Literature Across Frontiers • Inizjamed

MALTA INTERNATIONAL TRANSLATION WORKSHOP 2006

Organised by: LAF and Inizjamed • Location: Wardija and Valletta

In collaboration with the Ministry of Education, Youth and Employment and St. James Cavalier

Accommodation: private rooms with shared facilities in 2 villas in Wardija, hotel accommodation in Valetta

Literature Across Frontiers fosters cross-cultural literary collaboration and creation of new work and translations through short-term projects involving writers and translators in a workshop or residency situation. As available courses in literary translation rarely combine small languages, one of the main aims of the programme is to develop opportunities for poets/translators working between small languages.

In this context, Inizjamed is holding a week-long residential LAF International Translation workshop in September with the participation of writers from Malta and five other European countries within the framework of the Literature Across Frontiers literature project co-funded by the Culture 2000 programme of the EU.

The foreign writers and translators who will be participating in the MALTA LAF INTERNATIONAL TRANSLATION WORKSHOP are Jordi Punti from Catalonia, Roman Simić from Croatia, Aki Salmela from Finland, Susan Richardson from Wales, Valda Berzina Melgalve from Latvia, and Alexandra Büchler (Czech Republic/UK). The Maltese participants are Immanuel Mifsud, Simone Inguanez, Maria Grech Ganado and Clare Azzopardi.

An International Literary Encounter for the general public will be held Saturday 16th September 2006 at 8.00pm in the Theatre at St. James Cavalier in collaboration with the St. James Cavalier Centre for Creativity, with readings by the writers involved in the Malta LAF International Translation Workshop.

Provisional schedule

Contacts

Clare Azzopardi – workshop coordinator in Malta (Inizjamed)

Alexandra Büchler – workshop leader (LAF)  

Participants

From Croatia

Roman Simić was born in 1972 in Zadar, Croatia. He holds a degree in Spanish Language and Literature and Comparative Literature from the University of Zagreb. He works as publishing editor and for the past six years he has been the editor of the literary magazine Quorum. He is also Artistic Director for the annual Festival of the European Short Story and editor of a series of European short story anthologies published in Croatian translation. He has published a collection of poetry and two collections of short stories: Mjesto na kojem ćemo provesti noć (A Place Where We’re Going to Spend the Night, 2000, and U što se zaljubljujemo (What We Fall in Love With, 2005). His stories have been translated into Swedish, German, Bulgarian, Slovenian, Lithuanian, English, and Polish. Simić has also edited an anthology of Croatian erotic prose entitled Libido.hr (2002) and has prepared collections of contemporary Croatian short story and poetry for Spanish, Polish, Czech, and Slovenian literary magazines. He lives in Zagreb.

From Catalonia

Jordi Puntí  was born in Manlleu in 1967 and is considered one the most promising new voices of contemporary Catalan literature. He is the author of two short story collections Pell d’armadillo(Columna, 1998) [‘Armadillo Skin’] and Animals tristos (Sad animals, 2002). Bothe have been translated into Spanish and the latter into German, Italian and French. Punti has translated Paul Auster, Amélie Nothomb and Daniel Pennac, among others. He is currently the editor of the literary supplement, Quadern, published by the newspaper El País.

From Latvia

Valda Berzina Melgalve was born in Riga in 1955 in the family of an artists and architect. She studied English language and literature at the Latvian State University and started publishing in the early 1980s and has so far published two collections of short stories. In her works she concentrates on the seemingly small details of everyday life that have the power to change the protagonists’ lives.  

She has worked as literary translator since 1990 and among the many books she has translated are "Middlesex” by J. Eugenides, short stories and novels by P.G. Woodehouse, and two novels by Lawrence Durrell.

From Finland

Aki Salmela was born in 1976 in Helsinki and is a poet and a translator. He has published two books of poetry in finnish, Sanomattomia lehtiä (Untold Papers 2004), Leikitään kotia (Let’s Play Home, 2005) and one chapbook of experimental poetry in English, Word in Progress (2004) [tuli-savu.nihil.fi/julkaisut/salmela_word_in_progress.pdf]. His translations include the selected poems of John Ashbery, Valveillaoloa (2004), and the selected poems of Russell Edson, Intuitiivinen matka (2006). In 2004 he won the prestigious Kalevi Jäntti prize with his debute book of poems. Salmela is known as an experimental and innovative poet with notable taste for the avantgarde poetics and black humor. He has been on the editing board of Finlands main poetry magazine Tuli&Savu from 2003-2005 and is one of the editors of innovative poetry book series under the name of poEsia.

(photo: Lauri Mannermaa)

From Wales

Susan Richardson a writer and freelance tutor of creative writing based in Wales. Her poems have appeared in a wide range of journals and anthologies including Acumen, Poetry Wales, Iota, Orbis, Contraflower (Scriberazone Press, 2005) and Dance the Guns to Silence: 100 Poems for Ken Saro-Wiwa (Flipped Eye Publishing, 2005).  Her poetic drama, Two Of Me Now, is published by Cecil Woolf in the Bloomsbury Heritage Series. Recently, Susan was awarded a Churchill Memorial Travel Fellowship to journey through Iceland, Greenland and Newfoundland in the footsteps of an intrepid tenth century female Viking. A full-length collection of poetry, Creatures of the Intertidal Zone, inspired by her journey, is to be published by Cinnamon Press in 2007. As a tutor, Susan regularly runs writing workshops for a wide range of organisations and institutions including Cardiff University, the Welsh Refugee Council, Disability Arts Cymru, the Women’s Arts Association and the Open College of the Arts. She has also held a number of writing residencies at Swansea University and for the Anorexia and Bulimia Nervosa Association of Australia.

From Malta

Clare Azzopardi was born in Malta in 1977. She studied at the Faculty of Education at the University of Malta and read for a Masters degree in Literacy at the University of Sheffield. She has run writing workshops for both for adults and children. Her poetry and short stories have been collected in anthologies such as Illejla Ismagħni Ftit (2001), Gżejjer (Inizjamed, 2000), F’Kull Belt Hemm Kantuniera (Inizjamed, 2003), Ktieb għall-Ħruq (Inizjamed, 2004), and Storja Tinkiteb (Kunsill tal-lingwa, 2005). Translations of her short stories have been published in literary reviews, including In Focus (Pen Cyprus, 2005), West 47 and Cúirt 21 (Ireland, 2006), in Hungary, and have also been featured online at www.laurahird.com, a web page hosted by Scottish writer Laura Hird. More recently, she has published Others, Across (Inizjamed and Midsea Books, 2005), which contains two short stories translated into English, and Il-Linja l-Ħadra (‘The Green Line’), her first short story collection (Merlin Library, July 2006). In 2003 Clare was a member of the Maltese group representing Inizjamed that presented their work at the Biennial of Young Artists of Europe and the Mediterranean held in Athens.

Maria Grech Ganado was born in Malta in 1943 and  received her tertiary education at the Universitites of Malta, Cambridge and Heidelberg.  She was the first Maltese woman to be appointed a full-time Lecturer at the University of Malta where she taught English Literature.  She has published five volumes of verse – three in Maltese (Izda Mhux Biss, Skond Eva and Fil-Hofra Bejn Spallejha ( the first winning the National Book Council’s Prize in 2002) and two in English, (Ribcage  and Cracked Canvas) - and has been translated from Maltese into English, French, Italian and German, and from English into French, Greek, Spanish and Czech.  Her work has been extensively published in England, France, Italy and Cyprus, and she has been invited to symposia, readings, book fairs and festivals in Cyprus, Wales, Germany, Italy and Lithuania.  In 2000, she received a national award, the MQR, for Service to the Republic.  She also works extensively on translations into English of other Maltese writers and in November 2005 co-ordinated the international symposium, Re-Visions – Literary Exchange in an Expanding Europe, co-organised by Inizjamed and Literature Across  Frontiers in Valetta. Maria has three children, Xandru, Francesca and Louisa, whom she considers essential to her curriculum vitae. www.mariagrechganado.com

Simone Inguanez was born in Malta in 1971 and  graduated in law, criminology and youth studies and undertook training in Gestalt psychotherapy and family mediation. She now lives in Kalkara and works mainly as a reviser in the field of law with a leading translation firm based in Malta. Simone Inguanez published her first collection of poetry ftit mara ftit tifla in 2005 (Klabb Kotba Maltin). This was soon after the publication of fire, water, earth and i, a short selection of her works translated into English (Inizjamed, Midsea Boooks). A number of her works have also appeared in anthologies, journals and similar publications, while others were set to music. Simone Inguanez is currently the literary editor for the Maltese weekly newspaper lL-GENS illum, a task she fulfils on behalf of Mediterranean cultural organisation Inizjamed.

Immanuel Mifsud (Malta, 1967) writes poetry and prose in Maltese. He has published five poetry collections, including KM, a bilingual edition of travel poems with translations into English by Maria Grech Ganado (2005) and Confidential Reports (Ireland, Southword Books) translated into English by Adrian Grima and Maurice Riordan.

He has also published five collections of short stories, including L-Istejjer Strambi ta’ Sara Sue Sammut (Sara Sue Sammut’s Strange Stories) which won the National Literary Award for 2002, and the highly controversial Kimika (Chemistry) in 2005. Immanuel Mifsud has read his work at a number of international literary events in Europe. www.immanuelmifsud.com

Workshop Leader

Alexandra Büchler was born in Prague and was educated there, in Thessaloniki and Melbourne, Australia. She has lived in Great Britain since 1989. She is Director of Literature Across Frontiers, a programme of international literary exchange based in the UK, member of the editorial board of the European Internet Review of Books and Writing, Transcript, and editor of a new international series of contemporary poetry anthologies by Arc Publications. A translator of fiction, poetry, theatre plays and texts on modern art and architecture from English, Czech and Greek, she has translated over twenty-five works, including books by authors such as J. M. Coetzee, David Malouf, Jean Rhys, Janice Galloway and Rhea Galanaki into Czech. She has also edited and part-translated a number of anthologies, including This Side of Reality: Modern Czech Writing (1996), Allskin and Other Tales by Contemporary Czech Women (1998) and the most recent A Fine Line: New Poetry from Central and Eastern Europe, Arc Publications, 2004. She is currently editing an anthology of Czech poetry forthcoming in late 2006.

International Literary Event 2006 - Saturday, 16 September, 8.00pm

Inizjamed is holding an international literary event on Saturday 16 September at 8pm at the St. James Cavalier Centre for Creativity with the participation of leading writers from Catalonia, Croatia, Finland, Latvia, Malta, and Wales. week-long residential international Translation project in September. Entrance is free. This event is open to the general public and is being held in collaboration with Literature Across Frontiers, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Employment and St. James Cavalier.

This event will come at the end of a week-long residential International Translation project being held in Malta within the framework of the Literature Across Frontiers literature project co-funded by the Culture 2000 programme of the EU. [Read more]

Letteratura mill-Ewropa Tradotta għall-Malti

Qegħdin inxandru għall-ewwel darba wħud mit-traduzzjonijiet għall-Malti ta' xogħlijiet ta' kittieba minn ħames pajjiżi Ewropej li ħadu sehem fil-Laboratorju Internazzjonali tat-Traduzzjoni organizzat mil-LAF bi sħab ma' Inizjamed f'Settembru ta' l-2006 b'finanzjament mill-programm Kultura 2000 ta' l-UE. Mexxiet il-laboratorju Alexandra Büchler, direttriċi ta' l-LAF. Il-koordinazzjoni min-naħa ta' Inizjamed kienet ta' Clare Azzopardi.

Immanuel Mifsud, Simone Inguanez, Maria Grech Ganado u Clare Azzopardi ttraduċew xogħlijiet ta' Aki Salmela mill-Finlandja, Jordi Punti mill-Katalunja, Roman Simić mill-Kroazja (fir-ritratt), Valda Berzina Melgalve mil-Latvja u Susan Richardson minn Wales u mil-minn Inizjamed bħala parti mill-proġett Literature Across Frontiers. Il-kittieba barranin ittraduċew ix-xogħlijiet ta' l-awturi Maltin bil-lingwi tagħhom. (Diċembru 2006)

Susan Richardson (Wales) - Poeżiji: "Gudrid ir-Rari," "Ħajja Ġdida," "Liebes il-Vjola s-Silġ"

Traduzzjoni ta’ Simone Inguanez

Jordi Punti (il-Katalunja) - "Ħajta Deni"

Traduzzjoni ta' Immanuel Mifsud

Roman Simić (il-Kroazja) - "Ma Kellniex Triq Oħra"

Traduzzjoni ta’ Immanuel Mifsud

Jordi Punti (il-Katalunja) - Il-Kelb Jilgħaq il-Ġrieħi Tiegħu

Traduzzjoni ta' Clare Azzopardi

Roman Simić (il-Kroazja) - Għal Ftit Mumenti, Inkunu Kuntenti

Traduzzjoni ta’ Clare Azzopardi
 

Aki Salmela (il-Finlandja)

Poeżiji: "Il-Kunstkammer," "Mix-Xej’," "Għażiża Poeżija"

Proża Poetika: "Ħuta / Ritratt tal-Ħajja Ħuta," "Sigarett," "Limbu"

Traduzzjoni ta' Simone Inguanez