To make matters worse, yesterday he had stayed up reading a book--knowing all along that he should get some sleep--and he was paying for it now, his eyes hurting a little as he looked at the computer screen.
--Lady Joker, Volume One by Kaoru Takamura, translated by Marie Iida and Allison Markin Powell (Soho Crime)
I know the feeling; might even call it a job description, though I'm not complaining. The words quoted above come from a book that is gradually enveloping my current reading life in the best possible way. It's the first half of an epic (about 1,200 pages) Japanese work described by author Yoko Ogawa as "a novel that portrays with devastating immensity how those on the dark fringes of society can be consumed by the darkness of their own hearts." That it does. Lady Joker, Volume Two will be released this fall.
Women in Translation Month seems like the perfect time to embark on such an adventure, and a recent e-mail conversation I had with translator Powell provided just the inspiration I needed. I've enjoyed her work for years, including translations of Hiromi Kawakami's The Nakano Thrift Shop and Fuminori Nakamura's The Gun.
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Allison Markin Powell |
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The book world is celebrating WiTM in many ways. One of mine was to interview Powell after reading her recent post on Soho's blog: "Translating Women Is Essential: Allison Markin Powell on Translating Kaoru Takamura's Groundbreaking Japanese Crime Epic."
A literary translator, editor and publishing consultant, Powell has received grants from English PEN and the NEA, and the 2020 PEN America Translation Prize for The Ten Loves of Nishino by Hiromi Kawakami. She was co-organizer and co-host of the Translating the Future conference, served as co-chair of the PEN America Translation Committee and currently represents the committee on PEN's board of trustees. She is also a founding member of translator collectives Çedilla & Co. and Strong Women, Soft Power; and teaches literary translation at Hunter College (CUNY).
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| Women in Translation display at Powell's Books, Portland, Ore. | |
We first met in 2014 when BookExpo's Global Forum showcased "Books in Translation." In a conversation with program coordinator Ruediger Wischenbart, Powell had said that translating is "an immersion into another culture and a reading of signifiers. I do try to gear toward a general reader.... I work within trade publishing. I'm looking for work an American audience might want to read." We had a brief conversation after the session, and in 2017 she spoke with me on behalf of Çedilla & Co. for a column. Our intermittently ongoing discussion picked up again this week when I asked if she might reflect a bit upon WiTM through the lens of her experiences.
"There's been a tremendous amount of change since we were last in touch in 2017, a lot of activism to raise the profile of the translator, some of which seems to have actually had some impact," Powell observed. "There's been increased awareness about DEI in literary translation, similar to that within the larger publishing industry. But maybe the best way to respond is to talk about the work a group of translators has been doing to rewrite the Manifesto on Translation that was drafted in 1969 by PEN's Translation Committee. We started working on this in 2018, when planning began for the 2020 Translating the Future Conference and are just putting the absolute finishing touches on it now.
"As part of our call for action, 'we call for the entire literary community to move forward with a critical approach that recognizes translation as the engaged, collaborative, and creative writing practice that it is.' We invite all stakeholders to recognize our responsibilities to each other: translators, authors, publishers, institutions, book section editors & reviewers, teachers and readers--and booksellers too, of course. We'll be making it public very soon and hope to engage with the community at large about the various issues raised in the document."
Recalling past WiTM highlights, Powell said: "We've had some lovely events at WORD bookstore in Greenpoint, Brooklyn; also at McNally Jackson's Prince Street location. The PEN Translation Committee has been hosting virtual WiT events for the past three years, and another great series that has supported WiT is the Transnational Literary Series at Brookline Booksmith [Brookline, Mass.]."
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| Greenlight Bookstore, Brooklyn, N.Y. | |
What are some of her WiTM reading recommendations? "Off the top of my head, two Japanese titles that immediately come to mind (not super recent but definitely underappreciated favorites) are Territory of Light by Yuko Tsushima, translated by Geraldine Harcourt; and The Woman in the Purple Skirt by Natsuko Imamura, translated by Lucy North. Oh, also The Color of the Sky Is the Shape of the Heart by Chesil, translated by Takami Nieda. Non-Japanese, two books that I will be buying this week are Witches by Brenda Lozano, translated by Heather Cleary; and The Dogs of Summer by Andrea Abreu, translated by Julia Sanches (both Çedilla members). Now that I've gotten started, I could name so many!"
After undertaking the massive Lady Joker translation, Powell said she is currently "working on a much smaller project," a retranslation of a classic novella with a different co-translator. "Otherwise I'm working on various prospective translation projects while being very focused on promoting volume two of Lady Joker, which pubs on October 18."
Uh, oh... that's less than two months away. I've got some serious late-night reading to do to be ready, which also means that, once again, WiTM will break through its August borders, as it should.