The Elephant in the Room

Last week, the National Capital Area Translators Association (NCATA) hosted a movie night at the Goethe Institut with a screening of the Vadim Jendreyko’s documentary,The Woman with 5 Elephants (Original Title: Die Frau mit den 5 Elefanten), an award-winning 2009 Swiss film about Russian-to-German translator Svetlana Grier.

In case you were wondering, this is not a film tracking pachyderms across the savannas of East Africa—the five elephants are Ms. Grier's masterpieces—translations of Dostoyevsky's major works into German, completed in between relocating from occupied Kiev to Freiburg during Soviet rule.

The film brings to light interesting parallels between the preeminent translator's work and her life, also focusing on the fundamental incompatibility of the Russian and German languages.

One of the most eloquent quotes from the film is when Ms. Grier explains the internalization of the text during the translation process:

[...] one doesn’t translate from left to right, following the text, but only after one has made the sentence one’s own. It first has to be internalized, taken to heart. I read a book so often that my eyes ’gouge holes’ in pages. I basically know it by heart. Then the day comes when I suddenly hear the melody of the text."​

Brilliant.

I have also posted a two-part interview at San Francisco's 15th Berlin & Beyond Film Festival with the film's director, ​Vadim Jendreyko, and some interesting production anectodtes.

The Woman with 5 Elephants is available for online viewing via Netflix. In German and Russian, with subtitles. 93 minutes run-time. Check out the trailer in German, French, or English here.

Multilingual bragging rights

Like any other person with a healthy ego, I particularly enjoy being told I am more clever than the next lass, so I was quite pleased to come across an article splashed across the front page of today's Financial Times ​expounding that fact. 

...yes, being multilingual makes you smarter! 

Of course, the FT ​article took a business spin, lauding the employability of multilinguals, "because these employees can communicate better, have better intercultural sensitivity, are better at co-operating, negotiating, compromising. But they can also think more efficiently.” 

​Why, thank you.

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Today's article echos the sentiment of last year's New York Times article, detailing recent studies on cognitive function and how speaking multiple languages improves the brain's executive function responsible for planning, solving problems, and performing various other mentally demanding tasks.

Neuropsychologist Tamar Gollan of the University of California, San Diego, found that individuals with a higher degree of bilingualism were more resistant than others to the onset of dementia and other symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease: the higher the degree of bilingualism, the later the age of onset.

In all honesty, I don't think most multilinguals set out to learn another language to be "smarter" or to stave off disease -- or even get out of a fight with a Paris cabbie -- but it turns out that the gift of communication is the gift that keeps on giving. ​

Vive la... Francophonie!

It's March, which means it is the month of La Francophonie, celebrating all things French across the globe. The DC Festival is actually the largest of its kind in the world, uniting Francophone embassies, including France, Haiti, Switzerland, Mali, Senegal, and Lebanon, in conjunction with the Smithsonian, the Quebec Government Office, and the Alliance Française. This year's festival will feature worldwide culinary, literary, and performing arts, March 1 – April 13.

Tomorrow night (Thursday, March 7), the opening reception will take place at the Residence of Gabon, where the Grand Prix de la Francophonie will be awarded. Meanwhile, the Maison Française at the Embassy of France will host many of the festival's rendez-vous, emphasizing the diversity of the French-speaking world.

La Grande Fête, a highlight of the Festival each year, takes place at the Maison Française on Friday, March 22. More than 35 embassies and organizations will put together a stunning display of culinary specialties and traditions of the Francophone world. The evening will feature a live concert by Switzerland’s popular singer-songwriter Bastian Baker, whose pop-folk and catchy sing-along ballads stole the show at the Montreux Jazz Festival and sell-out venues across Switzerland. 

The Maison Française will also present Terakaft, a genuine desert rock band from Mali, at La Maison Française on Wednesday, March 13 at 7:30 p.m. Around the World recently described the band as "thoughtful, informed, insightful and worldly...some of the most bracing of the desert blues that has emerged in recent years, with its swirl of electric guitars and steely vocals."  

Well, that's certainly plenty of culture to keep you busy as we head into spring!​

There's a chill in the air...

With an impeding blizzard about to strike the DC area, there definitely seems to be a bit of chill in the air, or that could be just some Nordic Cool, the massive festival at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., with artists and designers displaying art and culture from the very tiptop of the globe (which I mentioned last week).  

I had the opportunity to attend Monday's panel, "From Classics to Crime-Translating Nordic Fiction for American Readers," moderated by Katherine A. Powers. It was a very insightful panel discussion, but for those of you who missed it, the Washington City Paper ran a superb interview with Ms. Allan yesterday.

The festival is winding down, but there still are several more panels, plays, and tastings to be discovered.​

Tomorrow, I will be sure to update the DC-based tribe on the Francophonie 2013 Cultural Festival, taking place now through April 13th in the nation's capital. A demain!
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Works that Work: Inside the Brilliant Mind of Translator Linda Asher

Linda Asher in her Manhattan apartment. She is the former fiction editor of The New Yorker, and has been translating books by Milan Kundera since 1986. (Photo by Bryan Schutmaat)

I was quite pleased to have come across the new twice-yearly international periodical, Works that Work, ​an unexpectedly creative journal of original essays, stories, and images.

The pilot issue features contributions that range from a piece on urinals at the Amsterdam airport that provide 80% in savings, to an article on dabbawallas  (Mumbai's homemade food distribution), to--drum roll please--an interview delving into the role of the translator in contributing to an impactful human exchange that reaches beyond the confines of the page.

In the piece, "Translation is a Human Interchange," (follow the link to download the article for 1 euro), Peter Biľak talks with Linda Asher, former fiction editor at The New Yorker and translator of Milan Kundera’s French works, about her work, good translation and good translators.

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Ms. Asher's observations about the process of literary translation ring poetic, "Translation is primarily performance, interpretation, more than it is ‘creation’, just as when Emanuel Ax plays Bach in a way that some other pianist doesn’t."

She continues with this deconstruction of the humanity of the interlingustic exchange, noting, "Translation is a kind of impersonation, I think. As a translator […] I am keen to observe the world consciously, and to notice dialogue, notice dialect, notice personal styles of speech, notice tics."

The interview is brilliant and worth shelling out the tax-deductible euro for a read. In particular, it is intriguing to learn about the translator-author relationship, in her case, as the translator of living literary legend Kundera.​

Finally, here is a bonus video with Ms. Asher regarding her translation of Memoirs of a Breton Peasant​ by Jean-Marie Déguignet, as interviewed by the editor of the French edition, Bernez Rouz... en français bien sûr!