Rick Simonson

Translate Me to Miami
November 9, 2007

It's one long overnight, corner-to-corner, cross-country leap to go from Seattle to Miami, and it's a leap in more ways than one. Winging it to attend a one-day series of discussions, formal and informal, on the place of international literature and translations in the U.S. marketplace, one realizes that a first bit of translating is realizing that the '81 degrees') the Seattle newspaper is telling you that it is in Miami really does mean 81 degrees. How does one comprehend that, by what language, when it's 45 and cold rain is coming down and you're layered in fleece, thick socks, and raincoats, to say nothing of a grey darkness that already feels eternal? To stagger off an airport hotel shuttle, to find a blast of risen sun at 7 am with a sky that's marble-blue clear .. and to top it off, be greeted by City Lights' Paul Yamazaki who has come by being up all night and awake rather more innocently than has sometimes been the case in the past ... you have to stop and wonder what dream this might be. One's last memories of Miami and environs (this is not particularly fair) are of the ABA of 1993, a show beset by lots of logistical problems (more hotel stories from that one year than all others combined) and with some really blustery, wet weather smack in the middle of it. The weather was teasingly beautiful as we left, I recall ... now here it was beautiful upon this years-later return.

Staged as a joint production by Book Expo America and the now-venerable Miami Book International Book Fair, 'The Translation Market' is as much as anything a brainchild of Reed's Lance Fensterman and Mitchell Kaplan (of whom so much can be said, but to say that in many of the overheard bits of conversation with him the main subject was how people wanted to come see him and the soon-to-open new Books & Books in the Cayman Islands - one does wonder, is there where reps will want to make sales calls? and writers to read?), wanting to both have a focused place for doing something particular and specific about translation and rights fir Reed's interests (one presumes) and for the Book Fair to add a trade, or industry component above and beyond the one whereby New York people flee to the degree possible to come work a nice November weekend down amidst the mingling throngs and audiences at the Book Fair.

About forty individuals have gotten the call to participate, with a nice number of others, from near and far, signing up to attend. Those 'summoned,' as it were, are a mix of editors, publishers, agents, writers, critics and reviewers, writers, and booksellers. The publishing people come from houses large, middle-sized, and small. The booksellers are all independent ones. If read right, only two of  us are coming from the U.S. west coast, but there are people from other, more distant coasts: Brazil, France, London, Lisbon, Spain. Domestically, Ann Arbor, Boston, Rochester, Philadelphia, Norman, Oklahoma, Champaign, Illinois, and New York City have representation. Everything was pulled together fairly late, but even in arriving, there comes with it a nice, almost spontaneous air to it.

Before the symposium itself, there is first the day of arrival, two bleary-eyed individuals who've flown in from out west on red-eyes, having to wait to check-in at the hotel, then setting out and doing their usual, intrepid orienting themselves to whatever city they jointly find themselves in - first by figuring how to walk it, then to know what its public transportation is, then to find the bookstore(s) they might know of ... and then to eventually get to those pleasantries associated with refreshment and sitting down somewhere. Here, in Miami, that means shade. It means something cool to drink. It means leaning back and trying to remember what cold place one dimly recalls coming from but hours before. This is translation ...

Posted by Rick Simonson on November 9, 2007 | Comments (0)