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08-15-2014, 01:48 AM
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Join Date: Dec 1999
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Translation Bake-Off, 2014: Call for Submissions
Dear Eratosphereans,
On your mark, grab your multilingual dictionaries, and get set and go enter this year's Translation Bake-off event, or rather, two events ---
Yes, this year, there will be two Translation Bake-off events, both with the theme of INSECTS. The three winners of each event will receive undying glory, plus a free copy of the Able Muse Summer 2014 Translation Anthology Issue (or, if they already own this, their choice of another book of poetry from the Able Muse Press catalog -- as shown at www.ablemusepress.com ), courtesy of Able Muse / Able Muse Press.
For the main event, judged by our very own Julie Stoner (plus the usual popular vote selection), we invite English translations of free or formal verse from any language, so long as at least one insect features as the subject or as a significant image. To find relevant poems for translation, you may find it helpful to search for words in other languages meaning butterfly, grasshopper, ant, bee, silkworm, dragonfly, maggot, mayfly, mosquito, and the like; you may also wish to combine these search terms with famous names from that language's literature...although anonymous nursery rhymes and songs may also be a fruitful source of material fitting the theme. ONE ENTRY PER PERSON may be emailed to where I will anonymize the entries and forward them to Julie. Please include your name and the original author's name, your English verse translation, the poem in its original language, and a literal English prose crib to assist anyone unfamiliar with the nuances of the original language. The submission deadline will be the moment of the equinox--Tuesday, 23 September 2014 at 02:29 UTC (i.e., Monday, 22 September 2014 at 10:29 EDT). A number of finalists, not to exceed twelve, will be posted anonymously for discussion, four per day, starting on the feast day of St. Jerome, patron of translators (Tuesday, 30 September).
For the secondary event, Julie Stoner will post another insect-themed poem in its original language, with an extensive English prose crib, at the moment of equinox (see above). Participants may enter this secondary event as often as they like, simply by posting verse translations to the thread, and they may edit their own previous entries until the thread is locked on St. Jerome's Day (see above).
Voting for favorites in both events will open Tuesday, 7 October, and will close Monday, 13 October, at which point the winners of the popular vote and the judge's choice will be announced.
Enter one, enter all!
Cheers,
...Alex
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08-15-2014, 01:52 AM
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Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Old South Wales (UK)
Posts: 6,667
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Hurrah! xxxxx
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08-20-2014, 07:48 AM
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Distinguished Guest
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Join Date: Apr 2000
Location: Belmont MA
Posts: 4,802
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Uh, Alex, submissions are being automatically rejected.
It was a relief to figure it out--I didn't think mine was THAT bad.
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08-20-2014, 10:32 AM
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Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: New York
Posts: 16,476
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I'll try to come up with something new, but if I don't manage it, is previously published work eligible? (I do happen to have a translation with a key insect image).
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08-20-2014, 09:23 PM
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Member
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Canada and Uruguay
Posts: 5,857
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Alex, My entry was discarded.
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08-20-2014, 10:34 PM
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Administrator
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Join Date: Dec 1999
Location: San Jose, CA
Posts: 4,916
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Cathy - I saw your emailed note, and it's because you didn't send to the email address indicated in the first post above. (You were sending to the sonnet address from the last bakeoff!) Everyone, be sure you send to address indicated above only, and there should be no problem.
Cheers,
...Alex
Editing in to say that Mike, Cathy - you're (partially) right after all about the automatic rejection notice. Even though I received your submissions correctly, the system still had the automatic rejections (wrongly) turned on! It's off and behaving now. --Alex
Last edited by Alex Pepple; 08-21-2014 at 02:32 AM.
Reason: (Spurious) auto-rejection message has been turned off!
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08-21-2014, 12:09 AM
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Member
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Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: San Diego, CA, USA
Posts: 8,307
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I had considered whether or not to say something about previously published material, but I was confident that the odds of someone having a relevant published translation were too slim. I stand corrected!
After much deliberation, here's the short answer:
Previously published and/or workshopped work is okay for this event, and will not be penalized by me in any way. (I personally can't be bothered to sleuth such things out, and anyway I don't want to know the translators' names until Alex reveals them.) But I can't vouch for the un-nosiness of others, and can't promise it won't affect the popular vote if folks retrieve your entry while searching for other English translations for comparison with your effort, as some people like to do.
Here's the medium-length answer:
Ideally, I'd like to challenge all entrants to whip up something from scratch, within the same time limitations. Having to find new material that is slightly out of each everyone's comfort zone, due to an offbeat theme, is part of the fun (in my opinion). I made many exciting discoveries while deciding on a poem to translate for a past Translation Bake-Off, which required the original author to be female.
However, as we all know, life is unfair. So if anyone happens to have a relevant, previously-published translation in the freezer, and really doesn't have time to bake something fresh, please don't feel guilty about reheating it for us.
Here's the long answer:
Although entries are anonymized, the risk that the judge and/or others may recognize the author is much higher in Translation Bake-Offs than in other events, since Sphereans tend to know which other Sphereans work in which languages. If Mithrandir Stormcrow is the only person here who has workshopped translations from Uruk-hai, it's a pretty safe bet that an entry translated from Uruk-Hai is Mithrandir Stormcrow's.
It also can't be helped that personal familiarity with certain languages can lead the judge, as well as those who participate in the discussions and vote, to look at certain entries in a way that is either advantageous or disadvantageous, compared to entries whose English cribs we are less likely to question. (Unless entrants are asked to work from English cribs of poems in languages they don't know, as we did in a past Translation Bake-Off. And even then, you just have to take someone's word when they claim not to know any Swahili.)
Anyway, I was hoping to level the playing field a bit by choosing an offbeat theme, so all entrants would at least share the disadvantage of having to come up with something new in the same amount of time. But of course, all of us have varying real-life obligations, so we really don't all have equal time to work on this.
Am I overthinking this? Yes.
Upon reflection, I don't care all that much whether someone actually composed their entry four years ago. I'm just going to loosen up and have some creepy, crawly fun. I hope everyone else does, too.
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08-21-2014, 11:19 AM
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Member
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Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: New York
Posts: 16,476
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Thanks, Julie. I can make your answer even shorter: Yes.
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08-21-2014, 03:14 PM
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Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: San Diego, CA, USA
Posts: 8,307
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Okay, people, now PLEASE stop using this thread to tell me, and everyone else, who's in the pool of entries!
I've asked Alex to hang onto the entries he's already received for a while, so he can resend them to me out of chronological order, mixed in with those of some more discreet entrants.
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09-05-2014, 02:41 PM
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Member
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Canada and Uruguay
Posts: 5,857
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Sorry. Posted to wrong thread.
Last edited by Catherine Chandler; 09-05-2014 at 02:43 PM.
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