I went to the Buchmesse yesterday. I hadn’t been for three years. I spoke to two publishers, briefly. But mainly I go to look at the books, not to chat up publishers.

Via Mobile:

It seemed less fun than last time. I was also quite disoriented. Last time, I remember taking little buses everywhere. They must have gone to the main entrances. On foot (the Via Mobile doesn’t go everywhere), it can be very wearing to walk all over a hall looking for the right exit. This is despite looking at the map online the night before.

Reklam:

This is probably a translator in action:

Previously, I made a longer list of publishers beforehand. I would go and see small presses like Ten Speed Press or various international law publishers – as a reader and book buyer, not as a translator. Now, I suspect many presses weren’t even there, and although I took quite a few catalogues, there was nothing like the superabundance of yore. Probably the financial crisis has had its effect.

I had been reading Chinese novels and thinking of brushing up my Chinese, but I did not see any English-language publishers with Chinese books (there may have been some). There were some German translations around. The tent features mainly Chinese minorities, doing calligraphy, painting, embroidery, making puppets and so on – all a bit demonstratively non-political.

For the Book Fair, translators means literary translators. The translators’ centre, which I saw when it began, have become a firm fixture. I heard Norma Kessler and Babette Schrooten talking on the topic of Wie kommt man als Übersetzer zu einem Spezialgebiet? – How does a translator find a special subject? They were talking about their position after training as translators. Babette had worked in a medical occupation for fourteen years and had done a lot of horse riding, and Norma (after failing to get a translation from Diogenes – I get the impression universities give their translation students the idea they can make a living as literary translators – and they haven’t even studied literature – rant off) went into architecture, her husband being an architect. It is always interesting to me to hear other translators talking about their lives. It also indicates that translation students (of both sexes) should consider well who they get married too.

At the BDÜ I was glad to meet – if briefly – another translation blogger, Fabio Said of fidus interpres. He was only there for the day too and had travelled as long as I had, but got up earlier.

Translators’ centre: translators who have won prizes:

Margaret Atwood on the blue sofa (irritating interviewer):

LATER NOTE: Fabio has blogged the Buchmesse now, and he also has a video giving an impression of his day there.

And here’s another impression of mine – hot dogs being warmed up at the left.

I was pleased but surprised that Herta Müller got the Nobel Prize for Literature.

I read a few of her stories and two novels while she was still in Romania (till 1987) and have meant to come back to them. What she writes is rightly described as poetic, but it’s easier going than Elfriede Jelinek and I should think quite translatable.

In particular I remember a story called Das Schwäbische Bad, about a whole family one after the other using the same bathwater. Apparently this story was not well received by a number of Banat Swabians.

Extract in English from Everything I Own I Carry With Me (Atemschaukel), tranlated by Donal McLaughlin.

The war was still on in January 1945. Shocked that, in the depths of winter, I was to be taken who-knows-where by the Russians, everyone wanted to give me something that would be useful, maybe, even if it didn’t help. Because nothing on earth could help. It was irrevocable: I was on the Russians’ list, so everyone gave me something – and drew their own conclusions as they did. I took the things and, at the age of seventeen, drew my own conclusion: the timing was right for going away. I could have done without the list being the reason, but if things didn’t turn out too badly, it would even be good for me. I wanted away from this thimble of a town, where all the stones had eyes. I wasn’t so much afraid as secretly impatient. And I had a bad conscience because the list that caused my relatives such anguish was, for me, tolerable. They feared that in another country something might happen to me. I wanted to go to a place that did not know me.

In Romania, there are two big groups of Germans: the Transylvanian Saxons (Siebenbürger Sachsen) and the Banat Swabians (Banater Schwaben). Herta Müller is one of the latter. Previously the most famous was Johnny Weissmüller. This map is from Wikimedia Commons and relates to the year 1945. Some Romanian Germans succeeded in avoiding deportation by emigrating at that time:

For most of WWII, Romania was on the German side, but in 1944 it joined the Allies. As far as I know, the Romanian Germans stayed loyal to Hitler. From 1945 on, all men between 17 and 45 and women between 18 and 30, with a few exceptions, were sent to labour camps in the Soviet Union for years.

The deportation order applied to all men between the ages of 17 and 45 and women between 18 and 30. Only pregnant women, women with children less than a year old and persons unable to work were excluded.

Here’s an English page with a lot of links (the Literary Saloon, via The Elegant Variation)

Extracts from The Land of Green Plums, translated by Michael Hofmann (original title: Herztier).

Expulsion of Germans from Romania after World War II

If you can’t get Herta Müller books at the moment, you can read her husband, Richard Wagner, in German.

Termium Plus, the Canadian database (French, English and Spanish) is now free online.

I believe it is useful for the English alone (the default setting on the site is to look up French terms). It has such a full set of definitions and examples that it should help translators between German and English too. It has been (rightly) expensive on CD so I have never become familiar with it.

(I’m trying to read Infinite Jest, so when I see a Canadian site I keep thinking about terrorists in wheelchairs, I’m afraid).

Here’s one description to make up for my ignorance (it refers to charges, which have now gone).