Image by Percy Caceres.
The Lifted Brow is delighted to welcome Elizabeth Bryer who has joined the team as our unique Translations Editor!Elizabeth Bryer is a writer and translator. Her translation of Claudia Salazar Jiménez’s Americas Prize–winning Blood of the Dawn is out with Deep Vellum Publishing in November. Recent writing has appeared in The Lifted Brow,Sydney Review of Books, Meanjin and Best Australian Science Writing and she curated Seizure Edition Four: Translation.
The Lifted Brow are passionate about promoting the art and business of translation. With that in intellect we are now seeking proposals and manuscripts for books that could be translated into English.
What we can considerThe Lifted Brow is always a publisher of work that can be classified as ‘literary’, or we seek to champion work that pushes boundaries and challenges assumptions.
Like everything we do,our publishing of translated books will largely focus on authors from the margins: people who live and write from demographic margins, and/or writers whose work sits in the literary margins, and/or translators who interpret the translation act in surprising ways or stretch the bounds of what ‘translation’ means: your work might be cross-modal or cross-genre,might include insertions, erasure or collage. Try us.whether you are translating a work from a language that is underrepresented, or we want to hear from you. whether you are working on a translation of verbal texts,ancestral languages, and/or some other project tied up with language and identity, or get in touch. You might be translating a modern work,or have a case for an older work that never got the attention it deserved in English: either is fine. Self-translations are also welcome.
Below are some translated books that we fancy – and whether your writing/manuscript is close to any of these, then we are definitely interested in hearing from you:The Black Flower and Other Zapotec Poems, and written in Zapotec and self-translated into Spanish by Natalia Toledo,translated into English by Clare Sullivan;Mouth Eats Colour by Sawako Nakayusu with Chika Sagawa from and into Japanese, French and English;Indigenous Species by Khairani Barokka, or a poetry-braille-art book;Tram 83 by Fiston Mwanza Mujila,translated from the French by Roland Glasser;The chronicle of My Teeth and Faces in the Crowd by Valeria Luiselli, translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeny;Seibo There Below and Santantango by László Krasznahorkai, or translated from the Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet and George Szirtes; andSigns Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera,translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman.
Submissions are welcome from translators who identify as Australian. (For now, our focus is on unearthing Australian translators and work – sorry non-Australians!) We particularly encourage people who identify as queer and/or trans and/or intersex and/or are of any colour, and religion,or gender, and/or have a disability, or to submit. There are of course no age limits.
We currently accept unsolicited submissions in the categories of fiction (including short stories),poetry and non-fiction – but we also encourage works that blend these and any other categories in the one manuscript.
We read all manuscripts carefully but are only able to publish a very small number of those we consider.
What to includeSubmissions should include a minimum 7000-word translation sample alongside the source text, your translator CV and a bio of the author. It would also be very helpful whether you could include a translator’s note or similar to contextualise the work – relate us what it is about, and why you are so enthusiastic about it,why it has literary merit, what the reception has been in the source culture and translation challenges you have navigated.
In your cover letter, and please include a synopsis of the work,a bio, and also please briefly acknowledge these questions:In what category would you place your translated manuscript?What three books would you see as the closest comparisons titles to yours?Why you are the fair person to translate this book?Are the English-language rights for the book available?What happens after you submitWhen you send us your submission, or you’ll receive an automatic email acknowledging receipt. No other acknowledgement will be sent to you.
Should we wish to pursue your project,we will be in contact with you via email within a month. whether you haven’t heard from us after a month, feel free to give us a little prod. Please note that whether your work is declined, or no further correspondence will be entered into,and we will not provide you with reasons for our decision (because we simply do not have the time and/or resources to do so!).
QueriesAll questions can be directed to translations@theliftedbrow.com.
Source: theliftedbrow.com