on minority languages in Europe. She has published books, journal articles and reports in the field of culture, media, language planning, sociolinguistics, and creative translation. She is a member of the Council of Europe’s Expert Group on Media for the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages, and a member of the Academic Board of the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol, an organisation responsible for the development of the Welsh language in higher education. She translates between Basque, Catalan, English, and Welsh.