What is this German we translate into? – A Talk
27 September 2023, 7:30pm, Heinrich-Heine-Haus Lüneburg
“Between us and Weimar, there is Buchenwald,” said German scholar Richard Alewyn, who had returned from exile in 1949. Since the Shoah, German-language literature has moved in this field of tension. What language do we translate into when we translate into German? Which echo chambers do we enter and which do we try to avoid? What happens when an American novel about the Shoah finds its way “back” into German – is our language particularly suited to experiences of violence that have become literature? The three literary translators Ulrich Blumenbach, Henning Bochert and Miriam Mandelkow discuss these questions on the basis of selected works by Joshua Cohen, James Baldwin, Dawn King and others.
A coproduction with the Literaturbüro Lüneburg e. V.
Funded by the German Translators Fund.
Miriam Mandelkow has been translating from English for a good 20 years, including works by Richard Price, Ta-Nehisi Coates and NoViolet Bulawayo. In 2020, she was awarded the Helmut M. Braem Translator’s Prize for her new translation of the works of James Baldwin.
Ulrich Blumenbach translates from English. For the translation of David Foster Wallace’s novel Infinite Jest he was awarded the Translation Prize of the Heinrich Maria Ledig-Rowohlt Foundation and the Translation Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair. He received the Paul Celan Prize in 2022 for his translation of Joshua Cohen’s novel Witz.
Henning Bochert works as an author, dramaturge and has been translating English and German for more than 25 years, including works by Susan Glaspell, Dawn King, Carlos Murillo, and George Brant. He runs a translation agency and is involved with Drama Panorama: Forum für Übersetzung und Theater e.V., among other organisations.
Leave a Reply