“Towards an Indonesian Literary Translation Center” Seminar 2012

During the seminar (8th-12th October 2012) we discussed conditions for literary translation and shared good practice in Europe, Asia, Australia, and the US. During the week we also developed strategies and ideas to realize the Indonesian literary translation center, and built a network of organizations that could work together on residencies and exchanges.

The seminar focused on five main topics: developing translators’ skills (Monday), improving working conditions for literary translators (Tuesday), promoting literature in translation (Wednesday), bringing Indonesian literature to the world (Thursday), and finally models for a new center for literary translation in Indonesia (Friday).

Running parallel to the seminar were literary translation workshops for emerging literary translators.  Opening and closing plenary sessions were with the workshop participants as well. At the opening plenary we discussed the events’ background and expected results; at the closing plenary we shared the experience of the week and suggested ideas for next steps.

Speakers:

CARME ARENAS (sending paper from Barcelona) is the current president of PEN Català. She is a Catalan professor, translator and publisher. She has translated writers such as Svevo, Sciascia, Bontempelli, Maquiavelo, Boccaccio, Calvino and Eco. Ms. Arenas has taken part in the creation and publishing of books, literary exhibitions and websites. She has written studies on the avant-garde and been in charge of editing outstanding publications. Ms. Arenas is the editor of Catalan Writing, the PEN Català’s English publication on literature.

DAVID COLMER is an Australian writer and translator, who lives in Amsterdam. He translates novels, poetry and children’s literature and has won several awards, including the NSW Premier’s Translation Prize for his body of work and the IMPAC Dublin Award (with author Gerbrand Bakker). Most recently, he has been shortlisted for the 2011 Popescu Prize for Heavenly Life, a collection of poetry by Ramsey Nasr, the Dutch poet laureate.

KATE GRIFFIN: As well as running the international program for the British Centre for Literary Translation (BCLT), developing and coordinating partnerships in Asia, Europe and the Middle East, Kate is a freelance consultant specializing in international literature translated into English. Current clients include Writers’ Centre Norwich and the London Review of Books. Previous employers include Arts Council England, International PEN, British Council Russia, and the Centre for Research on European Women. For six years, she judged the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Her photographs can be found at www.kategriffin.org

LIAN GOUW is the author of Only A Girl, an historical novel, and founder of Dalang Publishing LLC, a California-based publishing company. She studied creative writing at San Jose State and San Francisco State University, and privately with Tom Jenks, who has edited Richard Ford and Rick Bass among others. Lian was born and raised in Java, Indonesia during Dutch colonial times, and immigrated to the San Francisco Bay Area in the mid-1960s. She is a staunch advocate for the preservation of the Indonesian language and is currently active in bringing Indonesian literature to the world. Dalang specializes in publishing English translations of work by Indonesian writers. It has recently released its first title, My Name is Mata Hari, the English rendition by Dewi Anggraeni of Remy Sylado’s Namaku Mata Hari.

ELIZA VITRI HANDAYANI is the founder of InterSastra. She received a full scholarship to attend Wesleyan University, Connecticut, USA, as a Freeman Asian Scholar from 2000 to 2005. After returning to Indonesia in 2006, she took a job as acquisitions editor at a Jakarta publishing house. In 2007-2009 she managed Jakarta Arts Council’s literary translation program, and then in 2010-2012 she worked as an associate editor of Eko Endarmoko’s Tesaurus Bahasa Indonesia.

NICHOLAS JOSE is an Australian author best-known for his fiction and cultural essays. His seven novels and two collections of short stories include Paper Nautilus, The Red Thread, and Original Face. His acclaimed memoir Black Sheep: Journey to Borroloola appeared in 2002. He was general editor of the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature (2009) and has written widely on contemporary Australian and Asian art and literature. In 2002-05 he was President of Sydney PEN. He was Visiting Chair of Australian Studies at Harvard University (2009-10), and is an adjunct professor with the Writing and Society Research Centre at the University of Western Sydney. He was Chair of Creative Writing at The University of Adelaide (2005-08) where he is now Professor of English and Creative Writing.

IVAN LANIN is well-known for introducing Indonesian equivalent of foreign terms. He is an editor of Wikipedia Indonesia, Google bahasa Indonesia, and a moderator for Bahtera, a mailing list and community for Indonesian translators. Together with a colleague, Romi Hardiyanto, he developed Kateglo, a program that contains dictionary, thesaurus, and glossaries. Read his blog nan tak (kalah) penting at http://ivanlanin.wordpress.com.

EDDIE R. NOTOWIDIGDO, a Certified and Sworn Translator, is a native speaker of Indonesian working full time as a freelance translator in Jakarta. An autodidact, after working for 20 years in multilingual and multicultural environments in Belgium, UK, and the USA in international trade, he now offers translation services in English, Dutch, and German. His specialization is translation of commercial, business, and legal documents. Since 2010 he is elected President of the Himpunan Penerjemah Indonesia (HPI – Association of Indonesian Translators).

LILY ROSE TOPE is a professor at the Department of English and Comparative Literature, University of the Philippines.  She is author of (Un)Framing Southeast Asia: Nationalism and the Post Colonial Text in English in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines as well as  several articles on Southeast Asian literature in English, Philippine Chinese literature in English, and ethnicity in Southeast Asian literature.  She was editor in chief of Humanities Diliman, a refereed journal for the Humanities published by the University of the Philippines.  She was a fellow and later a member of the Regional Screening Committee of the Asia Scholarship Foundation which was based in Bangkok.

CORAZON D. VILLAREAL is Professor at the Department of English and Comparative Literature, University of the Philippines Diliman of which she was former chair. Her main publications are on translation and translational processes relating to Philippine literature and culture, among them, Translating the Sugilanon: Reframing the Sign (University of the Philippines Press 1994) and Siday (Ateneo de Manila University Press 1997). Her international publications have appeared in the Asiatic (Malaysia 2010), Language Teaching (UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012) and The Global Local Interface: Language Choice and Hybridity (UK: Multilingual Matters, Forthcoming in 2012). She is recipient of a Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship at Columbia University in 2006 and was an international associate at the Translation Workshop of the Nida School of Translation Studies in Misano, Italy in 2011.

C.W. WATSON (sending paper from Bandung) is Emeritus Professor at the School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent, UK and author of Of Self and Injustice (KITLV: Leiden 2006) and Multiculturalism (Open University Press: Buckingham 2001). He is also the translator of It’s not An All Night Fair (Bukan Pasar Malam) by Pramoedya Ananta Toer (Penguin: NY, 2010).

OLIVIA E. SEARS (sending paper from USA) is the founder and president of the Center for the Art of Translation (CAT), a non-profit organization that promotes international literature through programs in bilingual education (including the award-winning Poetry Inside Out program that teaches young children to translate poetry); through publications such as TWO LINES: World Writing in Translation, an annual anthology of world literature translated into English; and through an acclaimed reading series featuring some of the world’s finest translators. In addition to being the long-time editor of TWO LINES, Olivia is a translator of poetry from the Italian and the author of Self/Cell, a collection of original poetry with photographs by Aline Mare. She is the editor of The Best of Contemporary Mexican Fiction, forthcoming from Dalkey Archive Press as part of the NEA’s international literary exchange, and is also co-translator and co-editor of A Primer of Italian Fascism.

JOHN H. McGLYNN is a long-term resident of Indonesia, having lived in Jakarta almost continually since 1976. He is the translator of several dozen publications under his own name, and through the Lontar Foundation, which he established with four Indonesian authors in 1987, has brought into print more than one hundred books on Indonesian literature and culture.

WAHYU GINTING is a founder and moderator of the literary network mediasastra.com. He worked as a freelance translator and interpreter before starting Lidahibu, an online linguistic magazine, with a group of friends. He is now its editor-in-chief.

CECILIE WINGER is the chair of Norwegian Association of Literary Translators. She is also a translator and a nonfiction author.

ARIANY ISNAMUTRI is the Managing Director (Ketua Pelaksana) of HB Jassin Literary Archives.

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Seminar Schedule

MONDAY, 8th OCTOBER 2012

9.00-9.30 COFFEE/TEA

9.30-11.30 OPENING PLENARY SESSION

• Introduction
• Objectives and expected outputs for the workshops and seminar
• Experiences at BCLT Summer School July 2012

Speakers:

1. Eliza Vitri Handayani & Kate Griffin (organizers): welcome, introduction, background of event, expected results, review of workshop participants’ sample translation
2. Kari Dickson, Gustaaf Peek, David Colmer & Kjersti Skomsvold (writers-in-residence and workshop leaders at BCLT Summer School 2012): experiences at BCLT Summer School July 2012
3. David Colmer (literary translator): the art of literary translation

11.30-12.30 LUNCH

12.30-2.30 TEACHING THE ART OF LITERARY TRANSLATION

• Teaching translation at universities or schools
• Possibilities of starting regular translation workshops or opening a literary translation study program
• Specialization for literary translators—a good idea?
• Mentoring schemes: what it is, how it is carried out, and how it can be started in Indonesia

Speakers:

1. Nicholas Jose (University of Adelaide, Australia)
2. Corazon D. Villareal (University of the Philippines Diliman)
3. Olivia Sears (Center for the Art of Translation – sending paper from USA)

Chair: Margaret Agusta, literary translator

2.30-3.00 COFFEE/TEA

3.00-4.30 INTERNATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES

• How to foster competent translators from languages other than English
• Opportunities available for literary translators: study programs, scholarships, residencies, exchanges, and translation consultancies
• Opportunities available for collaboration with the envisioned Indonesian translation center

Speakers:

1. Cecilie Winger (Norwegian Association of Literary Translation)
2. Corazon D. Villareal (University of Philippines Diliman)
3. Nicholas Jose (University of Adelaide)

Chair: Margaret Agusta (literary translator)

TUESDAY, 9th OCTOBER 2012

9.00-9.30 COFFEE/TEA

9.30-11.30 WORKING CONDITIONS IN PUBLISHING HOUSES

• Conditions for literary translation in Indonesia and other countries
• What publishers expect from translators, and what translators expect from publishers
• What translators expect from editors and vice versa
• House style and self-censorship

Speakers:

1. Nicholas Jose (University of Adelaide)
2. Lily Rose Tope (University of the Philippines)
3. Carme Arenas (PEN Catalan/PEN International Committee for Translation and Linguistic Rights – sending paper from Barcelona)

Chair: Yusi Avianto Pareanom (translator, writer, owner of Banana Publishing)

11.30-12.30 LUNCH

12.30-2.30 THE VALUE OF TRANSLATION ORGANIZATIONS OR COMMUNITIES

• What translation organizations or communities do and what more we can expect from them
• Do we need an independent organization for literary translators?
• What can translators’ organizations do to protect works, authors/translators, or literary events from censorship or attacks?

Speakers:

1. Cecilie Winger (Norwegian Association of Literary Translators )
2. Carme Arenas (PEN Catalan/PEN International Translation and Linguistic Rights Committee – sending paper from Barcelona)
3. Eddie R. Notowidigdo (Indonesian Translators Association)

Chair: Yusi Avianto Pareanom (translator, writer, owner of Banana Publishing)

2.30-3.00 COFFEE/TEA

3.00-5.00 READING AND DISCUSSION WITH INDONESIAN AUTHORS

1. Lily Yulianti Farid
2. Avianti Armand
3. Kurnia Effendi

Guest: Isabela Banzon from the Philippines

WEDNESDAY, 10th OCTOBER 2012

9.00-9.30 COFFEE/TEA

9.30-11.30 REVIEWING & PROMOTING LITERATURE IN TRANSLATION

• How books in translation are reviewed in the media; Are there special strategies or skills needed to review books in translation? Should we start a publication specifically dedicated to the review or criticism of books in translation?
• How books in translation are studied or taught in classrooms, or written in academic journals.
• How books in translation are promoted and marketed in Indonesia and abroad? Do we need special strategies to promote books in translation?
• Translators’ visibility and presence at literary events
• How to start Indonesia’s first literary translation award

Speakers:

1. Eliza Handayani (Inisiatif Penerjemahan Sastra)
2. Lily Yulianti Farid (Makassar International Writers Festival)
3. Kate Griffin (former judge of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize)
4. Christel Mahnke (Goethe-Institut Indonesia)

Chair: Aldo Zirsov (Goodreads Indonesia)

11.30-1.00 LUNCH

THURSDAY, 11th OCTOBER 2012

Note change of venue: PDS HB Jassin, 2nd Floor Gedung Galeri Cipta II, Taman Ismail Marzuki (TIM), Jalan Cikini Raya No. 73, Jakarta (Thursday only).

9.00-9.30 COFFEE/TEA

9.30-11.30 BRINGING INDONESIAN LITERATURE TO THE WORLD

Presentations by:

1. John McGlynn (Lontar Foundation)
2. C.W. Watson (translator of Pramoedya Ananta Toer’s Bukan Pasar Malam – sending paper from Bandung)
3. Ariany Isnamutri (HB Jassin Archives)

11.30-1.00 LUNCH

1.00-2.30 TOUR OF HB JASSIN ARCHIVES (by invitation only)

2.30-3.00 COFFEE/TEA

3.00-5.00 READINGS AND DISCUSSIONS WITH INDONESIAN AUTHORS

1. Zaim Rofiqi
2. Ayu Utami
3. Zeffry Alkatiri

FRIDAY, 12th OCTOBER 2012

9.00-9.30 COFFEE/TEA

9.30-11.30 MODELS FOR A NEW INDONESIAN LITERARY TRANSLATION CENTER

• What would translators or the existing translation organizations like the new center to have or do?
• Models, experiences bad and good, and best practice from Indonesia and around the world
• Funding opportunities
• Relationship-building, how we all can continue to work together

Round table discussion with:

1. John McGlynn (Lontar Foundation)
2. Eddie R. Notowidigdo (Association of Indonesian Translators)
3. Lian Gouw (Dalang Publishing, USA)
4. Ivan Lanin (Bahtera translators community)
5. Kate Griffin (BCLT)
6. Wahyu Ginting (Lidahibu, an online linguistic magazine)

Chair: Eliza Handayani (Inisiatif Penerjemahan Sastra)

11.30-12.30 LUNCH

12.30-1.00 BREAK INTO GROUPS AND FEED BACK TO PLENARY SESSION

1.00-2.30 CLOSING PLENARY SESSION

Speakers, writers-in-residence, workshop leaders, and participants shared their experiences during the week, talked about next steps and plans to establish a new Indonesian literary translation center.

2.30-3.00 COFFEE/TEA

3.00-4.30 WORKSHOP PERFORMANCE REHEARSAL (not open to the public)

SATURDAY, 13th OCTOBER 2012

Venue: Erasmus Huis Auditorium, Jl. HR Rasuna Said Kav S-3 Jakarta 12950

19.00-22.00 CLOSING EVENT (Performance by authors, translators, and workshop participants–followed by informal reception), OPEN TO THE PUBLIC