Marco Sonzogni, Senior Lecturer in Italian and Programme Director, and executive member of Te Tumu Whakawhiti Tuhinga/New Zealand Centre for Literary Translation, has been awarded the Looren Translation Grant. One of Europe’s top literary translation grants, it is awarded by Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Arts Council, in recognition of published translations as well as on the merits of an ongoing translation project – in this case, a selection of poems by the emerging and award-winning Swiss-Italian poet Oliver Scharpf.

Dr Sonzogni is a widely published literary translator from and into English and Italian. As well as the work of Irish Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney and of Italian Nobel Laureates Salvatore Quasimodo and Eugenio Montale, he has also translated NZ literature: Katherine Mansfield, Patricia Grace, Bill Manhire and Vincent O’Sullivan. His most recent publication is Corno inglese (2009), an edited collection of translations of Montale’s poetry. Sonzogni’s second collection of poems and translations, Falli di mano, will be published later this year.

He is currently working on a new English translation of Primo Levi’s Collected Poems with American poet and translator Harry Thomas and on a study of the book cover as intersemiotic translation.

German Films

Third-year German students are once again making creative use of their language skills in a short film project. The project involves story and script writing, pronunciation and intonation work, and of course acting, directing, filming and editing – all in German! Some or all of the finished films will be entered in the Short Film Fest 2009 for Students of German in New Zealand, sponsored by the Goethe Institut, ILANZ and the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany.

The theme for this year’s competition is “Die Mauer” (“The Wall”) to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. But the films don’t necessarily have to be about Berlin, rather the students can interpret the theme however they like, and in the early stages of the project they have already come up with some very imaginative takes on the theme.

Overall the students’ response to the project has been extremely positive, with most agreeing that the opportunity to use their language skills creatively makes learning both enjoyable and rewarding. Judging by the experience of previous years, it’s not only the learning experience that’s of high quality, but the films themselves as well. Victoria students have won first prize in the tertiary category of the Short Film Fest for the last three years.

Stephen Epstein is Co-editor of a Volume on Media Consumption in East Asia

Dr Stephen Epstein, Director of the Asian Studies Institute, is the co-editor of a book entitled Complicated Currents: Media Flow and Soft Power in East Asia which is due out later this year by Monash University Press.

The volume addresses transnational production and consumption of media products such as cinema, television dramas, popular music, comics and animation in Japan, South Korea and China. Its multidisciplinary approaches include cultural studies, gender studies, media studies, and a content analysis of popular discourses of otherness in the East Asian context. While suggesting the emergence of a shared East Asian popular consumer culture, it critically examines the proposition that such a shared popular culture can resolve tensions between nation-states, and highlights the appropriation of popular culture by nation-states in an attempt to exercise soft power.

This volume will be of interest to researchers in the emerging area of Inter-Asian cultural studies, especially issues involving new media and transnational cultural flows. It will also be useful to students in Asian studies, cultural studies and media studies courses.

Events