Marian Schwartz » Center for the Art of Translation

Upcoming Workshop on One Small Piece of the Translator’s Craft

mbs — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:19:22 +0000

In less than a couple of weeks—Saturday, March 20, in fact–I’ll be giving a workshop on literary translation for the Center for the Art of Translation and the Northern California Translators Association, focusing on some of the nuts and bolts of the profession and demonstrating the process with a passage from Federico Sorrentino’s “Habits of the Artichoke.”

Two Lines, the CAT blog, has posted a piece giving a taste of my demo here.

The Translator’s Toolkit

mbs — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:55:29 +0000

Ahead of the workshop I’m giving for beginning literary translators at the Center for the Art of Translation and the Northern California Translators Association in San Francisco on March 20, I made this contribution to CAT’s Translator’s Toolkit series, which appears on their blog, Two Words:

A few years ago I attended ATA’s national conference—not a regular stop on my annual rounds—specifically to hear and meet Michele Berdy, an American expat who has lived in Moscow for decades and who writes a fine column for The Moscow Times explicating Russian vocabulary, idioms, and usage for English speakers. She was giving a workshop and delivering the Slavic Division’s keynote speech. Both performances were stellar, yielding multiple insights and new information but also a fabulous tidbit (assuming tidbits can be fabulous). Berdy told of a CD that collected vast quantities of Russian literature from the eleventh to the early twentieth century. Virtually everything by virtually every writer you ever have and haven’t heard of. And it was searchable.

For the whole article, click here.

Two Words features Yuzefovich, Life Stories

mbs — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 12:14:14 +0000

Two Words: The Blog of the Center for the Art of Translation—CAT, located in San Francisco, being one of this country’s most innovative and impressive organizations focusing on literary translation—has run a flattering post on me and the new anthology Life Stories, which benefits hospice care in Russia. For the anthology I translated Leonid Yuzefovich’s “The Storm,” about a group of young schoolchildren who endure a stressful class about traffic safety. In the end, lightning strikes. Yuzefovich is a historian who first became known for his biography of R.F. Ungern-Sternberg, the "Dictator of Mongolia," but became famous with his historical thrillers about Ivan Putilin, the first volume of which became a TV mini-series and the third of which received the National Bestseller Award.