[Adam Elgar]

The Translation Bake-Off is coming up! Four more days to submit entries.

Our Distinguished Guest is Michael Juster, well known and highly esteemed Eratospherean; translator of Horace, Petrarch, Baudelaire, Sextus Propertius and others; multiple winner of Howard Nemerov Awards for sonnets; and winner of the Richard Wilbur Award for his book The Secret Language of Women.

Visit Mike’s website for samples of his work and more information.

To enter:
send one translation to me, with the original and a prose crib, by midnight (U.S. Central time) on 19th June. I will take the names from the poems, narrow them down to 20 and send those 20 on to Mike, who will then narrow them further to around a dozen.

Formal and non-formal poems, published and unpublished - all are welcome.

We plan to start posting the final selection with DG’s comments, two per day, starting on June 25th. At that point everyone is welcome to join in with comments of their own.

When all of the translated poems have been posted, I will start a thread in which people can vote for the top three. Then I will tabulate the results and announce a popular winner, while Mike will also name his top three. Only then will the names of the authors be announced.

[Adam Elgar]

Thanks to everyone who sent me their entries for this.
All have now been passed to the DG, Mike Juster, who will spend this week working on his comments and verdicts.
He has all the entries - no screening was necessary.

[Michael Juster]

So that no one is puzzled, I'm going to post my comments and then Adam is going to fill in the translations and adjunct material after me. If I were more technologically adept, we could probably do it more efficiently, but poor Adam has to work with what he has.

There may be some brief lag times, so be patient with us.

The quality of the work is very high, and it makes me proud to have started the Translation forum when I was scaling back here as a moderator many years ago.

[Adam Elgar]

Many thanks, Mike. We are proud to maintain your great tradition.

*******

Mike may well be ready to start posting his comments shortly, ahead of the official date. So watch this space!
As he mentioned, there may be delay between his comment going up and my insertion of the poem and translation. Your patience is sure to be amply rewarded!

[Petra Norr]

You mean today? YAY!!!!!

[Adam Elgar]

Could be. It all depends on Mike's schedule, which isn't entirely in his control this week.

[Roger Slater]

Great!

I'm confused, though, about Michael's "technologically adept" comment. Michael has posted 3,500 times, and served as moderator, so what's the big deal about posting translations and comments together?

[Adam Elgar]

Whispered for your ears only, Bob. I suspect Michael underrates his aptitude at the technical side of this game, but I daren't say so. He and I will do our best to provide a seamless service. The important bit is the thinking, which is currently under way at furnace heat.

[Michael Juster]

Apologies, folks. I'm being blocked from starting a new thread.

We'll figure it out.

[Adam Elgar]

Now we're up and running. I've inserted the text to accompany Michael's long and detailed commentary.

I'm offline now for a few hours, but will be able to ensure that there's not too big an Atlantic time lag after that.