One for the Road: How to Travel with a Salmon

by Kelly Amabile on

I realized after writing about foreign translations yesterday that I’ve actually read a few translated titles recently that are somewhat travel-inspired. First up is Umberto Eco’s How to Travel with a Salmon. This collection of witty parodies, published in 1995, gathers together a variety of satirical essays written by the Italian novelist between 1975 and 1991.

Eco’s short “diario minimos” have been translated into English by William Weaver, allowing a larger audience to enjoy his cleverly disguised complaints about the idiosyncrasies of travel, and life in general. These whimsical essays entertain readers with humorous advice on how one should eat in flight, travel on American trains, go through customs and take intelligent vacations.The chapter on how to buy gadgets might have some merit for travelers too, or at least keep ’em laughing.

One for the Road: Words Without Borders

by Kelly Amabile on

One of the groups involved with The Reading the World program I mentioned earlier today is Words without Borders, who have just revamped their website with a fresh new look.

Since I last spoke of WWB, the group has grown substantially and gained worldwide praise for its first anthology of international literature, a groundbreaking collection of stories from Iran, Iraq, Korea and other “enemy nations.” Now WWB has released Words Without Borders: The World through the Eyes of Writers (March 2007), which features the work of more than 28 writers from almost 20 countries.

Short stories, poems, essays and excerpts from novels all appear in this volume for the very first time in English. Writers such as Ha Jin, Cynthia Ozick, Javier Marias, Wole Soyinka and Günter Grass are included. The website contains info about the writers, as well as the editors and all important translators too. Without their treasured language skills, these stories would remain unread by many.

Reading the World

by Kelly Amabile on

For the third year in a row, June marks the beginning of Reading the World, a collaboration between publishers and booksellers to bring readers attention to a variety of global literary voices. Throughout the month, indy bookstores across the country will prominently display a selection of international books that have been translated into English. The forty books featured this year represent literature from Lithuania, Iraq, Norway, Chile and more.

I attended a session at Book Expo this year where I listened to the folks behind this program speak about the challenges of getting foreign translations published and available for larger audiences. Did you know that over 50 percent of all books in translation now published worldwide are translated from English, but only 6 percent are translated into English?! That’s a ton of stuff being written around the world that we just don’t have access to…unless we can read in other languages, of course.

Here’s the first part of an interview with the program’s manager, Chad Post. In it, he explains that the spirit of Reading the World is one that seeks to raise cultural awareness and showcase viewpoints and opinions from the international literature community, and does so by highlighting works originally written in a language other than English. Take a look at their list of suggested books, maybe you’ll find one written by an author from or about a place you may be visiting soon.

Vanishing Chinglish

by Iva Skoch on

China will never be the same; at least Beijing, that is. As the Olympics approach, a quasi-government group in Beijing has set out to correct the city’s English menus and signs.

The WSJ just ran an article detailing these efforts: to date, for example, these language cops from the Beijing Speaks Foreign Languages Program have replaced 6,300 road signs with often odd, sometimes downright hilarious, English phrasing, the result of bad translations.

We’ll definitely miss the restroom signs saying “Genitl Emen” (aka, gentlemen), such great attractions as the “Beijing Hospital for Anus and Intestinal Disease” (aka Hospital of Proctology), and street signs telling us “To take notice of safe: The slippery are very crafty” (aka, be careful: slippery). Or, “Little grass is smiling slightly, Please walk on pavement” (aka ?).

Fortunately, we’ll still be able to relive the good ol’ days on various websites, such as pocopico.com, flickr’s chinglish pool, chinglish.de, and google images, of course. Any other good collections out there, dear readers?