Translation: press merger, funding campaign, podcast plans

In an attempt to tame the incoming flood of RSS feed updates, I'm going to start posting and linking according to a schedule, with a designated focus for each day. The categories are still evolving, but at the moment Tuesday is designated as the day for news and links about 1) translation and language; and 2) French literature and publishing. So this is the translation and language post...

Northwestern University Press has acquired Curbstone Press, according to an Inside Higher Ed report last week—though the news isn't mentioned on either press's website. Northwestern has long been strong in publishing translations, though that strength has faded in recent years. They were one of the few to have published Herta Müller in the US long before the Nobel Prize, so maybe that (luck? foresight?) has prodded them to pick up the pace again. Curbstone has a focus on social justice and human rights, which sounds like just the sort of thing not to entrust to a wonkish university press, but they also have put out a few translations, mainly from Latin America. Unfortunately, the Curbstone website appears to be totally borked at the moment.

The Center for the Art of Translation wants your help. These folks do some nice stuff: publishing the translation-anthology series Two Lines; running a translation-in-the-schools program for kids called "Poetry Inside Out"; and hosting the "Lit&Lunch" series of readings by writers and translators (in San Francisco, but they can be heard online). To make it easy, they've set their donation threshold ridiculously low: just $5. (C'mon, anyone can manage that!) And there's a reward, too: you'll be entered in a drawing to win signed copies of some of this year's most significant translations. Call Click now, operators are standing by!

Making the translator visible—and audible! Chad Post is catching up with his "Making the Translator Visible" series at the Three Percent blog. (My slot in that series two weeks ago was the prod that got me to launch this blog.) Today's post is on Erica Mena, but it also contains Chad's note that he and Erica will be starting "a translation-centric podcast" next year. You'll remember that voice—literally, the sound of the spoken word—was one of the ancillary aspects of "character" that I launched this blog to cover. I'm excited to hear about this new venture—and yes, I'll prod Chad and Erica about getting involved somehow.

Chad mentions that they're going to start work at the MLA convention in Philadelphia in two weeks. The convention theme this year is "The Tasks of Translation in the Global Context," so I'll be going to Philly to see what's up with that. I'll post a more detailed preview next week.