The Oxford–Weidenfeld Prize is for book-length literary translations into English from any living European language. It aims to honour the craft of translation, and to recognise its cultural importance. It was founded by Lord Weidenfeld and is supported by New College, The Queen's College and St Anne's College, Oxford.
This year the winner of the Oxford–Weidenfeld Prize will be announced on 30 September –International Translation Day – during an online ceremony hosted by English PEN. To book tickets for the award ceremony, see here: https://www.englishpen.org/international-translation-day/.
To accompany the award of the Prize, OCCT is uploading a number of videos in which the shortlisted translators discuss or read from their respective translations. The videos will be uploaded at midday on 30 September on the OCCT’s Oxford-Weidenfeld page: http://www.occt.ox.ac.uk/oxford-weidenfeld-prize. The 2020 shortlist is:
Michális Ganás, A Greek Ballad (Yale UP), translated from the Greek by David Connolly and Joshua Barley
Pajtim Statovci, Crossing (Pushkin Press), translated from the Finnish by David Hackston
Mahir Guven, Older Brother (Europa), translated from the French by Tina Kover
Tatyana Tolstaya, Aetherial Worlds (Daunt Books), translated from the Russian by Anya Migdal
Multatuli, Max Havelaar (New York Review Books), translated from the Dutch by Ina Rilke and David McKay
Dušan Šarotar, Billiards at the Hotel Dobray (Istros Books), translated from the Slovene by Rawley Grau
Dina Salústio, The Madwoman of Serrano (Dedalus), translated from the Portuguese by Jethro Soutar
Birgit Vanderbeke, You Would Have Missed Me (Peirene Press), translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch
Other Events
1.The BCLA Triennial Conference on Randomness was going to take place at Queen's University Belfast on 15-17 September. Because of Covid-19, we had to cancel it but we still want to come together and reflect on Randomness and Culture the Age of Quarantine with three of our keynote speakers and a round table on Zoom on
Wednesday 16 September 2020, 9.30am-13.30pm
All are welcome! Register for free here or on the BCLA website to receive the link
Programme
Session 1: Speakers
9.30 am Welcome by BCLA President, Prof Susan Bassnett
9.35-10.05 Prof Mads Rosendahl Thomsen (Aaarhus), The Value of Imperfection
10.05-10.35 Prof Kylie Crane (Potsdam), Decay, Ruin and other (Un)Becomings: Random readings
10.35-10.45 – break
Session 2: Speakers
10.45-11.15 Prof Maghiel Van Crevel (Leiden), No one in Control?
11.15-11.45 Prof Peter Arnds (Dublin), The lost art of happenstance
11.45-12.00 break
Session 3: Roundtable discussion
12.00-1.30 Chaired by Prof Ben Hutchinson, BCLA Hon. Secretary
All welcome!
2. Webinars
The magazine and world literature
Organised by Patricia Novillo-Corvalan (University of Kent) and Francesca Orsini (SOAS, University of London). This monthly series (Fridays, 4 pm, link: https://zoom.us/j/8216864806) explores how magazines in different languages, contexts, and periods “did” world literature.
The first speaker on Fri 25 September will be Prof Stefan Helgesson (Stockholm), ‘The Discrete Worlds of Staffrider (Johannesburg) and Charrua (Maputo)’
Further dates: 16 October: Yan Jia (Peking University)
20 November: Laetitia Zecchini (CNRS, Paris)
11 December: Francesca Billiani (University of Manchester)
22 January 2021 Rossen Djagalov (New York University)
World literature and translation
Organised by Joseph Ford (Institute of Modern Languages Research, School of Advanced Studies, University of London), and LINKS.
The first webinar will be by Emma Bond (St Andrews) on Thursday 1st October 3-4:30pm (UK time) on 'Museum Practices in World Literature'
In re-telling histories of colonialism, war, borders and mobility through objects, authors Daša Drndić, Valeria Luiselli, Maaza Mengiste and Olga Tokarczuk collage together literary, archival and journalistic sources, traces of visual and material culture, song and photography, effectively assembling their books as mobile, living archives on display. Register here: https://modernlanguages.sas.ac.uk/events/event/22685
3. Online Early Career conference: “Global Publishing and the Making of Literary Worlds: Translation, Media and Migration.” June 4-6 2021
We include the link here and invite you to send it on to your early career students and colleagues. https://globalpublishing.princeton.edu/.
If you read the Home page and the Call for Papers, you will see that the conference has been designed to put participants in direct contact with publishers and editors from a variety of presses in exciting and supportive ways, including through one-on-one coaching sessions about their book descriptions.
The 250 early career scholars who eventually register are also invited, though not required, to serve as speakers in panel discussions related to the conference theme. Our hope is that these panels will in fact provide opportunities for the early career scholars (almost all new to the ICLA) to think through the intellectual questions at the heart of the conference, and to “meet” (if only virtually) our global range of officers, Executive Committee members, and chairs of our Research and Advisory committees. This will, in turn, make our association and our efforts to support the rising generation of scholars more visible—and effective.
