Brazilian Stories – your opinion

“You’re invited to read and evaluate as many as you like of 25 short stories, which include translations of six stories each from four Brazilian authors. The dates of publication range from 1864 to 1935. There is also, for the purpose of comparison, a slightly camouflaged short story by a British author, published in 1923.

The authors’ names have been omitted at this stage because the main purpose is to test the validity of the critical reputations of the Brazilian authors. All will be revealed – authors’ names and potted biographies together with a summary of the evaluations – on 1 November 2010.” (The deadline for evaluations is 1 October 2010)

This is part of a postgraduate research on “Translating Reputation” at the University of Bristol, UK.

via Conexões Culturais

Tipos Latinos 2010

Um dos que gostei bastante. OPTICA by Manolo Guerrero (Mexico).

Ontem precisei matar tempo num dos meus lugares favoritos em São Paulo, o Centro Cultural São Paulo. A idéia era sentar num cantinho e ler, mas topei com essa exposição bacana de tipografia, a Tipos Latinos 2010. A grande maioria dos tipos em exposição foram pensandos para texto, muitos para textos literários especificamente. Apenas uma pequena seção era dedicada a tipologia para web. E muita tipologia legal para capas.

World Directory of Children’s Book Translators

Bologna Children’s Book Fair maintains a WORLD DIRECTORY OF CHILDREN’S BOOK TRANSLATORS (in cooperation with UNESCO). It’s free both for translators to register and also for publishers looking for translators.

Ebooks’ costs

by Javier Candeira

Last Friday morning I was able to attend the Flip panel with Robert Darnton and John Makinson about the future of the book. Although the event happened in Paraty (small city in the Rio de Janeiro state), I could watched it from my home office in São Paulo. Thank God there is Internet. Unfortunately, there was almost nothing new about it. It’s not the participant’s fault, but I wonder when we will hear something new about the future of the book. This subject actually seems so old fashioned now. I guess it’s time to start asking new questions, because the old ones were already made hundred of times, and for most of them nobody has a confident answer. But that’s not what this post is about. At certain point of the panel, one of the questions addressed the issue of lower costs of ebooks in comparison with our old paper friends and it was mentioned that “… as ebooks don’t have distribution costs…”. I’m not a specialist, but it seems obvious to me that ebooks must have a certain level of (eletronic) distribution costs. It’s not because it’s digital, that it’s magical. I mean, even if something is done digitally, human beings need to be involved at some level, machines and servers need to be used. Not mentioning electricity and all the environmental costs involved (there must be, if they exist for emailing). And all this cost money. Anyway, I though it was worth reading this article about the costs around ebooks and also the business model that is being adopted in the US. This other one, Are ebooks different?, questions the ebook pricing, saying it should take into account how much the consumer is willing to pay for it, and also publishers’ working methods: “One of the major reasons that the economies of digital aren’t always appreciated by the public is that they don’t understand that in the digital age many publishers still live, work and develop content and the marketing collateral in the Dark Ages and simple convert it, post production as an afterthought.”

129,864,880 and counting…

How many books there are in the world? Google attempted to do the maths. This was out last week and most of people must have already heard about it. But for my own records, here is the article where Google explains how it counts books. The number was reached after they “exclude non-books such as microforms (8 million), audio recordings (4.5 million), videos (2 million), maps (another 2 million), t-shirts with ISBNs (about one thousand), turkey probes (1, added to a library catalog as an April Fools joke)” among other things.

Ilustra Brasil! 7

By Ricardo Cunha Lima e Felipe Muanis.

For sure next week will be busy in São Paulo. In this case, it will last a little longer. Illustra.Brasil (site in PT only) will be open from August 9th to September 11th and it will have an exhibition, lectures, and workshops about dranwing, book illustration, and animation as well. Maybe a nice way for publishers to discover new illustrators for their books.

Jean-Yves Mollier in Brazil

You see? Apparently I’m excited about my come-back. Now I’ll probably talk much more about Brazilian things than ever, but I will keep writing mostly in English? Why? Because it’s my blog and I can do whatever I want in here. But, most importantly, because I have dear friends who follow it and don’t speak any Portuguese. And If I probably don’t have readers (I’m not sure about this, really), at least I have friends who like me enough to drop by sometimes.
Anyway, next week it’s time for Bienal do Livro (São Paulo’s Book Fair). This one I will attend mostly to try to meet my friends and colleagues from the old times.
I already talked about this on Facebook, but I’m not sure all (all?) my readers have facebook accounts… In the very same day (12th August, when Bienal is only open for professionals – and when I will be there), Jean-Yves Mollier will give a lecture in the morning about his book L’Argent et les Lettres (Money and the Letters) that is being published in Portuguese now. I’m looking forward to that, because I already saw his lectures few other times and it’s always interesting. So, it will be a busy week.
Information about the lectures below.

Am I Back? (And Flip for paulistanos)

Yesterday a friend of mine told that I should stop being lazy and start writing here again. Well, he didn’t say I was lazy, that’s my own interpretation. But probably twitter and facebook has made a lot of bloggers lazy. Anyway now I have much less time to post, as freelance working can be much more time-consuming than most people would think. (For those who doesn’t know, I’m back to São Paulo). Thus maybe it be would really a good time to start posting less, but better. At least I wouldn’t fell that I’m neglecting my beloved blog.
This week the 8th Flip (International Paraty Literary Festival) is going on and I really regret that I have never attended a single one. Specially because these year there will be some panels about translation. Next year, maybe. Maybe I could have squeezed it in my schedule, but it wouldn’t fit my pocket these days. I don’t need to say much about it as everybody is talking about that (at least in Brazil). But if you, like me, is stuck in São Paulo, there will be some panels just around the corner at Livraria da Vila (including Robert Crumb).

The danger of a single story

It’s worth it to watch this. Although she doesn’t mention the word translation one single time, for me it also remind us the importance of translation and diversity.

Why in this world, a biography of Clarice Lispector

(veja a versão em Português logo abaixo)

I read Clarice for the first time when I was a teenager, it was The Passion according to G.H. I’m not sure if it was an school assignment or for curiosity (I guess the latter). And I read much more after that, but I have to admit that there is a long time that I don’t touch one of her books. She was also among the subjects of my master thesis, not in the literary sense though, so I can’t say that I’m a specialist.
As I also love to read a good biography, I got curious when I heard about the new book Why in this World, by Benjamin Moser. After all if translations from Portuguese to English are already very rare, it’s even more unusual one to write about a Brazilian writer.
For one side, this is really a book for non-Brazilians and can be a little bit tiresome for the natives. The (necessary) author’s effort to present the Brazilian political and cultural context along the book is to be praised. Any explanation about Brazil is always welcomed by most of the foreigners. For us however it can be a little preachy, even if we don’t remember all the dirty details. But Moser did a good job, although sometimes I had the feeling that he was telling the history as someone who looks through a window (well, in a way he was) or that he might have trusted too much a single source regarding particular subjects (and not always the best one). On the other hand, it was amusing to realise his intimacy with Rio and with its neighborhood Leme.
Moser quotes Clarice’s work extensively, too much for a biography. I understand and appreciate the intent of presenting Clarice’s work to the reader. Most of the readers presumably are neophytes e will be content of being able to discuss her books without reading a single one. But to tell the end of The Hour of the Star? That’s a little to much… To be honest, I jumped some parts. I didn’t have patience to so much analysis. I was reading a biography after all, I wanted to know what was going to happen next (in her life, not in her books).
But what bothered me most was the fact that there is no reference for the quotations. I mean, there is. But to the works in Portuguese… If the quotations are in English, I expect them to refer to the English translation. Or that it was stated that they were author’s translations. Maybe that’s why I have lost my patience with the analysis, I felt like walking in the quicksand. And if one take into account that Moser didn’t translate everything himself, what is very likely, this wasn’t very polite. But translators are not authors, are they? Or maybe I’m being picky. Anyway, this biography lost the great opportunity to become the first step for the non-Portuguese readers towards Clarice Lispector work. A bibliography of the author also wouldn’t have made any harm.
But in general the book is good, really good, even for someone who already read other biographies about her. There are always surprises. I want to read her books again soon, as soon as I have one around me. My only fear is that she becomes, to international eyes, a Jewish author, as much as she was regarded as a feminist one. Labels are never good, specially in this case. Because more than being Jewish, Ukranian, “Recifense”, “Carioca” or Brazilian, she was Clarice.



Li Clarice a primeira vez quando era adolescente, A Paixão Segundo G.H. Não me lembro mais se por obrigação escolar ou por curiosidade mesmo (provavelmente a segunda opção). E li muito mais depois, mas confesso que não pego em um livro dela tem alguns bons anos. Ela também foi um dos objetos da minha tese de mestrado, mas não do ponto de vista literário, e por isso não posso dizer que sou especialista no assunto.
Como também gosto de ler uma boa biografia, fiquei curiosa quando li sobre o lançamento do livro Why in this World, de Benjamin Moser (a ser lançada pela Cosac Naify no Brasil). Afinal de contas, se traduções do português para o inglês já são raras, não é sempre que se escreve em inglês sobre um escritor brasileiro.
Em parte, esse é um livro para inglês ver mesmo e para os brasileiros pode ser um pouco cansativo. É louvável o (necessário) esforço que o autor faz para apresentar o contexto político e cultural brasileiro ao longo do livro. Para a maioria dos estrangeiros toda e qualquer explicação sobre o Brasil é mais do que bem vinda. Para nós, no entanto, mesmo que nem sempre nos lembremos de todos os detalhes sórdidos, a coisa pode ficar um pouco enfadonha. Mas Moser fez um bom trabalho nesse sentido, apesar de em alguns momentos ter ficado a sensação de que ele conta essa história como quem olha por uma janela (de certa forma, ele olha mesmo) e que talvez tenha confiado demais em uma fonte só para determinados assuntos (e nem sempre a mais recomendável). Por outro lado, foi divertido perceber a intimidade dele com o Rio de Janeiro e com o Leme principalmente.
O autor faz longas citações das obras de Clarice, longas demais para uma biografia. Entendo e aprecio a intenção de apresentar a obra de Clarice ao leitor. Muito provavelmente, a maioria dos leitores serão neófitos e ficarão satisfeitos de poder discutir a obra da autora sem ter lido ao menos um livro dela. Mas contar o final de A Hora da Estrela? Achei um pouco demais… Para ser sincera, em alguns momentos pulei alguns trechos. Não tive paciência para tanta análise. Eu estava lendo uma biografia, afinal de contas, e queria saber o que ia acontecer depois (na vida dela, não em seus livros).
Mas o que mais me incomodou mesmo é que não há referência para os trechos citados. Quer dizer, há. Mas para as obras em português… Se os trechos estão em inglês, o mínimo que espero é que a referência seja para a tradução em inglês. Ou que se diga que a tradução é do autor. Talvez por isso eu também tenha perdido um pouco a paciência durante as análises das obras, me senti andando em areia movediça. E se levarmos emconsideração que Moser não traduziu tudo de próprio punho, o que é bastante plausível, esse foi um grande desrespeito para com os tradutores. Mas tradutor não é autor, não é mesmo? Ou talvez isso seja chatice da minha parte. De qualquer maneira, perdeu-se a oportunidade desta biografia se tornar o primeiro passo para iniciar os não-falantes de português na leitura da obra de Clarice. Uma bibliografia da autora também não faria mal a ninguém.
Mas no geral o livro é bom, muito bom, mesmo para alguém que já tenha lido outras biografias de Clarice. Há sempre surpresas. Quero lê-la de novo o mais rápido possível, assim que tiver um livro dela ao meu alcance. O meu único medo é que ela passe, aos olhos internacionais, de autora feminista para autora judia. Rótulos nunca são bons, especialmente nesse caso. Porque mais do que judia, ucraniana, nordestina, carioca ou brasileira, ela era Clarice.