I may be putting words in Zdravka’s mouth, but one of the most beneficial activities of her stay was having a chance to workshop her translation of Boyan Biolchev’s “The End of a Bird” with some of the translation studies students at the University of Rochester.

Just to give a bit of background, every semester the Open Letter interns (usually around 6) have to take a one-hour a week Intro to Literary Publishing “class” in which we talk about various aspects of book publishing, its future, literature in translation, marketing, etc., etc. It’s a lot of fun to teach, and I think (hope?) the students enjoy it and get a lot out of it. It’s pretty much a crash course in publishing, an attempt to fill in all the blanks that they don’t get from their normal intern activities, such as writing reader’s reports, doing sample translations, designing marketing plans, writing catalog copy, et cetera.

This semester was the first time I tried workshopping the intern’s sample translations in class, and thanks to the great success of this, I think I’m going to incorporate it into all future semesters. The process we used was to read the translation aloud, pausing anytime something seemed out wack, or needed clarification, or seemed like the translator was forced to make an interesting choice (like dealing with Italian dialects, or describing parts of an antiquated train). It’s a lot of fun, and a bit brutal, since all the various “warts” are exposed when you read so slowly and so critically with a group of very bright people.

This also frequently led to numerous linguistic jokes and off-the-wall suggestions, which is both fun and would leave me personally feeling like I had lost control of the English language . . . But to be completely frank, it really is through this sort of editing/workshopping process that one learns how English can really function and what the possibilities are in translation. It’s incredibly informative, even if all the student translators are a bit embarrassed by the wide-ranging critiques of their work. (Although it should be written that they shouldn’t be embarrassed—they all did a marvelous job, and I think this process helped with all future translations.)

Anyway, Zdravka’s translations of Boyan Biolchev were what won her the Translation Fellowship, so she workshopped the story “The End of the Bird” on two separate occasions. It’s worth noting that a) Zdravka’s first language is Bulgarian and b) even though we went through this twice, there’s probably more work that can be done. But to give you a sense of more classic Bulgarian lit, and what Zdravka’s working on, her translation of the short story is posted below.

In terms of Biolchev, here’s the bio Zdravka wrote up about him:

Born in 1942 in Sofia, Boyan Biolchev is one of Bulgaria’s most interesting and original fiction writers. His novels and novellas have been translated into many languages, and in 2007 he won won the VIC Literary Prize for his novel Varoe’s Amazon. He’s also the author of several successful screenplays and is the former director of the University of Sofia.

And here’s “The End of the Bird”:

In early autumn, hunters often passed by my little house that I had built not far from the sea. Sometimes they carried quails and wood pigeons tied to their wide leather belts, most often however they came back with nothing. Then they talked about the good luck they used to have, or they swore that on the following day they would catch all wild animals in the forest.

They were among the few living things that disturbed the peace and quiet of the tired summer.

The only creatures that I saw moving about were the flocks of crows. They showed no burning enthusiasm as they darted across the yellow grass picking at things only they noticed. When they got sick of the bleached grass, they perched on the picket fence and appeared lost in thought as if they lived in a dark short story by Elin Pelin.

The crow is a despicable animal, I thought. It makes sense to kill a quail or a wood pigeon, yes, those are worth cooking. At a certain point I remembered that hunters were highly praised for the crows they’d shot. To prove their achievements, they carried only the crow’s legs. The remaining parts of the body had no value whatsoever and I asked myself if there was a living being in the world that worthless.

In those years, no one talked about environmentalism, and no one worried to ask what was so harmful about the crow. Why did the hunters lavish praise on each other for the crows’ legs they had cut?

So far so good. On the day I had in mind, two hunters happened by my house. It was evident they had trudged through the hills near the sea and were on their way back empty handed. A thought crossed my mind: at such moments a senseless thirst for compensation races through the blood of the hunter. I had seen boar hunters who having had no luck throughout the day shot at a young birch with their powerful guns until they shattered its trunk. Their eyes shone with wild frenzy, then after a while they withdrew, their steps weighed down by shame. I knew no matter what they’d tell tales about the non-existent boar that had dodged their bullets, and they wouldn’t mention the young birch they had destroyed.

The two hunters stopped in the middle of the clearing. The taller guy raised his gun and fired. One of the birds that had perched on the picket fence fell to the ground with a thud. Its wings flapped in the dust of my yard.

The hunters started for the village satisfied their last shot was a success. I had asked children why they launched stones at sparrows with their slingshots. And they had told me, “We want to see if we can hit them!” I had done the same thing myself. The seemingly senseless murder had not been my goal, but it was the result. Or was that true?

I approached the picket fence and I found the bird lying perfectly immobile. A thick droplet of blood shone on its back; that was the spot where the slug had passed. I turned the crow over. An identical drop of blood gleamed on its breast. At that moment I noticed the bird was looking at me. Its eyes resembled grains of black caviar. It was the first time in my life that I looked at a crow up close; these birds were very cautious and always flew away as I approached them. One can throw out a dead bird easily, I said to myself. This one however was staring at me as if it wanted to know what I intended to do. I reached out and tried to touch its wing with my forefinger. At that moment the crow suddenly turned around, flapped its wings and flew away as if the hunter’s slug had never hit it. In the few seconds I bent over it, the bird had mustered its strength. It was flying madly and powerfully. It soared and shot up high above the sea shore, then suddenly took a sharp turn to the tall trees in the village.

It flew on for several minutes and grew small, turning into a black dot, then the black dot started falling, gently at first, and after a while vertically, heavily until it hit the ground. That was far away from me and I didn’t hear the dull thud of the dead body in the dead grass. Its flapping wings had drained the crow.

The bird had met its death flying.

I thought to myself, yes, the crow maybe was the most unwanted and abject bird, but nature has given it strength to die with dignity. Maybe there was some purpose to it that our imperfect human senses could not register. Maybe there was a meaning that our rational mind was incapable of describing.

Milen Ruskov and Zdravka Evtimova Win Inaugural Contests for Contemporary Bulgarian Literature

December 2010—Open Letter Books and the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation are proud to announce the inaugural winners of two contests supporting Bulgarian literature: Milen Ruskov won the first Contest for Contemporary Bulgarian Writers for his novel Thrown into Nature, and Zdravka Evtimova won the Contest for Translators.

“What the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation is doing for Bulgarian literature is remarkable,” said Open Letter publisher Chad W. Post. “The support they’re giving to Bulgarian writers—through the Sozopol Fiction Seminars and these contests—goes a long way to helping bring contemporary Bulgarian literature to the attention of readers throughout the world.”

Milen Rouskov’s Thrown into Nature will be published by Open Letter in the fall of 2011. The novel is an ironic, humorous book set in sixteenth-century Spain and tells the story of Dr. Nicolas Monardes, whose treatise “Of the Tabaco and His Great Vertues” was partially responsible for introducing tobacco to Europe. Da Silva—Dr. Monardes’s assistant—narrates the novel and the absurd adventures of Dr. monardes, who attempts to cure all ills through the “power of tobacco,” until it becomes painfully clear that tobacco isn’t the perfect panacea.

As a result of winning the Contest for Transaltors, Zdravka Evtimova will spend three weeks in Rochester, NY, working with Open Letter on her translation of Master Mille’s Living Light and Other Stories by Boyan Biolchev and learning about the U.S. publishing industry. An author in her own right, Evtimova has also translated several English novels into Bulgarian (including Siri Hustvedt’s What I Loved) and Bulgarian stories into English.

Elizabeth Kostova (author of The Historian and The Swan Thieves) helped found the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation in 2007 with the goal of promoting Bulgarian creative writing, the translation of contemporary Bulgarian literature into English, and friendship between Bulgarian authors and American and British authors. To this end, and among other initiatives, the Foundation supports the Sozopol Fiction Seminars, the , and, with support of the , these two inaugural contests.

was also founded in 2007 at the University of Rochester with the goal of publishing and promoting literature in translation. In addition to publishing 10 works in translation every year, the press helps run the , the Reading the World Conversation Series at the University of Rochester, and the .

“I’m delighted and grateful that Open Letter Books is partnering with Elizabeth Kostova Foundation to support the very fine—and very interesting—literature currently coming out of Bulgaria,” said Elizabeth Kostova. “These awards will do much to nurture the work of Bulgarian writers in the global literary scene.”

“In the context of how few English translations of contemporary Bulgarian literature are published on an annual basis, I consider these two complementary awards both indispensable and essential to the mission of the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation,” EFK director Milena Deleva stated. “These awards create new and much needed opportunities for both Bulgarian writers and literary translators. They also expand the Foundation’s collaborative framework through two ideal partnerships with Open Letter and the America for Bulgaria Foundation.”