New Zealand Centre for Literary Translation, Te Tumu Whakawhiti Tuhinga o Aotearoa
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Overview
The New Zealand Centre for Literary Translation (NZCLT) supports the translation of foreign language writers into English as well as supporting research projects in literary translation.
The Centre is an innovative and exciting concept that hosts a core group of translators from the Asian and European Languages programmes at Victoria, as well as maintaining links with national and international experts. It was officially launched, in the presence of some 200 guests, on the 3 March 2008 by the Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Helen Clark.The Centre, directed by Jean Anderson, will pursue three main aims – to research issues relating to literary translation, particularly of New Zealand writers; to provide support for the translation of our writers’ work, in part through the eventual establishment of a translator’s residency; and to develop literary translation activities, in both teaching and professional areas.
Publications
At the Centre’s launch, the first official publication, Been There, Read That! Stories for the Armchair Traveller (Victoria University Press) was also launched. The anthology contains more than twenty stories from twenty different countries, translated from over a dozen different languages. The anthology is a team effort, involving translators from the School of Language and Cultures, as well as other local and international specialists in language and literature from countries as diverse as Ireland, Iran, Spain, Korea, Vietnam, Austria, Switzerland, Mauritius and Venezuela, to name but a few.
Seminars
The Centre hosts a series of seminars dedicated to literary translation. The inaugural lecture, organised in association with the Goethe Institut, was held on 8 October 2008. The guest speaker was Breon Mitchell, Professor of Germanic Studies and Comparative Literature at Indiana University (Bloomington). He talked about the fascinating process and special challenges of re-translating Gunter Grass’s Tin Drum. In 2009, the Centre hosted public talks and readings by Bill Manhire (award-winning poet and fiction writer), John Milton (University of Sao Paolo) and Brian Boyd (University Distinguished Professor in English at the University of Auckland).
In September and October 2009, under an agreement with the Korea Literature Translation Institute, the Centre welcomed Korean writer-in-residence, Kim Sun-Woo, to work on the translation of some of her poetry. Her books of poems include What If My Tongue Refuses to be Shut Inside My Mouth (2000), I Fall Asleep Under the Peach Blossoms (2003) and Who Sleeps Inside Me? (2007). She has also written essays, which have been collected in When the Moon Under the Water Unlocked (2002), Objects According to Kim Sun-Woo (2005), Sugar-like Kisses Entering My Mouth (2007), and Who Has Laid Inside This Rice Bowl Besides Us? (2007). She is also the author of a book of folk tales for the grown-ups titled Princess Bari (2003). She has received the Contemporary Literature Prize, the Chun Sang-byung Poetry Prize, and other literary awards.
Postgraduate Student Research
The Centre hosts a number of postgraduate students, who are working on projects across a range of languages and approaches. Current students are as follows:
Anne Siebeck is working on a PhD thesis on translated children’s fiction. Her research focuses on European children’s books, mainly picture books, which have recently been translated into English within New Zealand.
After completing her MA and writing her Magister (Master equivalent) thesis at the Institute for Children’s Literature Research at the Goethe-University of Frankfurt, she translated videogame texts in Germany before embarking on her PhD at Victoria University.
Richard Donovan’s PhD in Asian Studies examines “Issues in the Stylistics of Japanese-to-English Literary Translation”.
Julia Seemann is working on a PhD jointly supervised by the Italian and German programmes, entitled “Translating Traditions: The Whale Rider from Novel to Film”, which examines some of the translation issues involved in transferring text from its original context, both in terms of form and language.
Desirée Gezentsvey is working on an MA in Spanish focused on literary and theatrical translation. Her thesis is entitled “Spanish Wings for Kiwi Theatre: Cross-cultural Challenges in New Zealand Theatrical Translation”. Desirée is a published poet and translator and a native speaker of Spanish.
Jennifer Craddock is working on a MA in French. She is translating the short novel Comment cuisiner son mari à l’africaine by the acclaimed French-Cameroonian writer Calixthe Beyala and discussing the cultural and linguistic challenges of the project.
Louise Kotzé is working on an MA studying the challenges of translating a children’s book by German writer Cornelia Funke, Der Herr der Diebe, which is set in Venice.
Johanna Bartley has been working on an MA thesis entitled “Love and Loss: Selected Short Stories of Annie Saumont”, consisting of a translation of a themed selection of texts and a critical commentary.