As part of the Reading the World Conversation Series, this “Translators’ Roundtable” brought together four literary translators—who work in a variety of languages and genres—to discuss their experiences. The conversation explored a number of different topics, from how they got started as translators, to the obstacles of retranslating classic works, to translating film scripts during the writers’ strike, etc.

In attendance were Michael Emmerich, Edward Gauvin, Marian Schwartz, and Martha Tennent. There’s a lot of brilliant discussion here—one of my favorite points coming from Michael who makes a case to those who lean on the phrase “Lost in Translation” that it is, instead, and “100% gain.”

from on .

This is a pretty loaded post, but this morning the new issue of UR’s was released (which explains the above picture) and includes a long overview on Open Letter, including descriptions of our inaugural list of titles.

The books don’t come out until Fall 2008 (the first will have a September 26th pub date), but here they are:

• Nobody’s Home by Dubravka Ugresic
• The Taker and Other Stories by Rubem Fonseca
• The Pets by Bragi Olafsson
• Vilnius Poker by Ricardas Gavelis
• The Conqueror by Jan Kjaerstad
• The Sailor from Gibraltar by Marguerite Duras

Part of the reason for this article is to promote the upcoming event , which is part of UR’s Humanities Project.

With such a great list of panelist—Lisa Dillman (translator), Daniel Shapiro (Director of Literature at the Americas Society), Jack Kirchhoff (Book Review Editor at the Toronto Globe and Mail), and Jonathan Welch (co-founder and buyer at should be an interesting conversation. And we will be able to record this and post it next week.