The Texas Institute of Letters has named AATIA member Marian Schwartz’s translation of White Guard a finalist for the Soeurette Diehl Fraser Award for Translation.  The winner will be announced at TIL’s April 18 annual meeting at the Hilton Waco Hotel.

The Winter 2009 issue of Chtenia, "Winter Holidays," is rich with stories of hope, expectation, miracles, and holidays, from authors including Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Kuprin, Ustinova, and Zoshchenko, and with a story by Olga Slavnikova, “Love in Train Car No. 7,” translated by AATIA’s Marian Schwartz.

There are stories of angels, Christmas parties, yolkas, movies, trains, love, and so much more. And of course there are poems, photos, memoirs, and even a bit of history on the origins of Ded Moroz and Snegurochka.

To order this issue for just $12, click here.

As announced on her new website, Marian Schwartz will read from her new translation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel White Guard at 7 pm on Friday, November 7th, at BookPeople ( 603 N. Lamar).

Bill Marx of Public Radio International’s World Books has posted a 26-minute podcast interview with Marian Schwartz, whose retranslation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The White Guard was recently released by Yale University Press, as reported here earlier this summer. (Don’t miss the related Geo Quiz.)

The interview [taped August 13] is really interesting, touching on why people should read The White Guard in addition to The Master and Margarita, what some of the issues were with the previous translation, and, on a related note, how onomatopoeia works in the new version.

This translation also received a favorable comment in an article in The Independent.

Today’s Wall Street Journal gives a glowing review of Marian Schwartz’s translation of White Guard, the first novel by Mikhail Bulgakov (1891–1940), famed Soviet-era author best known for Master and Margarita.

Written in the 1920s, White Guard focuses on the household of Dr. Alexei Tuchin, his sister and brother, and assorted military officers and friends.

The unnamed urban locality at the novel’s center is clearly Kiev a year after the Bolsheviks seized power.

The remains of the Russian Empire are in turmoil, none more so than Ukraine, where the civil war is raging with particular ferocity. No fewer than 18 different regimes — led by Germans, Poles, Ukrainian nationalists, monarchists known as the Whites and the Bolsheviks themselves — will eventually claim control of Kiev, lifting their banners over the ancient city.

With this edition of White Guard, translator Marian Schwartz has done a handsome job of matching Bulgakov’s rich Russian vocabulary and attention to meticulous detail.

Words Without Borders, the online magazine for international literature, recently published Marian Schwartz’s translation of Mikhail Shishkin’s short story Calligraphy Lesson.

Schwartz introduces the translation with some thoughts about the specific problems she faced in conveying the story’s description of the calligraphy of Cyrillic letters to an English-speaking reader. She decided not only to translate the word in question, but also to reproduce the Russian word.

In the predigital era, when Cyrillic characters were technically difficult to reproduce and so were rarely included in translations, I might have been inclined (or forced) to go the other way. Thanks to modern technology and to the fact that Shishkin’s description was based on the letters’ visual characteristics, which English readers could see and appreciate for themselves, I did not have to forgo Shishkin’s tour de force….

AATIA will observe World in Translation Month at the member meeting on Saturday, May 10, 1:00 p.m., at the Austin History Center, 9th & Guadalupe, according to Maurine McLean, Director of Professional Development.

Tony Beckwith will share insights on translating tangos, with musical examples. Marian Schwartz will point out some key Internet sites for literary translators.

In addition, Frank Dietz will demonstrate how to use RSS feeds from the new AATIA blog, walking us through the process of connecting to this valuable resource.

Refreshments and networking round out the meeting. Language-loving guests are welcome.