Very much. And at the heart of research, translating and writing about literature in this country.
And it's not just the place on my left.
And of course. If you I think one of the few places I mean, it's most if not universally familiar with that.
But for those of you who are not, what do you think she was and that was the filibuster is an honorary research
associate at UCLA School of Compensation Studies and she was a critic of literature.
And also later, as writing with me, published on Crucifixion, was the 19th and 20th century century.
That particular particular focus and interest is in this feminism writings by women and those who have spoken up, which is, of course,
increase the range of individual needs of students and educate and inform other people,
as well as some of the most recent innovations, for example, the 19th century.
Right. And that's exactly how stuff that's not that's very well known and sometimes read as a sort of a feminist movement for the future.
And because so much information is missing and is working to look at these books around
and understand this is currently working on and also translations and also how to use it.
But if we were to see some of the things which were not what you can say continue to look and very little has been translated basically material.
And if you look at what's around you short sleeves and we probably didn't ask a question of
anyone here us because I do have a bit and I will and I do like to put it to you at this point,
so I think you've got it. Um, so my left is to my right.
Um, Antonia, Lloyd, Judith.
We know as well as everyone else that this complete lack of contemporary and modernity 20th century literature, food, climate data um, one finds that,
um, the translation of both and is really very widely translated particularly to because 89 literature, all genres as it were, prose.
Paper, well, poetry. Borowski The things reportage sort of it's of course going over the whole of literature, which is it's quite an interesting,
a collection of essays by a medical doctor and the technique and biographical work and children's literature.
And that takes us further back in time by the but of course with the famous
talk about the scientist and other students in translation coming out soon.
Um, to use this a lot of illustrations come out.
Yes, it has already come out. Well, it's available through the Free New Zealand Cookbook kind of distribution here.
Right. Um, and I'm also a mentor for the Centre for Nutrition, Patience and the Descent of Religion and Patients Mentorship program.
Um. Crime prose as well.
Detective Novel Novel Sequel is a very wide range of literature from which company has to take it into English.
It makes sense to revisit this in this country.
Our third speaker is George Gomery.
Um, and again, you would be very familiar with the witnesses and his work.
Hungarian born poet, writer, translator, literary scholar.
And he taught published in Hungary literature for many years that position in the University of Cambridge.
Um, among his many, um, merits and um, uh, awards is membership of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in Vancouver,
and which is widely written on Polish as well as in very literature.
He is an accomplished poet itself, mainly in his native country language.
But there are also contemplations, um, from the Hungarian into, into English and understanding composers as well, and vice versa.
George also translated some of the best known 20th century Polish poets into Hungarian and into including Milos and of course, Helmut.
Um, and it's his, um, new book that will be launched soon at the Turkish Embassy, The Polish Sworn Truth.
It's a collection of essays focussed on transient essays on Polish and comparative literature.
This very catchy title doesn't come from me.
It comes from Isaac Watts, who describes it this way.
Exactly. And the volume includes a wide range of a wide range of authors,
which is really taking us from the Renaissance Karnofsky up to not including very interesting authors,
such as, for example, the related authors of gifts to other Baroque authors,
such as much to also other late Renaissance authors from the late 16th century since Alinsky.
So this is altogether quite an exciting volume in addition to criticism.
And so this is just the brief introduction of our three speakers.
And of course it's not to be talking, but it's about having the opportunity to hear what and how to as speakers.
And you can tell us about translating Polish literature before and after 1989, and perhaps I can invite you to talk,
um, simply, uh, for sake of simplicity in the order as you appear on, on, on, on the program, as it were.
So, Antonia, because you have a different ideas, you know, but you are happy with that.
Yeah. Are you all happy with that. I don't know. That is and then George mentioned that, but I don't mind.
I mean. Well, yes, well I don't like what mean.
We could have decided on the 1989 yes or no because I'm sort of combining sort of two in a way.
I think it's better if I'm an optimist.
Yeah. So, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
So how may I suggest this order the first and then let me let me keep myself.
I'm not going to keep order. I don't know whether that one should be projected because.
Because of helping. It's on here, so it's just switched it.
So it's simply a list of anthologies of British literature translated into English from 1956 to 1989.
And that is just to get rid of the right.
Okay. Well, first of all, I would like to say a few words how foolishly became not exactly popular in England, but better known in England.
This didn't happen right after the war. There was a very large number of POWs under somebody as we know them, most of them.
But some came to England and many of of the foolish, like those British soldiers settled down both in Scotland and with England.
Scotland. This interesting was of serious interest in physics.
At least that was my impression, because before that you had very simple collections published by emigres.
But they weren't important. They didn't reach the general public.
And even the very first contemporary British stories was probably Santa Barbara and California.
I don't think it hit the English market at all, you know what I mean?
Maybe I was just some of the three periods which I'm going to talk about, one from 1956 through to 68, 68 in the late seventies and then after.
And basically, this is a phonetic, phonetic division, because in the very first period,
what interested the English reader or what was the interest in the English?
And this was the reward experience in Poland,
and that involved both the Polish underground fight of the British underground against the Germans and the Holocaust.
And it's foolish. But anyway, what experience was what dominated the contemporary poetry?
Short stories 160 and to some extent even the modern Polish modern of edited by Maria Savage in 1962.
Here I would mention to many Mexicans, but I'm coming to the main players in the studio.
On the issue of ski.
Ski, we don't believe in conditions at which these four people, I think, were the most isolated and moved in the United States and in England.
Because when you're speaking about this period,
obviously various publications in the United States which didn't reach the sort of prudish place, which is probably much later in England.
But already by the matter of 65, had a huge impact in America.
So let's let me talk about the these four people very, very briefly.
Of course. Yes. MGM Ski was known before the Second World War as a Catholic writer of existentialist leanings.
I think he was very much anonymous in his very first two books.
And then he became, as we know, after 1945, a very well regarded fellow traveller of the 32nd response.
During this period, he wrote one book, Ashes and Diamonds, which became a huge bestseller all over the world,
mainly because of the film, which was quickly, marvellously, which was soon, I think, in a different media, like a 58 certificate.
So here I would have to say that the influence of this film on the reception of literature in England, in the other states was very significant.
Very significant. Now Up All Ashes and Diamonds is published about penguins as early as 1962.
But I knew David West from Sleep, and in fact I visited him once on a talk in Ann Arbour, Michigan,
and enjoyed the hospitality of Welsh, who was bitterly complaining about diamonds because he said they cost too much out of the book.
The publisher didn't want various details, which of course was English, so he wasn't very happy with it.
But then he was on the board in Arbour and translated quite a lot.
I think not really. I'm just I think he was a route to a TV series, a biography one was, which, you know, but it's not approximately September,
never mind 600 objects you need to continued his his his popularity continued in England and
in America although he didn't write anything which would have been made same impact as ashes.
And then I don't want to go into analysis because that would be just very far on the right.
People thought he was too pro-communist. It wasn't enough communism.
It was a controversial book.
Anyway, the film was excellent because there's a lot of bad material cut Scotland and by the make it one of the best versions.
That is one of those Barofsky and those who never heard of him.
But I for the readers, yes, he was an inmate in Auschwitz or she a Jim.
And he described his experiences in a sort of deadpan manner.
Not it wasn't exactly a naturalist, but as if in the style a bit of Hemingway, I don't know.
But he was very, very, very laconic in his description of the concentration camp.
And also he tried to tell people that normal human ethics and morality broke down completely in the camps.
And that's why his. Testimony of the camps became symbols of what was also stated in the this 1976 border letter.
And, of course, he was missing from the history of, you know, what happens in 1996.
Okay. Today's. He was the first coach,
but I met a very young person because very few people knew this before moving from Leeds at the time spent as a scholarship there in Hungary.
So I met him back in 1952 or 53.
I was a very young beginner and done a mistake of inviting me when I am in Poland in that year on the scholarship.
And they said, Well, why did you come into politics? So I spent basically with the resistance and I've been corresponding since.
Now his popularity is due to an attempt rescue me, who otherwise is a modern, easy person to give me head injuries.
Right. But for you, you really did a very good job and translated excellently,
is watching this place because of some very good plays, I think sixties, seventies.
And he's really one of the still living blues classics.
And later on, he edited Definitely Some to Rescue the Anthology of British,
both because when they first then but then it gets further and further down the route.
And then I think, okay, but that is not a complete anthology of British poetry.
It's very much a selection which reflects his own taste.
Now you don't see, Well, he's a very good book.
He was a very good. But unfortunately, he no longer with us.
But his most memorable Bruce is a memoir of the Warsaw Uprising.
It's an extraordinary book. I recommend anyone can be Polish during the original.
He's he's one of the very credible witnesses of the uprising.
How the civilian population. Excuse me.
Let's talk about it. This has before it was translated into English in 1977.
And Oliver. Okay. Okay.
These are good experiences. Now, what really made a huge difference.
That was 1956.
Actually, two days, March the fifth. I usually remember this day with some glee because this is date and seven story story.
And that was the beginning of the fall, which started in different countries in different times.
The Island Book coined the phrase The fall are stolen.
This free belting out, I think, melting down to a more acceptable form of communism.
Who knows? Anyway, what happened in Poland between 54 and 56.
The Polish to produce a large amount of literature suddenly became interesting for the English reader.
And there is one book which was an anthology which I didn't put up because of that, and that is Cold Winter Harvest, published by Krieger York, 1959.
Now, that is an opportunistic anthology, in a sense, because it produces all the most interesting writing of the fall.
So you think it's a medical school student?
Don't do a substantive one. Okay, let's just go across these two essays.
But it has. Adam Marshall. Very important.
Very important for my literacy. That was like an earthquake in Poland in 1955 when my brother came out.
I can witness that because we will pass the time sensitivity to Hungary and this new group to the university at the time.
Unbelievable. Now, Russia is an interesting person who was a surrealist before the war.
Then he went through and he escaped to Russia, became an officer, political officer of the burning army, Christian School Fusion, not very popular.
And nobody liked him to tell truth because he was.
He enjoyed the spotlight. But then, after this long something, he began to understand the system.
And root is known for policy one for adults, which was the first frontal attack on Socialist Musical.
So in the second period, which goes on 68, even further down, so that is he met a large number of people who suddenly become interested.
And these include medical school. Well, very funny black realists, medical school who died very young,
but he emigrated from Poland or escaped from emigrated rather than age when his he
made a film with a West German production and fell in love with this leading actress.
So I think so, among other studios.
Anyway, my request was an extraordinary character because he somehow managed to write a kind of almost surreal surrealist naturalistic prose.
And some of his short stories are excellent.
His autobiography is very funny.
Very funny, except I do not I wouldn't translate it just because.
Yes, it's just published by Michael Roth of The New York Mirror.
And it's just come out and it's well, anyway,
one of the few people of that generation I never met but exchange letters in which
mother was who was rather characteristically asking for some piece of this population.
Okay. But other people who I knew rather well and who made a huge career in English speaking were speaking of her.
I had the distinction of having invited her back first to Oxford, United 59 that I wrote this.
Yes. You go and said to this here is this approaches you amongst others.
He wrote a kind of poetry which was again, I didn't I'm not here to analyse the.
But you just see that the classical tradition and modernism was combined in Herbert's verse,
which is usually on the writings of the radical left and which translates extremely, very Jewish.
So he became really a star of the Jewish literature.
Let's go back up, put them to sleep, because me was delicious.
And thanks to viewers of Anthology 65 and of which just of himself is a major presence.
And strangely enough, he becomes he is the one who is also whose career in the works starts with before but in a different way.
Not in Poland, but by like a couple of months writing, which comes out at the very before the film begins in Poland and has an enormous impact.
Copies of these, including milkshakes, have been considered have been made major work of his.
He wrote it because at that time he both needed money and to justify why he didn't solve the catalogue of communism.
But it's a book which is worth reading today.
In some ways it's more it explains more than Custer's Darkness self-discipline, which it agrees with,
but of a very specific because it tells only about how the old Bolsheviks went through the process of basically suicide for the sake of the party.
Whereas New was from that point and its point of ultimate form.
Describe the ways in which communism was swallowed by this alphabet the government goes over.
Well, again, I don't want to discuss just years and it can be broken most often a lot about him.
But his first book, which really made an impact in the West.
I thought to get through mind that this was an anthology which he tried seeking and he was very
fat because he could stand superset or I think he included one letter much less of course.
Excuse I again, I do that to introduce him.
He becomes the the philosopher of the school,
the philosopher of all of that period in which people in Poland thought, Well, maybe we could reform communist.
If we could modernise it, we could. Well, and it was obviously the 1968 said at that conference in Moscow.
He wrote in several revisions.
His speech suggested that this is no longer an issue that he was writing.
Well, he wrote an enormous amount afterwards.
And I still think responsibility and history, which is his essay back in 1956,
is should be a must read for anyone interested in the history, not of what it was another person who became popular in Russia.
I mean, of course, the short stories with his place later on.
The problem is you see that he had so much to do with it, but no more.
But I could talk about the subject of it now. Mrozek Of course, that was interesting.
In the early period he was known better for swing and the short stories which you know,
were again, well representing the Polish episode or the East European episode.
Who knows? But they were little stories that usually twist or the very beginning twist.
I particularly remember the one of the Swan, the elephant, which is mean the end of the world,
which is basically all sorts of propaganda and then escapes defeat because there is no of course there isn't.
Well, the third period, which is basically the post revisionist period,
is when some of the greats of British literature come into fashion and are translated.
I think the video showed up translated in 63, but it's really popularity starts sometime in the eighties.
It must be redone now, is it? I'm sure gombrowicz because of lots of stories.
About course, he was translated into English in the sixties, but nobody knew any movies in Germany and France.
He was very popular. So in 1967 we got the French fries basically post and it was the times, you know, to ask for an opinion.
It was longer. So they sent me up. I was working in Birmingham in the Russian Historical Centre in the Falklands.
Who is this number? But I said if it worked,
it was created in the Times and there was four letters from me that say I do not believe that is a common Georgian order in Berlin.
Who knows about numbers? Who is this man anyway? He's invented.
But you see, gombrowicz. The funny thing about it is that he's too some.
Somehow he's too European for an English reader.
Nothing very foolish in some ways, and very sort of continental like.
I'm very excited that if you live in South America for many years but in the seventies and it is certainly good
translation of it because the first one anyway and it was like every subsequent from the French and German.
So he's lousy with it. But then somebody had something to say.
I can't remember because there is several now.
But. And you would do so.
No. Now I'm coming to the end of my somewhat go and another name I have to mention Visconti, since I believe that to be true, became very popular.
Not so much in England as in American California if your children loved the beach, but it was absurd enough for them and funny, you know, for them.
And again, to translate it.
And I think most of his important plays and he was performed in California from 1966 onwards and published several books, and that's it.
I'm sorry. I couldn't even do justice to a number of things, which I couldn't agree with that which I admitted.
There used to be a number of cycles in the and the tumult new writing of East Europe and also I think it was George Dryden in 1971.
And Davia, thanks very much. I think that provides a very nice background and searching for something that
reminded me of a million things that I have forgotten this remote village.
Can I just gently close this and I've got some pretty pictures for you and.
Just so I can hear. And Kathy.
This computer is happy with it. Rather than putting lists of titles that discover pictures.
If if I can make them appear. Does it mean that you don't want better promises here?
Will you do this machine?
Do your thing? So we have this completely unfamiliar computer.
I think it's ideal to do for. Probably.
Probably. Right click. Right click on it.
Oh, I've done that. Oh.
Since we caught frozen. Sorry about this minor technical hitch.
Do you know what to do to try it?
Yeah, it's there. Sorry. Let's try opening up.
Yes. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
All right, we open this. All right. No, I think it's a problem.
And partly it seems to be the point.
Yes. And that's my thing. Oh, okay.
We are right. Right. Okay. All right.
So just go to the full screen. Oh, no, no, no.
Don't know what to do to show the scene properly from beginning.
Right. But I don't want it to go flying through or and just to stop there.
Okay. All right. So let me that for you. So I've heard of you know, it's mentioned in the title.
I thought I would talk. I've mentioned that.
And what I'm really just going to show you is what sort of things get translated and published in English,
because obviously there are certain forces at work here.
Markets and things like that. It really Polish literature.
There's got to be more Polish literature in English, the contemporary stuff from 2000 onwards.
But Pavel was one of the writers who was there earlier with who was David Fleischer, which I translated, and that came out in 1996, 89, 90.
And also, he's useful for showing how things have changed in terms of how a book comes to get translated into English in the first place.
So what George would say in the past, books got into English because of academic initiatives, people who were experts,
often with quite with academic publishers or in journals or in fairly kind of not mainstream publishers.
And what an awful lot has changed in the last 20 years.
So that now Polish literature is appearing not exactly with mainstream publishers,
but as something that's generally available and more widely known about not just those,
but still have this strange quirk reading, East European literature.
And so how David Weiss it got into English was a sort of accident because there was one who Michael Thomas Pirie,
who was an academic in Glasgow, who died tragically young.
Otherwise he would be doing great things and he just was incredibly active and he organised in 1988,
which is quite a time to be doing a Polish cultural event in Glasgow where he got all
sorts of people a long night to get them out of Poland and including some writers.
And he got Ronny, some of my the poet Pablo Miller and Anthony LeBaron came over to teach about their work.
I mean, it was amazing that they could get passports and they were tormented by the immigration police on the way out of the country.
And it was these were historic times. And so I met Pablo at this event, and I was with Daniel Tarkovsky,
who at the time was a valiant fighter for Right, was running police publications in London and Pavel.
It just published like that, which was very successful in Poland.
And I was interested in translating, had done a bit for Russian, but wasn't very experienced.
And we just teamed up and I had been doing some work with Michael Glennie, who was very well established translator of Russian,
and he helped me and showed me how to prepare material to show publishers.
He then chatted up Liz Calder at Bloomsbury.
And so by a sequence of accidents of the right people with the right interest coming together.
This book was published in English, a book by a young Polish writer, completely unknown in in Britain.
And things were starting to change, not just in Poland, but also here,
because a great deal was also happening in in this country and in America in the last 20 years to put translation much more firmly on the map.
And there's an awful lot more respect for translated literature, there's a lot more translated training.
And I think the whole idea of reading foreign literature, although I wish more people read it,
that's a much better attitude generally to the whole idea of translation in an English language speaking country, which is also help.
So if so, that's a capitalist title.
But if I show you I've done this by genre, I'm not really a poetry translator.
I've done one poet who bullies me into it.
Basically it to sort have raised me up at four in the morning and complains about where commas should go and things like that.
So but here is a fairly nice selection of some of the things that have happened in Polish poetry in the last 15 years.
But it's the usual suspects. So for it's.
It's that sort of V-shape that's of Chevron of books that all the same publisher, which is Zephyr Press in Boston.
They've done fantastic things. And a lot of that is to do with certain very dedicated translators, the l.a.
Chiclets who's done the anthology on the record on Everest and she did the Martian a killer book sort Monica.
And then Bill Johnston who's done patrician Dickey.
I would say people think I'm sneezy and I say that name and who also was behind mirror wrote and 12 translations
of Roget's ski who think to my mind is the greatest living Polish poet and one of the greatest poets ever.
And so, for instance, this isn't everything. This is just the selection.
So the publicity is the latest work translated by the actor.
And then ARC, which is a very small, dedicated British publisher who does mostly anthologies.
And they did this six Polish edited.
And then today Puro and Rod Mangum did the altered state for them.
And then they've just done the Christine and they were banter, which is also elevated.
And then Phil Johnston gets to trade on the patch of attention yet very,
very quickly and publish a I would highly recommend this archipelago books review of epic.
So in poetry there's a lot happening with the younger poets now coming out and a lot
of this is down to one or two dedicated publishers and some dedicated translators.
So then looking at the fiction, this is just the selection.
Again, you've got Will Johnston has kind of got a publisher to listen to him very carefully.
So he's got all these tools out and mission is now in English.
The latest one is a treatise on jelly beans, which I highly recommend with superb translation.
And then there's more and more small independent publishers taking up Polish literature, but it's still really small independents.
It's not mainstream publishers. So what we see here is that the the market is very specific.
And you mentioned Telekom Group, which is too European, I would say, to Central Europe.
And there is a bit of a cut off with the perceptions of the Anglo-Saxon when it comes to foreign literature,
if it's a place where they go on holidays and they're happy with it.
So if it's Italy or Spanish speaking or French or German, it kind of figures on their radar.
But somehow one of the about the fault lines across Europe, for one of them, it affects what people read.
And unfortunately, Russia gets across the principal classic Russian literature.
But Poland is somewhere in this strange ghetto of of places we don't quite go to.
We kind of know about, but not quite. So it is very, very uphill work to get people to take a major interest in Polish books,
which is why it's so hard to persuade publishers because obviously publishers, a business people, they're not doing it just for fun.
They have to make a living. So they are only going to publish this.
They know they can sell.
And so when Polish publishers and translators are pitching books to them, it's very important for them to decide to choose very carefully.
And sometimes Polish publishers don't understand why certain books just don't take off in Britain or why nobody here is interested in them.
And a lot of Polish interest does very well in German. But clearly there's some cultural reference for Germans.
They find it more familiar, whereas for Anglo-Saxon somehow there is some difficulty here.
But anyway, there's, there is a lot happening and there is a lot of there are a lot of wonderful books coming out.
So just to give you an idea of the range, this is, there's more and more genre fiction now.
I mean, some people would be offended to be put in the category of extraordinary fiction thing, but these are crime books and then there's fantasy.
There's also some stuff I haven't bothered to mention.
The great wrecks like my poetry didn't have to scare me.
What is there of this? And I'm here. I haven't got land rights.
That's huge. Continues to be very successful and and was successful in before that although he was often translated.
And then this this thing on the top, right? It's appalling.
Thing is the graphic novel, which there are better ones than that coming out to post it.
It's quite amusing. And then to the question of these gory crime books, which I'm afraid I'm responsible for a couple of that.
So but it's very interesting, you you take this book, A Grain of Truth, with how that came to be published in English.
This is a much more typical example of what happens nowadays,
because the roles have developed for the translator and particularly for the Polish publisher.
So for instance, whereas in the past, Polish publishers really had nothing to do with what books got published in translation.
Now the Polish publishers are extremely active in selling the rights to their books, so they Polish writers don't have agents.
There isn't really enough money around for that. They're all this one very active agent sequel Polish rights run by women who make it.
And Fosca, who represents several of the major Polish publishers, including Germany and but mostly the publishers,
have dedicated foreign rights departments and they put together information to try to promote their books abroad.
And they go to all the book fairs, including it for the English language, obviously, London and BookExpo America.
And that it's been Frankfurt, of course, it's a major international rights selling market.
And they promote their books and they work very closely with people like me,
translators who can help them to prepare material to show Western publishers.
And I remember when they first started doing this, they were bombarding every Western publisher with all the books they had.
And I was saying, you know, you've got to target things. You have to think about the market here.
Think about what that publisher, what each British publisher publishes and only show the things that they're likely to be interested in.
Because every Western publisher,
every publisher knows their lists and what they're about and they know very quickly if they're interested in the book or not.
So you have to not bombard them, but tailor things to them.
So with the grain of truth, what happened was it was an interesting process because the Polish publisher had sent information to British publishers,
including Peter Lemon, who specialise in the US foreign crime books only.
That's all they publish and they only do about eight books a year.
They've just had their 10th anniversary and they're very successful and they
had been told about various Polish books by more than one Polish publisher.
So they approached me as somebody who could read those books for them and they said, Can you please tell us all of this?
Because it's this Mrs. our brief is this this. Can you tell us if any of these books fit the bill?
Which ones should we be interested?
And I read one didn't get through all of that, a stack of books and these seem to me exactly in the right mould for them.
So I said, This is what you want. And with the first one, they still wanted to read it in German before they published it.
But then the second one, they were happy to just take my word for it. And now they're going to do a search, the author's writing now.
So it's a different process now. So then we move.
Oh, okay. So Polish reportage is really taking off now because personally I think it's one of the
strongest areas of Polish contemporary publishing that does have a market in the way.
This is an awful lot of novels coming out in Poland, which are you were saying that it's not about the war.
Everything's still very Poland centric and there's still obviously a need in
Poland's part because of the restrictions on culture in the communist era,
there's still a need for an awful lot of expression of what's happened in Poland
in a need to understand that which is coming out in the literature still.
But of course,
all of that doesn't really travel and it's of great interest to Poles and maybe people in Central Europe and Germany seems to take that.
But less of a sell off when it comes to the markets in Britain and America where people are used to a different kind of book.
Yes, copper shoots the eye again. He's such a classic, but I haven't put him in.
But he is. He's the kind of father of all these writers and they've all come out of his school.
And of course, he's massively important.
Imperialist fantasy. Yes, it's fabulous all.
His books have been just about everything. Not the older ones about Poland, but everything else that's been translated into English successfully.
So thanks to him. That's another thing because he had good attention earlier and became an international figure.
It's given all of these people a slightly easier ride, but it's also that they're not writing about Poland.
Sad as it may seem, they're writing about other places. So we've got three books up there about Russia.
Well, Chechnya for about Uganda, about Bosnia, about the Czechs as a nation, about Turkey, for instance.
That's just those are just examples. Then I've got the two newest.
Just the opposite corners. They're just about to come out. So then I wish this category was bigger.
I mean, there's probably things that I haven't thought of, so certainly.
SULLIVAN Hurry up. So anyway, there's some essays and biography happening.
Again, the Catholic Church is an interesting how that came about because in this case, again, the publisher approached me.
Several publishers approached me to write reports for them. They all got the same one.
And, well, it's a big book. And then eventually some of them were interested in it, some of them less so.
Certainly I did. And the guilty party and then children's books, just this is really the newest thing that's really starting to take off.
I'm very proud that I translated this, which is really medieval for maps.
And then some of these are older writers like Yanukovich, obviously, and Tufan and Korczak.
So there's some interest in the older books, but these are very new.
These are the mission landscape books, which are very popular in Poland, and these have been very successful internationally.
The map is a hugely successful book. So that's very nice to see happening.
And then I just wanted to say sorry, rambling on and using a futon.
But so things have happened in Polish publishers publishing.
Polish publishers now have this new role of selling rights.
Translators help them. But then also importantly, the Poles.
The Polish state has done a great deal towards this. And this is well, let's say the Polish Book Institute,
which is in Krakow and is the most fantastic organisation that exists to promote Polish its report.
And we started it basically in the year 2000.
And so they have various programs which encourage translators and publishers.
So the Copyright Poland program publishers can apply to that for funding to pay for rights and translation.
Pub translators can apply for money to pay for extracts that they translate to use.
When they're pitching books to publishers, they organise a huge every four years what they call a Congress.
20 works to maybe ten to build, but it gets together translators from all over the world, from every possible language.
I didn't know there was a Vietnamese camp, which I think is really makes pretty good of the polish.
And then and then they have also seminar events where they get translators to come in and meet Polish translators.
They have residences for translators. They produce catalogues featuring new books that have just come out in Poland with extracts in them.
They go to the only international books as Poland's just been the in Delhi at the New Delhi books.
So the whole set of writers went inside and got some publicity and then they have a very good website.
I can put the address there for you because that's very,
very useful and this is a fantastic resource and I have friends translating from checking things and we when I tell them with envy and the truth,
the tragedy of their own situation where they didn't have this kind of support.
And then there are other resources, there are still some things that are very, very hard.
The hardest thing really is promoting Polish. It's just getting people to buy those books.
So the Polish cultural institutes, which are Ministry of Foreign Affairs institutions in London and New York and Delhi,
very useful because they help us to set up events.
They have limited resources, but they help us to get writers over, promote books and do something to get people interested in them.
Then there are other resources which aren't Polish specific, such as English Pen,
which has all the old Arts Council funding and the Fantastic Translation Grant program, which started out last year.
And then the EU also provides funding for translation.
And now that's more translated training through the British Centre for Literary Translations, for whom I am mentoring Polish translators.
But that's paid for again by the. This Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
And then there are summer school for people who are interested in literary translation.
I'll be running one city university this year for a week in June,
and then the London Book Fair has a translation centre where there is a great deal of information about four budding translators.
And Poland's going to be the guest at the London Book Fair either next year or the one off.
We're not sure yet. It will be announced in April.
So I know I've used up my time service.
Yes. I mean, from 52 perspectives, inevitably people have a lot of interest.
Thank you very much, because this is a very realistic presentation, not this is the real look where,
you know, special courses are applied and great ideas take you back to something.
What would you tell an idealist, which is how we study?
Sure. And its dependency is not on translation featured so prominently on the poster.
I feel that I should start from a book. I have a free three copies.
Would you like to hear how some of the people have not seen this yet?
Here's literature and transformation. This was an attempt not only by myself, but a group of 16 other schools to capture what happened.
Changes to British culture since 1989 as a result of the political and economic changes.
Yes. So we're basically talking about transition to democracy, removal of the official status,
of the introduction of the more fully functional aspects of the reproduction.
But we also look at way to recent research, notably, scholars work both in Poland and outside, responded to those factors.
And two of those conclusions was that we now have a situation of plurality.
We could not expand the books that we looked at.
We could not find any common themes where there were common subjects to discuss the still issues
about war and how this is still finding out because of the form of censorship speak honestly.
And so a lot of suppressed stuff came out. So there were things like that, but no collective thing that would speak for all poets.
The plethora of choice, flooded markets.
So it's very difficult to find any markers which would indicate what is representative and therefore possibly what should be translated.
Because I would say in the past there have been these kind of apologies that we've been talking about, an attempt to find, you know,
some level of representativeness in order to create a camp appointment, which is one of my conclusions of doctrine,
that the whole canon of literature, what we should study now is completely open.
Now the book is not itself about translation.
There is one article, though, about poetry translation, which which covers cultural ground that Julian Castro talked about.
Well, in order to get this piece active, I should mention or explain who the book is.
And that is one target audience.
Scholars, like most other researchers, people generally interested in post culture, which we already have some knowledge.
But it's all equally aimed at students and researchers of smoke,
teachers and other fields who do not necessarily have an in-depth knowledge of polish and therefore can't read the books.
When I'm not teaching at the moment, but I have to say that, you know, in my experience of teaching English literature a couple of years it.
In the last ten years that this is the initial problem.
This is the first problem that was encountered that people did not were not able or willing to read the text in college.
So the whole course built around what existed in translation,
and that is that you cannot now not this is not just the problem of teaching who is it, but of bringing Polish literature into a world of study.
And this is something that I know like to do. The mission about a mission about several, many years.
The Polish should not be treated necessarily as something separate,
separate field of study whose literature to culture that it should be brought into a wider field.
And I think this is where it also has a chance to support and be of interest to English.
Speaking of deep roots of comparative literature, European cultural studies and other comparative fields such as European Romanticism,
European Modernism, or the whole field of gender studies, women's studies, the whole field of the general post-colonial studies in post-Communist.
Now, let me explain why I think this is so important,
because it's not just a question of the Soviet fields and students being unwilling to read things in the visual language.
It's also to do with the survival of the studies.
And I'm sure some of you are aware of the term costs that Glasgow's been going through in the last few years,
where the the Czech and the Polish studies are really on the threat.
Well, then surviving what? They are surviving because they have moved into a comparative group.
Now the studies project and the way I have studied the people are going through the system who are already studying to finish.
But when they finished there were going to be no Polish literature study, which is only going to be in translation in comparative.
So this is why it's important to me anyway what exists for translation.
And there's also the additional points that while some of us might regret the passing of literary studies based on originals,
the increased reliance on translations does offer the chance for more known,
long projected speakers and monopoles to come in Bolton Field,
and hence also for the three text to be included in the study of exactly these broader European ones.
Comparative contexts. I mean, to me,
this is a battle because of the difficulty of the language and the fact that
relatively few people who are not post origin subject to a sufficiently high level.
I think, you know, we will accept few exceptions.
This means that the perception of Polish literature, something inaccessible.
I mean, I'm not sure that I would really entirely agree with that. It's that there's a reaction here to the Central European.
I think it's a question of normal chauvinism. To me, the barrier is the language.
It's not a cultural problem. I can't really stress this enough is no mysterious mistake.
What about Poland? Which does nothing that cannot be known.
Yeah. The problem is the language. And until we get over that barrier, we're presenting things in English, in translation.
I don't see how we know the efforts of individual translators because Anton is a great example of this.
Also, Phil Johnston, who since 1989, he's translated not only contemporary literature, that's done many books of contemporary,
he's also done pieces which I think been crucial in bringing home literacy studies to the English speaking world.
However, the experience of working on our books has shown that despite this many texts covered by
research are not translated and therefore they can't be accessible to local students.
So the research itself remains limited in its appeal for a quick sample of students,
maybe inspired while they were what we call them, take the study further or pursue the research because they can't read the books.
And this is exactly the same experience that we have to see in this project.
When we did a book on of these about ten years ago on the history of women's writing in Central and Eastern Europe.
No, we produced this book, but there were so few translations that it sort of fell flat because it was it was meant to
appeal to the gender studies and the women's studies and general cultural studies audience.
But it didn't really have any lasting resonance because people could then take what they want to read about themselves.
Now Antonio has already discussed some of the hurt.
Unfortunately, in that book, we have in fact on Occupy the very same effect which happens we discussed 16 pages and I was just going to pause.
Well, there's two of these that you actually featured.
Oh, yeah, of course. I was going to mention one full of.
Many. The article just doesn't isn't just a big graphical thing that this is what
has come out to highlight the work of particular translators and populations.
It also discusses this whole problem of being represented, know, being representative,
of choosing out of the vast array of stuff that's been published in what it represents to the left.
What's the account of? It basically ends up explaining how this is a entirely subjective thing.
One thing leads to another.
So certain poets become the ones that are always ready to move on to different operations.
Whereas there are a whole load of others that never get to never get a look.
So it's a lot. The whole business is very, I think, very unsatisfactory.
And I suppose this, you know, has to be realistic otherwise.
One thing that also I think is quite interesting, it shows how certain individuals have tried to bring Polish into a wider context of other poetry.
So, for example, we work through Malcolm in his special issue of The Jackal,
who then there's Brian McKay, who adopted an edition of Living with the Portuguese himself.
A poet who works with poets is actually put in the context that so it's not just Jewish literature,
but it's European virtue, it's Welsh poetry, Scottish poetry, and it's just the US military.
Yeah. And like all this poetry obviously has some kind of national and specific cultural quotations,
but mostly its interest and its its inspiration or craftsmanship.
And this is something that I do want to emphasise today, which is my experience.
I'm not foolish that what comes over from reading how you read a vast amount of literature is that it is entirely accessible.
It's what is called what has been walked is the way we've studied it in the past.
But certain certain things have been taken out. So we're talking about messianism.
We're talking about with the British suffrage, we're talking about the particular wars.
But these are things that any culture seems to come in some way identify with, but it's also transnational.
The problem is the language barrier. Now we see this 16 foot long surplus and a few of all of just like it was abandoned because a lot of water,
of course, has gone into choosing the boats.
But they are all rich.
And if you compare the ones that the boats that have actually been translated with another article in the book which was so great,
a postcard from those generations, there is movement since 1989.
It hardly touches the surface. So it's it's not a representation.
So I mean, I think what I'm trying to say is that we should be very wary of these these kind
of bad forgeries because they don't match the people that you've translated.
And this applies to the fiction as well. Well, come on. Starting with it doesn't matter who owns the titles.
You didn't coach Press.
I mean, there is some overlap, of course, but generally speaking also reflects a different approach by well-known critics like Doris Roberts.
Does it? Or indeed, because she needs to go in to all the reviewers, want to be not exhausting or to get information.
That's one area. And the second area, all the works which are treated as objects of study.
While academic critics misread historians such as in the various works on post 18 months, 1989, which was such experts as yes divisions.
Eight or ten is what took these awful exceptions and you know, is one of them as is over to culture.
So it's translated by quite honestly, they don't want to be exceptions.
So obviously, you know, other criteria apply in selecting works translation for the market and those which have
been identified as the ones we should perhaps be studying by competent Bush critics.
Um. No, this is it. I mean, just to give you just a very quick statistics on the book,
we have a lot of requests to require versions equal discusses that two of its principal school oh seven of which have been translated.
There are two articles about novels based on migration since 2004, mainly to the UK and to Ireland.
On this, no one could argue that they've all popular books.
They're not particularly well written, but they are sociologically interesting.
The two authors that discussed these, they discussed over 20 titles, only one of them Catholics,
and then the government of France, which for them to stop is the only one of those trends that has been translated.
And then, you know, the women were four schools of women writers from various aspects, I suppose angles 29 texts discussed.
Only three have been translated into English again by consent to two books flying over to Portugal and Spain in the golden memory, you see.
So when it comes to the study on the future of the study of Polish literature.
This to me is concerning particularly, you know, as the survival of the stock,
not just in Britain but in the USA is going to depend on a comparative context is quite important.
You know what this translates?
And I think, you know, it's the fact that, you know, you see people who are not supposed origin, have not read the text, then,
you know, the way in which this study is going to be continues, continue to be working around over national issues exposed.
Whereas if we don't get outside and bring the Polish texts into the void for Germany
has a chance to be really appreciated for its its whole transaction volumes.
I mean unless you are very strong in this and I think it's one of the tragedies of this literature,
not just to talk about contemporary literature, but over centuries.
But it's not a it example is an example of my own experience in it, but it's not brought into these white contexts.
I mean, I'm a complete utopian you. But what I think all this means is a systematic program with funding texts identified.
I mean, not just its importance, but going back even to lists of systematic projects identified by group of projects and scholars who dedicated
money to pay publishers because they're not things that are going to sell them in the market and pay translators.
And I would say that if you extend your list to include works, criticism, historical works, which are being produced in Poland which are not known.
Yeah well it's getting so feed into voices right now.
I got for 2 minutes for my. It's okay.
Well I will now turn to my own modest attempts to address the gaps.
And I eventually came to write my own invented translation program through women's schools.
This was my impulse to translate women who had not been translated.
Look, not just that now, but I'm talking about 19th and early 20th century.
So, I mean, I concentrated most of my knowledge in both the book that was originally published in 1906 1816.
It's in Baskets, the daughter of Isabella Chaucer, this stuff.
And then, of course, you know, who is usually regarded as the first big time in English women's writing,
although there are many writers, lots and lots of.
So this was originally published in 1856.
I now work as a novelist, so I've translated Sukar, which is has an international appeal.
It has a sort of Thomas Mahon type of theme.
It's set in 1925 in the Swiss Alps Sanitarium, and it has an international community.
And it's not just nothing to do. It holds nothing to do.
And one of the interesting things in it is that she meets there in the sanctuary of all the survivors from the genocide of 1916.
And this is one of the earliest notes, one of the few that I know of witnesses to this this event by somebody is not her before me.
So this is why I chose this war. Start with I've also translated ground.
So I finished translating it once before this and there's another one coming out.
So she looked at it from different things they all bought from the same publisher.
And another one, Marcos, could try to buy another club, which wasn't.
And my ongoing project.
I have also a translation of a 17th century nun.
Once you might think, Well, who the [INAUDIBLE] wants to publish that or read it is has actually got a publisher and it's good possibilities.
Transnational Series The Other Voice in Early of Europe, which is a series that was founded by two scholars in Chicago,
it was originally published by the University of Chicago Press, was recently moved to Toronto.
And my text, which is the I can be a graphic picture of one who is a Carmelite discalced Carmelite.
And it's written very much in the in the spirit of, oh, yeah,
this is one of 3/17 century Polish texts that are included in this vast series of slow Italian and French and the rest of it.
Let's tell you about. So I. What I've been pushing over Solomon is the novel.
He was troubled diary of a woman that he trained as a doctor of sorts.
She travelled in Turkey and in Washington, and that's one of them.
And the other one is of a small Francesca Reggie do over who lived what she learned in the early 18th century, which is playwrights.
Yes. Now she created the theatre, Michel.
Okay. So I have to say, why?
Why I think these women, though, it's not just because they are women's texts,
which I know is the work of the comedians talks about what women feel and because they are.
So tell us about aspects of Polish culture that we don't learn about from male voice in writing, which is outside Poland's in dispute.
This is the romance. Yeah. So this movie was originally published in 1816, so it's in about four years.
But The Heathen was published in 1846.
Now when I study projects, Jim, I think this is still based on principles.
We learned about the three great romantics and they wrote in reaction to the 1830 uprising.
They wrote in exile.
They were then writing poetry or dramas, wrote will at least tell us about culture in Hollywood itself in partition quotes from well,
you know, we can learn what's on the show to discuss the environment, environments, the media of the diverse person.
We can learn a lot about intellectual life in actually in the Congress kingdom, often because it's a very interesting period,
because it's in the founding of the Congress and the introduction of the first.
Since. So it was a very fluid time and the background to it is the 1812 campaign.
So it's very much a patriotic look.
It's got the elements, but it has a lot more about about he's a European.
And the same is true of Christian Austria. They happened to be written in Polish.
They have patriotic dimensions. What they tell us about the culture, the time in the romantic period, in the postcards itself,
and they all European texts, they happen to be European texts written in quotes.
Because if you look at the dominant so from my introduction you see that the inspirations come from European literature,
French literature, English literature, they come from German literature.
And this was something which was studied interestingly in the clothes.
So I'm not these are not texts that I've dug out from my own books.
They were texts that were well known during the in their day.
And in the thirties they were they were studied and written about while you were flying a boy or girl.
But I think shinkle. Yeah. So this is yeah.
So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Absolutely. And, and this is a time for questions from our audience.
So first of all, I would like to thank you all very much and.