Yet More Praise for Some Kind of Beautiful Signal

Posted on January 04, 2011 by Scott Esposito

The winter holidays brought with them a couple more huge mentions for the Center's latest anthology of literary translation, Some Kind of Beautiful Signal (follow the link for a table of contents, plus excerpts and web-only bonus translations).

First we have Anna Clark of the website Isak (a great site in general for international fiction), who writes "The collection includes more highlights than I can conveniently tick off ... but, oh hell, I'll try anyway."

She also makes an interesting comparison to Dalkey's Best European Fiction 2011:

Most of the time, though, I enjoyed just moving along on this ride. I read this collection, incidentally, while also moving through the mammoth Best European Fiction 2011 anthology; it is a curious thing to reflect on the differences between anthologies that share a similar purpose in making more excellent international literature available in English. While I love them both, BEF is immersive, contemporary, more unified in cultural landscape, form and the idiosyncratic preferences of Aleksandar Hemon, its editor. Some Kind of Beautiful Signal is the anthology that is more eclectic, more global, more far-reaching in time and tradition, and more attentive to the process and purpose of translation.

Then it's on to another great site for international lit, Molossus. Someone over there who I believe is David Shook writes:

Highlights of this issue include Bolaño’s short note on the importance of translation, which perfectly accompanies his advice on the writing of short stories, bilingual poetry by Xi Chuan, translated by Lucas Klein, the cleverly translated “Tropes” of Oliverio Girondo, by Heather Cleary Wolfgang, and the nimble transfer of Carlito Azevedo’s concrete poem “Traduzir” into the equally effective English-language “Translation,” by Sarah Rebecca Kersley. As always, a translator’s note accompanies each translation; these alone are worth more than the volume’s purchase price.

I'm glad that Molossus singles out the translators' notes for mention, since this is one of my favorite parts of each book. Obviously I'm partial, but I love reading about the decisions behind what the translators do with these texts, plus things like context, provenance, etc.