Het Nederlands, en alleen maar het Nederlands, is de taal voor mij waarin woorden
echte betekenis voor mij krijgen.
Mostly, intense contact between writer and translator does not exist. Why is this so? What can be gained by such contact for translated literature? Does a translator work best in total solitude? Or could it be of great importance for the translation that he or she is aware of the writer’s intention and meaning? The quest to find the answers to these questions might surprise the authors of The Chronicles Project as well as the festival guests.
Prior to the Crossing Border Festival, four young writers Hassan Bahara (NL), Priya Basil (UK), Crista Ermiya (UK) and Niels ’t Hooft (NL) will go to London for four days. Together with the translators Rhian Hepplestone (UK) and Krijn Peter Hesselink (N), they will exchange ideas on the theme ‘being translated’. They will then perform in the Poetry Society and the company will visit the Sebald Lecture 2007. The subject of this lecture will be the art of translation. One item of this event will be the awarding of the Dutch Vondelprijs for the best translation from the Dutch. This extensive conference between writers and translators serves as a prologue to Crossing Border, which will take place two weeks later. The first two columns will be written and translated in London. These bilingual texts containing the outcome of this meeting between the art of writing and the craft of translating can be read on the weblog of the Crossing Border website. During Crossing Border, the writers and their translators will try to forge a bridge between supposed abstractness of the literary world and real daily life. You can find more information on this subject under ‘Kronieken’.
This project is a cooperative effort between Crossing Border and The British Council and is also made possible thanks to the VSB Fonds and the Lira Fonds.
As everyone in The Netherlands speaks such good English, it was a surprise when, for some inexplicable reason, many still chose to speak in Dutch.
Toen we optraden in de Poetry Society in Londen, gebeurde er iets bijzonders: we slaagden erin het publiek enthousiast te maken over ons onderwerp.
During this project, a bright shaft of light penetrated the polygon of my mind and illuminated a neglected corner.
Nog een terugkerend personage: de enthousiaste jongen uit de havoklas waaraan ik vorig jaar tijdens Crossing Border vertelde over mijn schrijfwerk
Dat brengt mij bij het volgende punt: zou het geen
idee zijn om op Crossing Border een literaire equivalent op te zetten van MTV’s
Celebrity Death Match?
the last column would consist of THE ULTIMATE WORD that would convey everything about Crossing Border
‘How long were you together?’ I asked. ‘Until he died,’ she said.
Maybe there is no such thing as a ‘whole picture’. But what we can certainly aim
for is a fuller one.
Vandaag treedt Salman Rushdie op. Er valt veel goeds en veel slechts over
zijn werk te vertellen.
Niemand kon elkaar meer verstaan, maar de overschakeling had ook voordelen.
There must be the god of literature taking revenge for my defence yesterday of text messaging and computers
I have yelled for
peace in Palestine, while the thud of a heavy base pounded so loudly in my chest it
almost erased my own heartbeat.
Waar rappen Palestijnen zoal over als ze niet aan de bezetting hoeven te denken?
Op het moment van schrijven is de soundcheck in volle gang.
I predict that in a thousand years time people will look back and laugh at our fears.
You are a translator. I am. We are all translators – in a way.
Ik denk terug aan de vertaalavonturen in Londen en tegelijk probeer ik me iets voor te stellen bij wat komen gaat, op Crossing Border in Den Haag.
Er zit geen greintje pathetiek bij als ik beweer dat mijn leven armer zou zijn als ik niet
zo’n leraar had gehad.
He tells us his name and he’s lovely and probably hideously famous but all I can hear is ‘Barbarous’
All of us, I think, want to leave some mark of ourselves on the world.
Ik ben in Londen om te praten over vertalen en vertaald worden.
The horror! Dat laatste schreef ik in het Engels.
The fight to be recognised as a legitimate human being in your home country, to have a right to speak in your mother tongue, feels like a constant act of translation
Nog steeds krijg ik mailtjes van meisjes – altijd meisjes – die melden dat mijn boekje ze aan het huilen heeft gebracht.
“And what language did you speak at home?” “English.” “Yes, yes. Everybody speaks English. But what language did you speak at home?”
Translation can be viewed as many things: an art, a bridge between cultures,
a travesty, a necessity in our increasingly global world.
Ook een boek als Trainspotting boet aan zeggingskracht in zodra het in een
andere taal wordt gelezen dan het originele.