Mundo a Mundo / World to World

Just back from Queretaro's fabulous Mundo a Mundo / World to World Literary Translation Workshop--- it covers Spanish to English and English to Spanish--- a unique concept, sponsored by the IUSI, among others, and founded by literary translator and poet Amanda Powell. I was honored to be asked to talk about publishing literary translations together with one of the world's very few truly bilingual Spanish to English and English to Spanish literary translators, Herzonia Yanez (her translation of Daniel Orozco's short story "Orientation" appears in Tameme's issue #2). Herzonia made me laugh all the way home -- three hours--- to Mexico City. New word in my vocabulario: chiquitiguau (Herzonia's description of the restaurant where we had lunch). Well, I really need to put together a little article on "getting started in literary translating." There are some excellent on-line articles on the subject at the ALTA (American Literary Translators Association) website, PEN, and elsewhere. But I have my own take on the process, and where the value lies. I talked about Tameme, of course, Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion, the superb resource of Tameme's links page, and mentioned my war-horse of an article (reprinted more times than I can count) on publishing the literary short story--- most of the advice is directly applicable to publishing literary translations of poetry, short fiction and creative nonfiction. More anon.