Willkommen, bienvenue! New festival celebrates translated fiction from Cameroon to Slovakia as sales boom
A new festival of translated literature is being launched in Bristol next week amid a sales boom in translated fiction in the UK.
Translated By, Bristol is the brainchild of Polly Barton, author and translator of the award-winning Butter by Asako Yuzuki, and Tom Robinson, owner of Gloucester Road Books, which is organising the festival alongside Barton and another independent Bristol bookshop, Storysmith.
'Translated fiction becoming more popular in recent years has not necessarily led to a greater appreciation for the work of translators, or much consideration of the act of translation itself,' says Robinson. 'We wanted to think about whether there was something we could do that would address both of these concerns.'
The festival, which runs 12-25 May, will feature a conversation between five translators shortlisted for the International Booker prize and a 'translation duel' – in which translators debate their translations of a text in front of an audience – among other events.
UK readers continue to have strong appetites for translated fiction, with Butter selling almost 250,000 copies in the UK last year. Social media buzz around particular titles has helped shift copies: Ros Schwartz's translation of Jacqueline Harpman's I Who Have Never Known Men, a favourite on 'BookTok', sold 45,000 copies last year, an elevenfold rise on 2022 sales.
Festival organisers were aware of increased interest in translated literature from readers, meaning they felt the festival 'would have a breadth of appeal it might not have done, say, five years ago', says Barton.
A central reason for the recent success of translated literature is the work of independent publishers such as Fitzcarraldo, Peirene and Comma, say the organisers. Those presses 'tend to be more willing to take risks', adds Robinson.
One of the key aims of the festival is to showcase a 'breadth of languages and geographies, beyond the major languages and locations of Europe, which tend to occupy so much focus', says Robinson.
The programme features an event on translating the work of the Cameroonian poet Jean-Claude Awono and another with Hassan Blasim, who writes in Arabic, along with his translator Jonathan Wright. The festival will also host a conversation between two prominent translators of Latin American literature, Frank Wynne and Annie McDermott.
'We also have events featuring European languages that aren't the five or so that get the most attention,' says Barton, with conversations about books translated from Slovakian (This Room Is Impossible to Eat by Nicol Hochholczerová, translated by Julia and Peter Sherwood) and Danish (Iron Lung by Kirstine Reffstrup, translated by Hunter Simpson).
Barton sees this approach of 'actively looking beyond our immediate borders' as helping to 'resist the political currents promoting xenophobia, prejudice and cultural homogeneity'.
The festival will also see Max Porter talking to two of his translators, Saskia van der Lingen (Dutch) and Charles Recoursé (French). It will close with the translation duel, featuring Adriana Hunter and Wynne. 'The language of the slam this year is French, and we're distributing the text to people in advance, so there's the opportunity for people with a little French knowledge to have a go themselves if they like,' says Robinson.
Duels are an 'excellent way of opening up the process for people and allowing them to get a sense of how creative translation really is', adds Barton.
Translated By, Bristol is on 12-25 May
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
23 minutes ago
- BBC News
Suffolk artists Native James and Nina Arya picked for Glastonbury
Two emerging artists have been selected to play the UK's biggest festival, James and Nina Arya, both from Ipswich, will perform at the BBC Introducing area at the event later this rap artist Native James was astounded when he was told by BBC Radio Suffolk's Angelle Joseph that he had been selected to appear at the festival."Me?" he said, adding between laughter, "I will believe it when I see it." Meanwhile Arya was equally surprised and delighted by the soulful singer-songwriter said: "I said I'd never go to Glasto until I was playing it, so when Jasmine [Takhar - BBC Introducing on Asian Network presenter] told me I was playing this year I almost cried."Arya said support from BBC Introducing on Asian Network had seen her perform at Reading & Leeds festivals as well as London's Maida Vale studios. She said her Glastonbury set would be "an absolute vibe" and added: "I can't wait to share all the new music I've been writing." Native James, who blends hip-hop, grime, punk, rock, metal and garage in his unique sound, has had a busy 12 months touring the country, also supporting Skindred at a packed out show at the Corn Exchange in was nominated for Kerrang's one to watch award, received a Mobo nomination, and released new music, collaborating with the likes of Professor Green."If this is true, I want to say thank you to everybody that has locked in and made this journey a reality," he said. Angelle Joseph, who put forward the acts for consideration for the BBC Introducing stage at the Worthy Farm festival, was congratulatory of both artists."I know every serious artist we play on the radio or invite to perform with us has on their bucket list to play Glastonbury Festival one day," she said."To be able to help put forward local acts to represent Suffolk and play at one of the greatest festivals we have is an absolute privilege."It's a tough job but I'm super proud of them both and they'll be fantastic!"Highlights of performances will be broadcast on BBC Introducing shows across the UK and will be available on BBC iPlayer and BBC Music's YouTube channel. Follow Suffolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
BBC News
38 minutes ago
- BBC News
Britain's Got Talent comic hopes trolls find 'light in lives'
A Britain's Got Talent comic says internet trolls have not upset him, but he wants people to realise belittling someone on the internet "is sad".Joseph Charm from Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, came fifth in the 2025 ITV series after receiving the Golden Buzzer from judge Alesha Dixon and his mum, who had joined the 33-year-old said the buzzer, which automatically sends an act to the semi-finals, brought a lot of praise and a lot of the final, Mr Charm said he "wasn't bothered" by the online abuse and hoped the negative commenters could "find light in their lives". 'Spread joy' Mr Charm quit his job to pursue comedy in 2024 and said being on the show had been "incredible".He did not win the £250,000 prize but said the experience trumped everything especially for his mum who was able to meet Simon Cowell."Having that moment was worth its weight in gold," he said. "£250,000 would be fantastic but just getting to the final and to have Milton Keynes behind me is just fantastic."He hoped to keep the momentum up and "spread joy in a number of different ways," following the show. Mr Charm joked to the live audience on Saturday about some of the negative comments he had received."They said 'Joseph you're not even funny'. I said 'that is ok, comedy is subjective'. "Then they said 'you only got it [the buzzer] because you're black'."Then they said 'Joseph go back to where you came from..'. but I don't want to go back to Lewisham."Mr Charm told the BBC that some people felt "vindicated" after the show."I wasn't bothered by any of them. They are so fragile, fickle, weak and sad and I just hope they can find light in their lives so they can no longer be that way," he said."That's my genuine hope and if it's not through me hopefully it can be through the next comic or someone else can make them realise that it's sad trying to belittle someone on the internet." Follow Beds, Herts and Bucks news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
‘Nobody wants a robot to read them a story!' The creatives and academics rejecting AI – at work and at home
The novelist Ewan Morrison was alarmed, though amused, to discover he had written a book called Nine Inches Pleases a Lady. Intrigued by the limits of generative artificial intelligence (AI), he had asked ChatGPT to give him the names of the 12 novels he had written. 'I've only written nine,' he says. 'Always eager to please, it decided to invent three.' The 'nine inches' from the fake title it hallucinated was stolen from a filthy Robert Burns poem. 'I just distrust these systems when it comes to truth,' says Morrison. He is yet to write Nine Inches – 'or its sequel, Eighteen Inches', he laughs. His actual latest book, For Emma, imagining AI brain-implant chips, is about the human costs of technology. Morrison keeps an eye on the machines, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, and their capabilities, but he refuses to use them in his own life and work. He is one of a growing number of people who are actively resisting: people who are terrified of the power of generative AI and its potential for harm and don't want to feed the beast; those who have just decided that it's a bit rubbish, and more trouble than it's worth; and those who simply prefer humans to robots. Go online, and it's easy to find AI proponents who dismiss refuseniks as ignorant luddites – or worse, smug hipsters. I possibly fall into both camps, given that I have decidedly Amish interests (board games, gardening, animal husbandry) and write for the Guardian. Friends swear by ChatGPT for parenting advice, and I know someone who uses it all day for work in her consultancy business, but I haven't used it since playing around after it launched in 2022. Admittedly ChatGPT might have done a better job, but this piece was handcrafted using organic words from my artisanal writing studio. (OK, I mean bed.) I could have assumed my interviewees' thoughts from plundering their social media posts and research papers, as ChatGPT would have done, but it was far more enjoyable to pick up the phone and talk, human to human. Two of my interviewees were interrupted by their pets, and each made me laugh in some way (full disclosure: AI then transcribed the noise). On X, where Morrison sometimes clashes with AI enthusiasts, a common insult is 'decel' (decelerationist), but it makes him laugh when people think he's the one who isn't keeping up. 'There's nothing [that stops] accelerationism more than failure to deliver on what you promised. Hitting a brick wall is a good way to decelerate,' he says. One recent study found that AI answered more than 60% of queries inaccurately. Morrison was drawn into the argument by what he would now call 'alarmist fears about the potential for superintelligence and runaway AI. The more I've got into it, the more I realise that's a fiction that's been dangled before the investors of the world, so they'll invest billions – in fact, half a trillion – into this quest for artificial superintelligence. It's a fantasy, a product of venture capital gone nuts.' There are also copyright violations – generative AI is trained on existing material – that threaten him as a writer, and his wife, screenwriter Emily Ballou. In the entertainment industry, he says, people are using 'AI algorithms to determine what projects get the go-ahead, and that means we're stuck remaking the past. The algorithms say 'More of the same', because it's all they can do.' Morrison says he has a long list of complaints. 'They've been stacking up over the past few years.' He is concerned about the job losses (Bill Gates recently predicted AI would lead to a two-day work week). Then there are 'tech addiction, the ecological impact, the damage to the education system – 92% of students are now using AI'. He worries about the way tech companies spy on us to make AI personalised, and is horrified at AI-enabled weapons being used in Ukraine. 'I find that ethically revolting.' Others cite similar reasons for not using AI. April Doty, an audiobook narrator, is appalled at the environmental cost – the computational power required to perform an AI search and answer is huge. 'I'm infuriated that you can't turn off the AI overviews in Google search,' she says. 'Whenever you look anything up now you're basically torching the planet.' She has started to use other search engines. 'But, more and more, we're surrounded by it, and there's no off switch. That makes me angry.' Where she still can, she says, 'I'm opting out of using AI.' In her own field, she is concerned about the number of books that are being 'read' by machines. Audible, the Amazon-owned audiobook provider, has just announced it will allow publishers to create audiobooks using its AI technology. 'I don't know anybody who wants a robot to read them a story, but I am concerned that it is going to ruin the experience to the point where people don't want to subscribe to audiobook platforms any more,' says Doty. She hasn't lost jobs to AI yet but other colleagues have, and chances are, it will happen. AI models can't 'narrate', she says. 'Narrators don't just read words; they sense and express the feelings beneath the words. AI can never do this job because it requires decades of experience in being a human being.' Emily M Bender, professor of linguistics at the University of Washington and co-author of a new book, The AI Con, has many reasons why she doesn't want to use large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT. 'But maybe the first one is that I'm not interested in reading something that nobody wrote,' she says. 'I read because I want to understand how somebody sees something, and there's no 'somebody' inside the synthetic text-extruding machines.' It's just a collage made from lots of different people's words, she says. Does she feel she is being 'left behind', as AI enthusiasts would say? 'No, not at all. My reaction to that is, 'Where's everybody going?'' She laughs as if to say: nowhere good. 'When we turn to synthetic media rather than authentic media, we are losing out on human connection,' says Bender. 'That's both at a personal level – what we get out of connecting to other people – and in terms of strength of community.' She cites Chris Gilliard, the surveillance and privacy researcher. 'He made the very important point that you can see this as a technological move by the companies to isolate us from each other, and to set things up so that all of our interactions are mediated through their products. We don't need that, for us or our communities.' Despite Bender's well-publicised position – she has long been a high-profile critic of LLMs – incredibly, she has seen students turn in AI-generated work. 'That's very sad.' She doesn't want to be policing, or even blaming, students. 'My job is to make sure students understand why it is that turning to a large language model is depriving themselves of a learning opportunity, in terms of what they would get out of doing the work.' Does she think people should boycott generative AI? 'Boycott suggests organised political action, and sure, why not?' she says. 'I also think that people are individually better off if they don't use them.' Some people have so far held out, but are reluctantly realising they may end up using it. Tom, who works in IT for the government, doesn't use AI in his tech work, but found colleagues were using it in other ways. Promotion is partly decided on annual appraisals they have to write, and he had asked a manager whose appraisal had impressed him how he'd done it, thinking he'd spent days on it. 'He said, 'I just spent 10 minutes – I used ChatGPT,'' Tom recalls. 'He suggested I should do the same, which I don't agree with. I made that point, and he said, 'Well, you're probably not going to get anywhere unless you do.'' Using AI would feel like cheating, but Tom worries refusing to do so now puts him at a disadvantage. 'I almost feel like I have no choice but to use it at this point. I might have to put morals aside.' Others, despite their misgivings, limit how they use it, and only for specific tasks. Steve Royle, professor of cell biology at the University of Warwick, uses ChatGPT for the 'grunt work' of writing computer code to analyse data. 'But that's really the limit. I don't want it to generate code from scratch. When you let it do that, you spend way more time debugging it afterwards. My view is, it's a waste of time if you let it try and do too much for you.' Accurate or not, he also worries that if he becomes too reliant on AI, his coding skills will atrophy. 'The AI enthusiasts say, 'Don't worry, eventually nobody will need to know anything.' I don't subscribe to that.' Part of his job is to write research papers and grant proposals. 'I absolutely will not use it for generating any text,' says Royle. 'For me, in the process of writing, you formulate your ideas, and by rewriting and editing, it really crystallises what you want to say. Having a machine do that is not what it's about.' Generative AI, says film-maker and writer Justine Bateman, 'is one of the worst ideas society has ever come up with'. She says she despises how it incapacitates us. 'They're trying to convince people they can't do the things they've been doing easily for years – to write emails, to write a presentation. Your daughter wants you to make up a bedtime story about puppies – to write that for you.' We will get to the point, she says with a grim laugh, 'that you will essentially become just a skin bag of organs and bones, nothing else. You won't know anything and you will be told repeatedly that you can't do it, which is the opposite of what life has to offer. Capitulating all kinds of decisions like where to go on vacation, what to wear today, who to date, what to eat. People are already doing this. You won't have to process grief, because you'll have uploaded photos and voice messages from your mother who just died, and then she can talk to you via AI video call every day. One of the ways it's going to destroy humans, long before there's a nuclear disaster, is going to be the emotional hollowing-out of people.' She is not interested. 'It is the complete opposite direction of where I'm going as a film-maker and author. Generative AI is like a blender – you put in millions of examples of the type of thing you want and it will give you a Frankenstein spoonful of it.' It's theft, she says, and regurgitation. 'Nothing original will come out of it, by the nature of what it is. Anyone who uses generative AI, who thinks they're an artist, is stopping their creativity.' Some studios, such as the animation company Studio Ghibli, have sworn off using AI, but others appear to be salivating at the prospect. In 2023, Dreamworks founder Jeffrey Katzenberg said AI would cut the costs of its animated films by 90%. Bateman thinks audiences will tire of AI-created content. 'Human beings will react to this in the way they react to junk food,' she says. Deliciously artificial to some, if not nourishing – but many of us will turn off. Last year she set up an organisation, Credo 23, and a film festival, to showcase films made without AI. She likens it to an 'organic stamp for films, that tells the audience no AI was used.' People, she says, will 'hunger for something raw, real and human'. In everyday life, Bateman is trying 'to be in a parallel universe, where I'm trying to avoid [AI] as much as possible.' It's not that she is anti-tech, she stresses. 'I have a computer science degree, I love tech. I love salt, too, but I don't put it on everything.' In fact, everyone I speak to is a technophile in some way. Doty describes herself as 'very tech-forward', but she adds that she values human connection, which AI is threatening. 'We keep moving like zombies towards a world that nobody really wants to live in.' Royle codes and runs servers, but also describes himself as a 'conscientious AI objector'. Bender specialises in computational linguistics and was named by Time as one of the top 100 people in AI in 2023. 'I am a technologist,' she says, 'but I believe that technology should be built by communities for their own purposes, rather than by large corporations for theirs.' She also adds, with a laugh: 'The Luddites were awesome! I would wear that badge with pride.' Morrison, too, says: 'I quite like the Luddites – people standing up to protect the jobs that keep their families and their communities alive.'
