 Welcome. I'm Esther Allen, and I teach at City University of New York. With me is Allison Markin Powell, who translates Japanese literature and works with the Penn Translation Committee. She and I are co-organizers of Translating Future, and today is our super duper final finale grand marquee extravaganza event. Yes, thank you Esther, and thank you all for joining us for what was always meant to be the highlight of this conference. Today's event, a flight of Tokarczyk translator, which in case you didn't know the group word for Tokarczyk translators is a flight has taken various forms. For the originally intended in person conference, we thought we were being ambitious by inviting five of all the Tokarczyk translators to New York to appear together. To remind you, we began planning this before she won the Nobel Prize in literature last fall. Then, once we transitioned to this virtual format, it was Jennifer Croft, one of her English translators who encouraged us to go big. And now this morning, which is variously afternoon evening and night for the translators gathered here, we've assembled 10 of oldest translators to take part in a conversation about the joy and challenges of bringing her work into their languages for readers all around the world. Translating the future commemorates the 50th anniversary of the World of Translation, a conference that took place in New York in May of 1970, and was billed as the first international conference on literary translation held in the United States. The 1970 conference featured Isaac Besheva Singer, who had not yet been awarded the Nobel Prize at that point. We wonder who among the participants in the 2020 conference may eventually receive those laurels. We are very fortunate today to have as our moderator Susan Harris, the editorial director of the online magazine Words Without Borders, the essential online magazine Words Without Borders, and the first editor to publish Olga Tkachic's work in English translation in the United States. She acquired House of Day, House of Night, in Antonia Lloyd-Jones' translation for Northwestern University Press way back in 2003. Susan barely blinked when we asked her to conduct a Zoom conversation among 10 people working in multiple languages and joining us from across multiple countries. The translators will introduce themselves when the program begins. We also encourage you to read each of their bios on the Center for the Humanities website. We are grateful to have several sponsors for this conversation and would like to offer sincere thanks to the Princeton University program in translation and intercultural communication. Boston University Center for the Humanities and its newly launched MFA in literary translation. The East Central European Center at Columbia University and the Polish Cultural Institute New York for their generous support of today's program. We will soon hear welcoming remarks from the director of PCI NY, Robert Rzaniowski. As always, today's conversation will be followed by a Q&A. Please email your questions for any or all of the Tkachic translators and for Susan to translatingthefuture2020atgmail.com. We'll keep questions anonymous unless you note that you would like us to read your name. Translating the Future is convened by Penn America's Translation Committee, which advocates on behalf of literary translators, working to foster a wider understanding of their art and offering professional resources for translators, publishers, critics, bloggers, and others with an interest in international literature. The committee is currently co-chaired by Lynn Miller-Lachman and Larissa Kaiser. For more information, look for translationresourcesatpen.org. For those unable to join us for today's live stream or any of the other conference programs, recordings are and will remain posted on the HowlRound and Center for the Humanities sites, as well as on Penn's archive. Before we turn things over to Robert, we'd like to offer our undying gratitude for this final time to our partners at the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center CUNY, the Martin E. Siegel Theater Center, the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and Penn America, and to our dear friends at HowlRound, in particular, the inestimably wonderful Travis Amiel, whose superb work for the past four months has made these live streams possible. And now over to Robert Chasnowski of the Polish Cultural Institute, New York. Hello, everybody. Thank you, Esther. Thank you, Alison, for your warm welcome. I'd like to very warm thank to the organizers of the today's event, Penn America Translating Committee, as well as our partners, which names were already mentioned. So, well, I would like to say that it is really, really great to be here among people who really love literature. And from my personal record, I must tell you that many years ago I tried to be as close to literature as possible. So when I was a student, I decided to be a literature critic. And one of the first books that I tried to write something about was Olga Tkachuk's first novel, which was called The Journey of the People of the Book. I think that it is worth reminding this is her first novel, because there were some, some motives which tend to be repetitive. They tend to recurrent in her following works, no matter which genre she chose as a tool for her writings. So one of the motives of the motives is traveling. Another one is literature itself, the book. So it is a kind of a mirror that that gathers not only personal human experience, but a kind of collective memory, a kind of collective human experience. And I believe it has something to do with the philosophy of Carl Gustaf Jung. And in this vision of literature as something really, really important, which gives a kind of very, very deep insight into our humanity soul, the role of translators is obviously very much important. So, yeah, a kind of carriers of books, carriers of literature from one language to another. So I think that in case of this particular author Olga Tkachuk, your role is very much appreciated. I hope that that your today's discussion will be very fruitful and I'm looking forward to listen to it. And now I am giving the virtual floor to Susan Harris. Thank you very much. Thank you, Robert. And thank you, Allison and Esther for arranging this wonderful event with our flight of Polish translators of Tkachuk translators as Allison said that is the collective now for them. Olga Tkachuk's work is read all over the world, of course. But according to statistics compiled by the Polish Literary Translators Association, a total of 193 translations exist by as many as 90 translators into 37 languages. The first Tkachuk book to be translated was translated into English in 1996. And the most recent is playing many drums published last year in Albanian. To open our conversation wonderfully we have a message from Olga Tkachuk herself to the participants translated into English by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. Dear friends, I'm very happy to know that I am the inspiration for your event. The mere fact that I can connect people from a wide range of countries of different ages, and with various likes and interests is a source of great joy for me, a real compliment. Literature really does have the power to unite. We're the living proof of it. I hope you'll have a wonderful time. I'll be with you in spirit. Love and best wishes from my travels, Olga. Now each of our translators will introduce himself or herself, the language from which he or she translate into which he or she translates, and we'll say a bit about what brought each of them to Polish, and how they started translating his works' work. First up is another Olga, Olga Baginska-Sinzato, who translates into Portuguese. Hello. Good morning, everybody. Good afternoon as well. My name is Olga Baginska-Sinzato, and I translate to Brazilian Portuguese. I'm also a Brazilianist. I'm a translator. I teach at the University of Warsaw. I teach Brazilian literature. And my adventure with Olga Trocartic's work started a few years ago. Actually, it started with some, I would say, fascination with her work and the sort of affinity on the outlook of the world, of life, of crossing borders. And that fascination led me to the books of Jacob, and I think that everything started with the books of Jacob. I just, as Olga said, that when she was writing the book, it seemed that the whole world was helping her write the book that the world needed, the books of Jacob to be written. At some point, I had a feeling that Brazil also, I don't know, needed to get to know Olga and needed to get to know Olga's work. So I did a sample translation of the books of Jacob, and I think that's how everything started. As to the Polish language, well, I'm Polish, so Brazilian Portuguese is my outside language of my heart and my soul. And the language that I best can communicate in. And I think that's it. So thank you. Thank you Olga. Next up will be Jennifer Croft who translates into English. One of Olga Trocartic's two translators into English. Thank you Susan. And before I say anything about me, I just want to say how much I have appreciated this really magnificent summer of fascinating programs on translation that Allison, Mark and Paul and Esther Allen have organized so brilliantly and so industriously, industriously, sorry. And it's just, it's been such a dispiriting time and and this is, this has been an unprecedented opportunity for collaboration and and even discussion every, every week so I can't really say how much I've appreciated it but I know a lot of people feel similarly. I came to Polish in 2001. I don't have, I grew up only speaking English, but I was very interested in Russian literature and when I began graduate school at the University of Iowa, I had the opportunity to study Polish as well. And I knew that I wanted to translate contemporary women's writing. And I came across Olga's short story collection which was published in 2001 playing many drums in the university library, and I kind of fell in love with her style and her ambitious yet very accessible grouping of thematic interests so I, I found that Antonio Lloyd-Jones had already translated some work by Olga and I immediately wrote to her to to kind of ask where she was with her translations and if there might be any room for me to translate a story. So it was so incredibly generous and ended up introducing me to Olga and to many other people who have been so helpful in my career, and I published my first short story in 2005. Thank you, Jenny. Next up, Barbara Dolfino, who translates into Italian. Hi, everyone. I'm Barbara Dolfino and I'm one of the three Olga's Italian translator. I knew Olga's novels when I was at the university. I was studying Russian and Polish, exactly in disorder, with my Russian by choice and Polish by chance. And at the end of my studies, I wrote a dissertation on the dream dimension in the first four Olga's novels. And in my dream dimension, there was the intention of becoming Olga's translator. And in fact, I did it. The first book of Olga that I translated has been a flight that has the Italian title Eva Gabondi. And now in this moment, I'm translating the books of Jack Ops that will be published, I think next next next year or summer or in autumn. We're not sure. The experience of translating Olga's books and all what turns around this translation experience is very amazing. It's really amazing for me because in my, I've never had such an experience in my 20 years of this kind of work in this field. And I'm very happy with this. And it's all great. Thank you, Barbara. Next, Christina Godon, who translates from Romanian. Hello, Susan. Good morning, everybody. My name is Christina Godon. I'm Olga's translator into Romanian. And my journey with Olga Tokarczuk's work began in 2010 with the translating of the flight. And has continued ever since with four other novels, House of Day, House of Night, Last Tales. Drive your plows through the bones of the dead and tales of the bizarre. And I'm currently working on the books of Jacob. However, it's worth mentioning that the journey of the book of people and primeval and other stories are Olga Tokarczuk's first books to be translated into Romanian by two different translators. So long before flights in 2001, 2002. In my case, the publishing houses approached me. So I didn't have to search for a publisher. And I guess that's because at that time, Olga Tokarczuk's work was already known in Romanian. But there is a nine year gap between flights and the previous translation, so that's also significant. That's interesting. Thank you, Christina. Now, Antonia Lloyd-Jones, Olga Tokarczuk's first translator into English. Hello, everyone from rather gloomy today Warsaw. I started off as a Russianist, I studied Russian. And in 1983 I found myself in Poland at the tail end of martial law. And it was really rather embarrassing to be speaking in Russian. So I sort of accidentally fell into learning Polish out of a need for political correctness in a sensitive situation and sat in a field with my friends who were agricultural students who were chasing cows around the field while I read Polish and gathered mushrooms in my skirt because there was nothing to eat at the time. So I somehow something in me just clicked and I switched to Polish. I just graduated. And I just put all my energy into trying to learn this language and didn't have much chance to study it. I kind of had to teach myself. And then everything in my life happens by accident. I met Olga by accident because her agent in those days was a Dutch publisher called Adrienne van Rijthewijk. And he and his wife were good friends of Olga and her husband and they had decided to buy a house in the same area where Olga lived. And he invited me to come and stay but he didn't explain that the house was actually uninhabitable with a tree growing in the sitting room. So I arrived and he picked me up and explained on the way from Wrocław Airport out into the countryside that I couldn't actually stay at his house so he was taking me to this writer's house. And the airline managed to lose my luggage. So the first thing that happened to me was I met Olga on the threshold of her house in Krayanov in the countryside. She gave me a toothbrush, a pair of pajamas and a packet of paper disposable panties. And it's still a mystery to this day where they came from or how she came to have them or what on earth they were about. But that was my introduction to that house. And I had absolutely no idea at that point that I was ever going to be her translator, but not that long after the same agent managed to sell the rights for House of Day House of Night to grant her publishing in London. She really recommended me and I came to translate that book about the house where I had been so warmly received. And that house became a part of my life and it still is because I went back summer after summer and rode all this horse around the neighborhood having strange adventures, which is another whole story about being chased by a stallion I'll tell you another time. Not recommended. It was really wonderful to know the house and know the place when I came to translate House of Day House of Night, because there's so much of it infused in that book. And now Olga has done a great deal of work at the house and has organized is a big literary festival there. And I think we're all going to have some way to stay together and work quietly. Thanks to all this generosity. Thank you. Thank you, Antonia. Perhaps we'll get to the stallion story later in the, in the conversation. And next up Hikaru Ogura, who translates into Japanese. Yes, can you hear me. Yes. Hello everyone. My name is Hikaru Ogura. I will briefly tell you about my first encounter with Olga's works, very briefly. When I was a graduate student, I had a chance to teach Japanese at the University of Warsaw as a visiting lecturer for one year. And I had, after classes, I spent lots of time storing the city and I visited very often the bookshops. And at one point I saw many copies of title titles of same title laid out in promotional displays in every shop. It was playing on many drums by Olga Tokajuku. I didn't know her, but I read it about 20 years ago and instinctively I knew that this also would be loved by Japanese readers and that I would love to translate her works myself. Yeah. And after a while, after returning to Japan, I sent several pages from House of Day, House of Night in my translation to a publishing house that was going to launch a new literature series. And publishing house, I liked my translation and agreed to publish the book. Yeah. So that is House of Day, House of Night in my translation. Yes, this is the first translation mine. And the second was flight in 2014. But before the flights, I get a grant from my university and I could invite Olga to Japan. And I and my colleagues organized lecture series in Japan. It was in 2013. It was really fun and we hope she will come back to Japan very much. The third was Prima and other times in Japanese. This was published last year just after Nobel Prize last year. So it was very good promotion for this book. Yes. And the fourth is coming soon in this November. I think this is Polish, but also in Japanese is coming soon. That's all. Thank you. Thank you, Hikaru. Thank you for inviting me. Thank you, Hikaru. Now up we have Lisa Palmes and Lothar Kinkenstein, who translate into German together. Hello, everyone. Yeah. I thought it's better when we talk together because we have mainly the same topics. My name is Lisa Palmes. I am translating from Polish into German since 12 years already. And I started to learn and study Polish because I had some Polish friends and started to be interested in the language. And so I changed my profession and thought I could do something interesting. With Olga Tokarczuk, of course I knew her translations very soon. But I never thought about translating her myself because Poland was the guest country on the Frankfurt Book Fair in the year 2000. And after that a lot of translations also from Olga Tokarczuk were published. And the translator was always Esther Kinski. And she now is writing herself. So when the books of Jacob were looking for a translator, she didn't want to do the work and asked me if I would be interested. So I started to see if I can find a publisher in German. And this is the part where Lothar and I were connecting together because after a really long time I was trying to find a publisher. And the people were hesitating because the book is very big, more than 1000 pages. So I thought about giving up. And then at this moment Lothar asked me if I would mind if he also tries to find a publishing house. And then we tried to do it together. And I think all in all after three years we found a publisher. And now I give the voice to Lothar then you can tell the successful part of the story. Hello, my name is Lothar Kwingstein. I translate also from Polish into German. And I'm working as a university teacher in Swabica, Poland at an institution which is called Collegium Polonicum. So when I'm sitting there at the office I'm looking out of the window right at the German-Polish border, which is a river there. The river Odra, an image of steadiness and change at the same time I would say. And I feel myself very comfortable on both banks of this river, of this image of the border and this image of time actually. I'm also between teaching and translation. I'm a writer myself, dealing mostly with some topics connected also to Poland. And yes, actually the story of the books with the books of Jacob was really interesting. And I don't want to use the word chance or accident because I think there was something, there was some hand directing behind it. What hand? I don't know, but something was there behind. We had translated already one book together, Lisa and me. This was Ludwig Hirschfeld, his autobiography. And this work was so inspiring as a tandem that we wanted to continue it. And we were looking for something long, let's say, so it would be very suitable to work together on it. So we chose the books of Jacob. And there was this specific situation that Olga Pappatrupp for several years was not actually present in Germany, in the German language, because there was at a certain point a stop of the publications. And then we actually could bring her back with the books of Jacob. And this was the moment then, one week I think after the publication of the books of Jacob in Germany, she got the Nobel Prize. So this was all directed very well, very precise. And since then we continue this work. And recently I translated The Lost Soul and The Tales of the Bizarre. And now at the moment we are working on the next collection of stories together as a tandem once. Wonderful. Thank you, Lothar and Lisa. Now we will hear from Pavel Petsch, who translates into Czech. Pavel? I'm here. Hello. Ah, there's Pavel. Hi world. My name is Pavel Petsch. I come from the Czech Republic. I'm really grateful to take part in this wonderful gathering. Although I have to say I'm a little bit astounded for the other translators of Olga's into Czech, because there are about five or six of us, I counted so far. And of course we have a wonderful colleague that my friends here know very well. It's Petr Wiedlach, who says hello to you and who has been translating the books of Olga's over the last 20 plus years. Okay, so what was my adventure with Olga's books? Actually it is closely connected to Petr, who sort of gave me a call one day that he's not doing well with finishing and meeting the deadline of translating flights into Czech. So we sort of cooperated, co-translated the book into Czech together. And from that time on, I think it was the middle part of my interest in Olga, because I had met her at various sort of readings and stuff before. And I was interested in her and it's very interesting. And I want to talk about the relation of Olga's to the Czech Republic, of course. Antonia has mentioned the house, right? So the house is very close to the Czech border. And I think Olga would say that she has a lot of friends, a lot of relations, and also Czech readers are sort of very aware of the fact, correct me if I'm wrong, Antonia, that, you know, she's a little bit of our writer in literature. So she's not considered, of course, the interest in her is very, very strong among the Czech readership and every book gets translated, gets immediate attention and so on. And she sort of counted into our home. And because Czechs miss a Nobel Prize winners in literature, we only have one, sadly. It was a very good news in the Czech Republic that she got the prize and she was awarded. But I think she still looked upon as a part of our world. So this was actually, I got to her work very naturally through that as a reader, fascinated once again with the magical sort of world in her books. And I would say I would never go to translate her work if it wasn't a short deadline. But I was very happy to take up this job because I would otherwise be very shy. And I'm really glad I did because now here we are in a wonderful circle, sort of fellow translators from all around the world. And we can talk about Olga's work and it's wonderful. Also, I would like to say hello to Lothar, who mentioned the other river. Actually, I'm sitting 200 meters from the Ulza River, which is sometimes mistaken. But it is on the Czech-Polish border and also I am in the divided town of Cezyn or Cezyn. So I can see a little bit of a similarity with Svobica, which I visited. I visited your university last year and close parallels to that. And I think also Olga's world is sometimes placed on the borders like this. So thank you very much. Thank you Pavel for having me. Pavel, that's fascinating about the borders. Now we'll go to Ostap Slavinski, who translates into Ukrainian. Hello, hello from the other country, neighboring with Poland, from the other side. My story of the first meeting with Olga was something I would call fantastic. When I studied Slavic philology in the university, Olga's books were something like the must reads in Ukraine. She was really popular at that time. Her journey of the people of the book and the primeval and the other times were translated into Ukrainian by the very experienced translators. So I would never assume that one day I would join this brilliant company. But nevertheless, we, the young students philologists at the university were ambitious enough that in year 2004, we started a very tiny literary festival in my city in Vip. But we dared to invite Olga Tokarczuk to be one of the participants without any special hopes that she would come. All of a sudden after two days, she answered to our mail and she said, yes, I would come and in two days she was in Vip. She was very late in the evening with the last bus, tourist bus. She crossed that very problematic Ukrainian-Polish border, very problematic at that time. And I remember the long hours when we were walking around the night city looking for some place where we could eat something. We found it finally, but this was my first meeting with Olga and the first moment when I felt some very deep personal connection with Olga. And the next time we met, it was in 2009 when I was translating the flights beginning into Ukrainian. And it coincided in a very interesting way with her work on the books of Jacob. She started her work on the books of Jacob and she carried out her writer's research in Ukraine because a big part of action and the books of Jacob takes place in Ukraine. She came with her husband and it was our next meeting and we continued our long walks around the Ukrainian cities, bigger and smaller, looking for very, very special things like very ancient Jewish cemeteries, for example, or some other very secret places. But it's another story. Probably you'll have some time to talk about it as well. Thank you. Oh, Ostap, you have left us all in suspense. We may have to hear more about that later. Thank you, translators, all of you for telling your various stories. So fascinating to hear how each of you came to Polish and how each of you came to Olga's work. Now we'll move into a general discussion. Our first conversation, you all translate into such different languages. We wonder what are the challenges you faced with bringing Olga's writing into your language. Christina, would you like to go first? I'm afraid that, from my experience, I cannot say I have encountered particularly challenging situations or cases of, let's say, linguistic or cultural untranslatabilities because I simply relish translating Olga's work and I simply dive into the text. It's like channeling her work. But I can dissociate a bit and I can say that part of the difficulties that might arise in translating her novels might be generated by her narrative being multi-threaded and multi-layered with plenty of references to myths, legends, astronomy, astrology, religion, the arcana, you name it. And that requires from the translator to skillfully navigate such areas of expertise he's not necessarily familiar with. Another tricky aspect, I think, residing Olga's language. I mean, at first glance, it's very accessible. However, it's also very rich in meaning. Her narrative is seemingly uncomplicated, yet the language is very vivid, poignant, natural, succulent, humorous. And that again requires from the translator the same richness, lightness, easiness of expression into his own language. Another thing that I've noticed is that her narrative is not built entirely on words or by words, but also by images. And again, that requires from the translator to recreate and to render this imagery into his own language and requires in-depth knowledge of one's own language. The fact that Olga Tokarczuk switches swiftly from one register to another at a lexical level and navigates gracefully or crosses gracefully literary genres also can be trying for the translator, and it requires, in my opinion, a bit of a wild cultural horizon as well. Yes, what can I say? Also, the storytelling, it doesn't follow a linear traditional timeline. It mirrors, in my opinion, the human consciousness or the stream of consciousness. It's not linear. It's sometimes mingled, scattered. And I think Olga Tokarczuk catches its characteristic of the human consciousness very well in her works, and it's not very easy to translate. Apart from that, I think it's very easy and very pleasant to work upon her text, really. Thank you, Christina. It's interesting that you chose the word navigate and talking about the horizons because so much of Olga's work, as has been mentioned, is predicated on the notion of travel and movement. And Barbara, you also translated Flights, which is one of Christina's books. What kind of challenges did you find, Barbara, in your work on Olga's books? Okay, this is a matter about which we very often discuss with other colleagues that translate from other languages, because Polish and, in particular, Olga's novels are made up very often of very short sentences. Very short, but very striking. And reading a few words over novels, you can feel deep emotion, or someone also a sense of concernation, or pleasure, or fee pleasure. And this is a very big problem for us, for Italian translators, because we usually use very long sentences with a lot of commas, a lot of subordinate sentences. So rendering in Italian is giving to the Italian reader the same effect that all the pacacius gives to her readers. It's very complicated sometimes. I remember when I delivered my first book translated from Polish, not from Olga, but from another Polish author, I delivered it to the publisher, and he read it, and he said, okay, now please transform it with an Italian style, because it's different. And I tried, and yes, he said that the Polish style is too telegraphic for the Italian reader, and so I have to manage it, but only for the first pages, and then I'll continue to follow the Polish author style. And so this is the principle challenge that I have to manage always when I translate novels from Olga's culture. Thanks Barbara. Lisa and Lothar, translating into German, do you find similar challenges as to what Barbara found in Italian? Lisa and Lothar? I think maybe I can only talk about the books of Jacob, because that was the work we did together, except for it I had also the noble lecture, but I think there's nothing so special to talk about. But the books of Jacob had the language difficulties were not of the same nature as Barbara mentioned, that they were in the language, but we had different language layers, because the whole story is in the 17th century. So we had letters and also some original texts even quoted, so then we had to find a similar old language in German. Then we had the normal talking voice that was in a modern language. I think that voice was mostly Olga's voice, and then we had a person, a figure in the book who is writing a kind of diary, and there was again another language level. So we had to balance or to find languages for at least three different levels and switch between them and also try to find equivalents for some 17th century language that we are of course not using anymore. And these were basically the language difficulties we had with the books of Jacob. We also had long discussions about a certain kind of, let's say, a certain kind of locating the story in a cultural way in a certain region. And we wanted to give it a little touch, our translation, a little touch of Austro-Hungarian language because of the connection with Galicia. So Galicia, this old landscape, historical landscape, should be present also in the language. And we found out that there, by reading authors from Galicia, German language authors from the 20th century mostly in their autobiographical memories. We were looking for specific vocabulary, which was really specific German vocabulary, but used only in this region. So when the story of Jacob is moving around, let's say in the region of Lviv, Lemberg, and some other places connected to Galicia, we use these terms. And when it's moving into other parts of Europe, we switch to, let's say, a standard German. And this was a very interesting aspect. We learned a lot by reading these authors. And I think this is something that brings more color into this translation, that you can really hear something like, yes, let's say something like a voice, which is connected to this place. And one interesting story, it was just the first reading, the first meeting just on the day when Olga received the Nobel Prize. We were at the German town, the German town called Bielefeld, and there was an actress reading on that evening. And after the reading, she came to me and she said, I must ask a question because I am from Munich, and I'm very astonished to find so many Austrian vocabulary in some parts of the book. And to you and your colleague, you are probably from Austria and I said, oh, yeah, we are not from Austria, but it's very nice that you mentioned that because this was a concept that we followed by doing the translation. Wonderful. Hey, Karu, you translate Olga to Karczyk's work into Japanese. We've been talking about, we've been talking about the very European content of her books and how the various translators into the various European languages have handled that. What challenges have you faced translating Olga's work into Japanese with that very different, those very different cultural and geographical constraints. Yes, actually, Japanese and European languages are very different in every aspect. And so it takes many different techniques to translate literature from Polish. But without concerning geographical or linguistic difference, what I pay most attention to is not to break the poetic aspect or sensitive aspect of Olga's works. And the Japanese language has many more personal pronouns, many more personal pronouns than European languages. And its use of honorifics is much complicated, much complicated. I believe taking advantage of these things helps me to produce more sensitive translation, I think. Yeah, for example, depending on the format, we can use many ways to say I or you or she or she or something like that. And I also pay attention, I also pay attention to the way my translation sounds so that if it would give comfort to the readers if it were to be read aloud. Yeah. Sound is very poetic sound kind of it's very important aspect I think for Olga's writing so Yes, Japan. I tried to I tried to keep this aspect in also in Japanese translation. Yeah, I did. Thank you. Thank you, Hikaru. One of the, one of the points made about Olga's work, and I think several of you have touched on it is that her books, although they do share certain motifs and they share certain themes are wildly different. And each book, there is no there is no sense, I think when you read Olga's books that you are necessarily reading the same author time after time. I know I certainly reading reading flights and then following that with drive your plow over the bones of the dead was quite a whiplashing effect. But those of you who have translated more than one of Olga's works. I wonder what changes you've noticed in her style over time and Antonia I'm particularly interested in your take since you did House of Day House of Night, back in the early 2000s and then just published drive your plow last year. And what what kind of changes Antonia do you see in Olga's style over time. In some ways she's like it, the Athena she emerged from Zeus's head fully armed and kind of ready for battle. In many ways she she just is a brilliant writer who was born to do what she does. And of course we've all observed developments in her work over the years. And I think there's been a great growth in confidence pretty rapidly in fact and she kind of found her feet as a writer quite fast. But she's always had this sort of healthy anarchy of wanting to play around with form she can't bear to write a just straightforward boring linear novel. And she is making the form work for her. So what I've seen her do is develop these different attitudes to conventions sort of grab it by the throat and give it a good shaking. So, the genres have to fit her requirements not the other way around. There was the Greek soldier poet Achillicus wrote a lovely thing about the fox and the hedgehog. And the hedgehog has one trick it rolls into a ball and it's safe and the head, but the fox has many tricks. And as our Berlin use this as a metaphor for writing about writers and you wrote a wonderful essay where he talks about some writers as foxes and others as hedgehogs and Olga is most categorically a fox. So she has this versatility and she can keep reinventing herself and keep finding a new way to do things. And I'm really not surprised when she has more than one translator in different languages because sometimes I can't relate to one book but I can relate to another. So when I think about the three novels that I've translated this House of Day House of Night which is what all the calls a constellation novel like flights consists it's the one is the kind of counterpart to flights in that it's the one about the opposite of traveling it's about never going anywhere and staying in one place, but it's built up this patchwork of pieces including diary pieces and stories, which all form a sort of whole, and there is a wholeness to it, particularly when you translated you feel that thread going through it, and a sort of thread of a slightly sinister mood to it. And then I translated primeval and other times, and something I'm very lucky I share with Olga is that we both absolutely love fairy tales and have always all our lives. She's always collected and read a great deal of myths and legends from around the world she loves them. And that shows in primeval and other times where she's taking that genre of myth and just turning it into her own take to give a kind of a cousin portrait of central Europe through the 20th century amazing to just filter all that down into this story of this family that's told in a mythical way. And then I translated drive your plow over the bones of the dead, where I think most of the translators who've done it will agree, what's crucial is the central voice the narrator's voice, this rather eccentric, crazy unique voice this person who could be rightfully outputting you could read several pages of her and want to head for the hills, but you've got to make her sympathetic to the reader, and Olga does that she kind of makes the reader her, the main characters accomplice and drags the reader into being involved in very shady business indeed. That's challenging for the translated because you have to recreate that voice in the same way so that you also keep the reader with you for 250 pages, although the person whose hand they're trustingly holding and going into the forest with is completely bonkers. Olga, you also translated drive your plow. What kind of changes. Have you also seen in order to cartoon style across different books. Well, just as Antonio said, the differences are very visible. I mean, if you read for example. And then you read flights or drive your flow over the bones of the dead, and then the books of Jacob you will, like, just by intuition you will feel that the style is different. And in case of drive your plow over the bones of the dead it's a very, I would say, it's a different book just as Antonio said, you know, the most important thing is the voice. So you have to recreate the voice. And, for example, in Brazilian Portuguese that was, I wouldn't say it was, it was difficult, but there was, because Brazilian Portuguese is, I would say it's less formal than Polish. The Polish voice, Janina Dusheko's voice is quite formal. And she's extant, eccentric. She's, she's very emotional, but at the same time she's quite a formal, especially when she writes the letters. So in Brazilian Portuguese that was, it wasn't hard, but I'd have to, like, put myself, you know, into her head and voice and, you know, try to recreate the woman, you know, in her 60s, for example. In her 60s, just, you know, talking to you or to the to the readers, you know, and telling her strange stories. So, and also the astrology, for example, the parts where you have, you know, her, her lectures on astrology that that was, that was quite complicated or difficult as well just to not to get no the reader board with that. Oh, Steph, you also did, you did books of Jacob and you also did flights of what kind of change what kind of differences and changes did you notice again over over time. As he translated into Ukrainian. Well, I, I have an impression that the books of Jacob, the, the book, which was really very, very expected by, by many people by many Olga's readers. And we are in some sense, and to some extent, continuation of this traveling story, but if in the flights you have mostly the heroes who escape from something they escape they are, they want to escape from their lives, first of all. And if I try to state it in one word, I would say that flights is a story is a noble of escape of some, some trust some journey which has only a starting point, but it doesn't have a finish point it doesn't have it's it's visible point. While it books of Jacob is noble, which could be described as a story of search for home metaphysical home, not geographical spatial but home for one's soul. It's very interesting how these two texts are similar complimentary and different deeply different on some very, very profound level. But both these texts really give a very important message to all of us, the contemporary people people of 21st century, because it's these texts are the texts about the other the otherness. It's someone who has no natural place to be a no no natural home, no spatial home, and sometimes is in a situation when he or she has to look for it's for for for the for the home somewhere and some spiritual spheres not spatial. And we have to be ready to see and to hear these people sometimes besides us very closely to us. And it's very important also to the Ukrainian readers I think it's a very it was a very, very important message, an important story about our country, our, our lands. Absolutely. Oh step and it's so interesting that you focused on the topic of otherness. That of course is what one characteristic of works in translation that the publisher and the translator of course always work to not overcome and not even necessarily a lead, but ease to bring a book from one language, one culture into another, translators are so crucial in the reception of writers in other countries in other languages, obviously that was a very obvious comment. I'm interested in the reception of Olga Tokarczyk's works in each of your country on Pavel, what is the reception of Olga Tokarczyk's work in the Czech Republic. Pavel. Okay, here I am. I think I mentioned it in the introduction. It's fantastic. It's almost as she was one of our own female writers. And although we have a wave of a wave, I would call it. We have many wonderful female writers at the moment in the Czech literature, which is a very fascinating sort of way of sort of treating with the with the old male waves that came. She's considered a part of it actually. Yeah. And as I was saying, the only each of Olga's books that came into the Czech Republic were very much expected. And I don't tend to be better with luck because they had to be translated very quickly because the readers were expecting it. And also we had some sort of other editions as well with that that came with the direct reprints. Also, you know, many personal ties that are decided with Olga. So I think the Czech Republic is really another home to all guy. I don't know if she would agree with the fact about, you know, she's very much based here from the beginning from her very first books and through the readership sort of reactions to her books. And she's she's a part of our culture. I wrote. I wrote an article after she received and she and Jenny was with us received the menu international Booker price two years ago. I was asked to write an article about Olga and this price into one of the Czech literary magazines, and I put the title and they kept it. And it was in English, I guess you would loosely translated as our lady of the noble price. So she was she was actually our lady. And everyone was very curious. And I'm sure the other translators into Czech got phone calls and and stuff and congratulations. Everybody was so, so much happy because, you know, in Czech literature we haven't had much international success. There are exceptions, of course, over the last year. So we are a little bit sort of occupying other countries but I think it's a very, very pleasant way to do this. Okay. Thank you. Hey, Karu, you said that when you first read Olga's work, you thought immediately that she would really appeal to Japanese readers. And what what is the reception what has the reception in Japan been to her various books you've done what. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yes. All three books have been positively received in Japan, but all has day has night has gained the most popularity and I know understand why because when I was reading this book I felt kind of some kind of nostalgia in this book. And I thought about this nostalgia, nostalgic feeling that I realized that what I felt is what I felt was so oriental view of the world in existed in this book in has day has night. In fact, I've, in fact, actually I've written a paper on the subject. And after the, and interestingly, after the book has day has night was published to a very famous critic commented that it reminds her of Kamano Chomei. Kamano Chomei was an assess Japanese assessor who lived 800 years ago. Yeah, and he wrote about the evidence, evidence of life. I think that everything in this world changes. Yeah, and as that is as a Buddhist view of world. And one quote from his s days famously says that as water is not the same as water before, like river flowing. I think evidence and instability. There are qualities that characterizes all this working or all this works so there are among others reason there are reasons why Japanese leaders that work, work, all this work, I think, and it's also said that we very often experience. natural disasters here in Japan. So we, we don't believe anything everlasting. So it's also said that so so I feel simplified. I feel kind of simplified with all those words. That's fascinating Hikaru. Thank you. You know, another, another question that comes up here we have 10 of August translators in one place. This is very exciting. As we mentioned earlier, there are as many as 90 translators who have worked on her books. And another interesting element of translation publishing is that books are not necessarily published in the order in which they were published originally in the original language. And often a group of books are published only after one book makes a great success so you'll see many others coming out in a very short time, whereas there may have been a gap, as a couple of you have mentioned. And I'm curious to know about, to what extent, when you do have all these options of worldwide versions of Olga's work. We're interested in knowing how what do you, what kind of do you consult with other translators in your in your language or in others, or refer to other translations. I think Lisa and Lothar, I think you could lead off this question because of course you're, you're the tandem pair in our conversations tonight you're that the collaborators who do work together I think everyone would be interested in knowing what methods you use. Lisa and Lothar. Yes. Yes, we are here. Okay, we are here. Yes, as Lothar said before, we already translated another book before autobiography. It was also a very big book, 600 pages. And we decided to not that one person translate the first half and the other one a second, but to change after every chapter. So we were exchanging the chapters all the time. And this was a very good, because I think otherwise, when one some person translates a lot of chapters as the other one the next, then you get lost in your own language style. You never see if it fits together. Maybe the reader later will see something doesn't fit that the language changes within the book. So we decided to work like this again. And this was, of course, it was a longer process than as if one person translate the whole book. I think because we already were correcting and working on the style. On the other hand, for me, especially with the books of Jacob was a very necessary thing, very necessary experience, because I think I alone, there are so many things we had to read to understand this, the topic and the life of Jacob Frank and the theory and mystics behind it. And I think one person alone would not be able so good to to understand everything. Or at least I know that I wouldn't be able to to to see so many aspects I saw working together with Lothar. So it was on the one hand was from the language very interesting and necessary because we found that in this process we very often we have the same thoughts. And when we were we met at least one time in the month that we're talking about the chapters we did in between. And then very often we came to the same conclusion. So this was a very good and interesting process. But maybe it would not work with everyone. A lot of people told me they never could work together in translation with another translator. But I must start. I think this is can speak for both of us that we said several times during this work on the books of Jacob that we really have the deepest deepest deepest respect for persons who did this alone because I speaking for myself. I think I would have been afraid to get lost alone. And you also said sometimes that it is so helpful because you you have doubts. We immediately could could discuss them. We could consult them and we collected we collected the library. It's our private Jacob Frank library during the work. We really read so many books articles. We also were in an archive in Offenbach where he spent his last years. There are lots of Frankiana there. We brought home really hundreds of pages of Xerocopies to study. And this was this was a huge work. These characters appeared in our dreams. We were really and we were absolutely absorbed. And so many times we said now imagine you are working on this alone. This is really is almost incredible. And the thing which was really wonderful was that all the time when we were discussing certain problems discussing certain aspects of the translation. It was a huge inspiration. And we actually the question that came up sometimes in discussions also with readers. Didn't you fight in your quarrel? Actually not because there was nothing to quarrel and to fight a solution and willing to to find the best solution. And this was always the main priority. And sometimes we we were twisting the sentence 25 times. And then suddenly we said this is it now. And the other person said yes you are right this is it. But I also think it is it is a question of let's say a question just of work. I can understand that for example someone says that he or she would not like to make such a tandem work. It just came out that that we are somehow yeah we are just somehow made for it. So I surely I absolutely can understand it if someone says this would not be a right thing for me. It's a question just of trying and finding out. Thank you Jennifer. Yes yes and you are one thing very important thing. I would also like to to send a special thank you and a special greeting to Danny because she we also had contact with her a quite intense contact. And she put us on a very important track because thanks to Jenny we came to Salomon Maimonides. Thank you Jenny. I would also like to respond to Lotar and Lisa's comment again wondering if how they could ever have done it without a partner. How have you how are you how are you doing it alone. Yeah this is also my question. Yeah, a short sorry. A little correction it was of course Salomon Maimon not Maimonides Maimonides was also in the book but in another chapter it was Salomon Maimon. Thank you. I'm just going to interject that I am so grateful to Lisa and Lotar and also to every every one of Olga's fans who is working on or who has worked on the books of Jacob because they are Lotar and Lisa are right it's not really something that you can do alone and as Chef mentioned Olga didn't do it alone either I mean she is using so many books and she also traveled so much and she went around Ukraine and she visited these spaces and this isn't just the work of one person's imagination so it can be the work of one translator's imagination either and I was really lucky to take out Lotar and Lisa on the phone a few times we talked a lot about sources and we have a Facebook group for all of us now called Windows which is comes from Olga's very short that appeared in English in the New Yorker about the pandemic and it really spoke to us as her translators because it seemed to correctly reflect this idea that one thing that Olga can offer the world is these kind of fresh perspectives and this borderlessness and this transparency that you don't often encounter in literature. So, so when I have questions. Olga is always happy to help but sometimes I feel like the best thing to do if there's a sentence that is really just giving me a hard time is to ask the other translators rather than asking Olga because once you involve. This is just how I work but once I involve the author then I'm extending the translation into this whole other realm of biography and so forth, and their intentions and maybe that doesn't isn't reflected in the actual book in Polish and maybe it doesn't also need to be transmitted in the English version but just for reference this is the book that we're talking about. And it's quite enormous so this is one of the reasons why it's hard to translate alone but there are many, there are many reasons so but I have not translated alone it translated with lots of help. Oh, Barbara, you also did books of books of Jacob into Italian. Did you did you consult with other translators along the way. I'm waiting now this moment. Yes, but I say always that I'm quite at the end. It means that I have still 200 pages. Oh my say okay I'm quite at the end after 700 pages you feel it is way at the end. Three quarters of the way. Sorry. It's three quarters of the way there. Yes. Okay. At the beginning of my career. I didn't think that consulting with other colleagues was so important. With Olga's book. Yes, it is. And in fact, with also with this book with this books of checkups and working, not with a translator, but with a Polish actress of theater that is she lives in Italy and she is a friend of Olga. And so Olga suggested that we work together because she has a very great culture and she and she knows very well the story of Jews in Poland and also she knows very well this story. And so she she's very helpful for me. And at the beginning with this book, I thought that the most most difficult thing was the story plot and all the historical facts for the stand. And I told her with language no problem the language is very simple I can understand quite everything. And then I discovered that it is not in this way I have her, her, her help is. Yes, I need it. And so we are working together. I translate that she correct. We don't quarrel. And I think that this is a way also to, to change a little the idea that the translator works alone. And that this image of a loneliness of the translator is no more in this way probably in the past. I don't know, but now I think, and also with this also in this moment as we can see that we are all here together talking about the same authors and languages. And, okay, so I hope I think that this collaboration should be at the basis of the work process of a translate of a translation. Thank you, Barbara. Christina, have you, you've done so much translation have, have you found yourself consulting with other translators as you've worked on Olga's books. No, I didn't consult with my fellow translators in the past, but I'm 10 pages into the books of Jacob and I'm, I already I'm feeling that it's a book like no other before so it will require a lot of research on my part and I'm sure that I'll have lots of questions to ask my fellow translators. And I'll be happy to benefit from their insights and experiences. Well, why don't we take advantage of having all 10 of you here now and turn this over to you what questions do you have for your fellow translators. Well, I don't have a question related to the books of Jacob but I have a question to Antonia. Do you have any inspiration for the short story, Professor Andrews in Warsaw. Absolutely not. I didn't know I think when she wrote that it was, it's not because you lost your luggage, and it was that period. He's a person who arrives knowing no Polish whatsoever. And he arrives in Poland on the day that Marshall Law is declared December the 13 1981. And he's an Englishman who's been invited to come and take part in a conference in Warsaw. And this poor man arrives, not understanding anything. So nobody comes to pick him up from the airport and he can't understand why and eventually some student comes and doesn't know quite what to do with him and they take him and they stick him in a flat and they just leave him there. And there are tanks in the streets. And it's just before Christmas and in Poland, people have carp for Christmas. And so you can go and buy a carp and it's a famous thing that people buy them living and they swim around in the bathtub before Christmas. And then you have to eat this pet fish you've got used to for Christmas. So he goes to a shop and he can't really understand what's going on except that someone keeps saying live or dead live or dead, thinking he wants to buy one of these fish. So it's all about this bewildered professor actually going to be filmed. So it's got nothing to do with me. There is my father inspired a story of August, of which is in flights. About a professor in Greece who she was staying with me and my father and his wife my father was a professor of classical literature and they were traveling in Greece on a boat giving lectures. He just fell out of his bunk bed and made an almighty fuss about it, although the high teeth fallen was like this. So Olga thought this was funny and then based the story wrote a story about a professor and his wife traveling in Greece and the professor actually dies in the story leaving the wife to pick up the piece. So fortunately my own family story was not quite so dramatic. Well I'm glad to hear that since it amuses you so Antonio. Other questions. Translators for your colleagues here. Pablo, did you have a question for for the other translators. Yes. Sorry. Okay, Barbara wanted to ask. I wanted to say and that says Antonio stuck in a flight in Warsaw right. So I'll take it up to you if you believe her story or not. Okay, actually I had a question for our Scandinavian colleague who is unfortunately couldn't make it to today's meeting because I was really interested and maybe some of you could tell me. This is the reception of Olga's work in Scandinavia. You know, somebody knows, somebody knows because I was interested in, in, in, in this aspect, nobody gave her a small price in Sweden. Yeah, I was going to say about Sweden. Yes, yes, I remember. And apart from that, is it, or maybe some of you know about Olga's relations to Scandinavia. This is just my flick that I, that I got this morning, but maybe maybe some other questions. Yes, since I have some, some, some colleagues, I congratulate the tandem a lot are in Lisa on on doing the book and I was really interested in the method that you did. Yeah. I co translated flights with Petrov it like as I said, and the method was totally different, which is this little stories and stuff. Okay, what is my question. I've talked about it a little bit. Maybe I could change Scandinavia for Brazil. So Olga, Olga tell us because it's quite exotic for us, at least Europeans. So you said that you've actually introduced Olga to Brazilian readers. So that was nothing before. There was. 2013 flights were published here in Brazil by the Chinta Negro. And Tomasz Barciński was the translator that translated flights the first version of flights. So it was published, but I don't know why actually, it wasn't really it didn't, you know, it didn't get very famous Olga did not get very famous here in Brazil. So, I think it was like more restricted to smaller to people who actually knew Eastern European literature. And, and there was no interest. Like, even by the, you know, the publishers weren't really interested in Olga's work until until I could say last year. The Booker Prize, of course, made Olga famous here. And the novel, and after the novel, well, she she became very, very famous and the reception has been very, very, very good. Yeah. So people even write, write me, you know, on Facebook or straight and ask me, you know, when Olga's books are going to be published, when more of Olga's books are going to be published, because last year in November, I blow over the bones of the dead was published in November, right after the Nobel Prize, so it was like a very, you know, perfect timing, I would say. And I translated flights once again. So that was also quite a difficult. Yeah, it was, it was hard because, you know, Thomas Bartin's mistrust translation was from 2013 so there's not much, it's not like, you know, not just a few years have passed from from 2013. And yeah, and I think that, well, the public is quite interested and I believe that Olga was going to be, she is already a success here but she's going to be a bigger success. So I'm interested that you said the Booker had such impact in Brazil. Does the, does the international Booker generally have, have that much effect or would you say it was particular to, or that it was specific to Olga's case. No, in general the Booker has a very, very big impact. The point is that the Brazilian market, like publishing market is also very, very big. So you have lots of, you also have lots of Brazilian authors. So, you know, foreign authors don't have that much space, you know, especially Eastern European, they're known, like in very limited circles I would say, academic circles as well. So to really get to the general public, it's not that easy. But I think that Olga managed to do it. And she, I would say that she's a very universal, even though she's Eastern European, she's Polish and the Polish culture and the Polish mentality is very present in her, in her works. But she is able to cross those borders and to really, like with her, with the emotional side of, of the poetic side of her, of her writing, of her books, she's managed, she manages to get to, you know, foreigners. That's why I was curious as well. For example, what it was in, how it was in Japan, if the Japanese people managed to like to understand Olga and if they understand like the, you know, the cultural side as well of her, of her writing, of her books. Because I know that for example, Chopin, the Japanese people love Chopin. Exactly, exactly. What is it like with Olga's texts, yeah. Yeah, but as I said, she gets very famous now and she has gained most popularity and I, I, yes. Yeah, and actually, actually this House of the Husk Knight was forced to reprinted. Four times. Four times, yeah, four times. Wow. It's very rare case in foreign literature, yeah, in today's market for literature. So, yeah, I'd say very popular and very famous writer now in Japan, even in Japan. Yeah. Hey, Karu, are there. What is the, what is the reception in Japan of Polish writers in general? Is Olga Tokarczyk really one of the few or do you, have you done a lot of other books or? No, actually, no, actually, no. I translated one of short stories from Tadeusz Mieciński, very, yeah, ancient point, or, or so, for example, last year, this year, Oh, I forgot. Zofia Narkowska, translation Zofia Narkowska, she's not modern writer, a person, modern writer, but Zofia Narkowska get translation, literary translation prize in Japan, DCU, so getting much more popularity now, Polish literature is getting much more popularity now, but yeah, yeah, yes. Yes. Okay. Jenny and Antonia, I had a question for you as our two English language representatives. Obviously the Nobel has different, different impact for different writers but Antonia I think you mentioned that you saw a rush of sales for your translation of House of Day House of Night after the Nobel. Yes, that it was out of print in Britain but it was still on sale in the United States where, thanks to your good offices, it had appeared a long time earlier and not been given all that much attention. And the same with Primeval which was published with a tiny little publishing house based in Prague, Twisted Spoon, and of course the Nobel did suddenly sell those books again, which was very, very nice because you've done all that work and you feel all sad that nobody's taken any notice of it. And suddenly people wanted those older titles. In fact, there's, there's some older books of August that haven't been translated into English that I have tried and tried in the past and still hope I might perhaps be able to translate. So yeah, it has definitely been a huge boost. And Jenny, were you over, I can't remember were you already under contract for a book of Jacob, when the Nobel came, when the Booker and the Nobel came through. Yeah, but the, but yeah, so I, I've mentioned this in other conversations about August work but I, it took a really long time to find a publisher for the book flights in the US or in English. And I think that the English speaking world's relationship to translation is a little bit different from the German speaking world for instance or, or certainly neighboring countries like Ukraine and the Czech Republic that translate more from Poland. So it's really hard to sell a foreign author. Anything that any particularities in her style were received by potential editors as like red flags, things that could potentially drive readers away from the book, which obviously turned out to be not the case at all but it really did kind of take the The Booker Prize helped a lot in the in English to and of course then the Nobel Prize helped enormously but I was really lucky to find Jacques Testard at Fitzgerald, which is a very small public I mean it was basically just him at the time. A wonderful independent publishing house in London. And he signed both flights and the books of Jacob at the same time. A brilliant move on this part. And a wonderful show of confidence in an in an author who again had not been so terribly or recently really tested in published in English. But I think looking at this if I think most of the large number of our of our translators here have done flights. So, it does appear to be the most popular of Olga's books in in translation. Those of you who have done flights. What do you think, what do you think is is the appeal. Oh, stop. What, what do you think is the appeal for flights to the Ukrainian reader. So as I said, Olga Tokarczyk was popular in Ukraine, even in in in late 90s. The first first translations of Olga's works appeared in some literary periodicals. After 1999, Olga is getting more and more popular. So it was really some kind of a must read for us as young people who who were beginning to study foreign literatures. But not only for us for specialists. It was it was really popular. Maybe partly due to a very interesting situation with her with Olga's origin because many people in Ukraine perceive Olga as Ukrainian writer or partly Ukrainian. So for a Nobel Prize for Olga, it was a huge misunderstanding in an Ukrainian media, a journalist from different media, commenting this prize or asking questions to the translators about her work. She was calling her Ukrainian writer. So and we were, we were asking them, please stop. She's not Ukrainian. Yes, she she has some Ukrainian origin. She has some Ukrainian roots, but she's not Ukrainian. We, I always tried to stress that this is even more interesting situation that she is not Ukrainian, but she feels these Ukrainian Polish borderland territories even better. And she knows them even better than many Ukrainian writers or Polish writers who are not that so how to say border oriented. It's very important how she shows the territories that we are used to perceive as Ukrainian, of course, taking into account its complicated history, but she shows it from the completely different point of view. After books of Jacob were published in Ukrainian, I, I saw the some reactions concerning the images of Ukrainians in this novel because there is only one hero, very marginal one who is evidently Ukrainian, despite the big part of the action takes place in Ukraine. There's only evident Ukrainian, only one, due to, we know it due to his name, Hrytsko. This Ukrainian guy is, he grew up in Jewish family, and he became, in fact, he became a Jew. He is not, he does not be a Ukrainian identity anymore in this novel, and it was, it was a circumstance which was discussed in Ukrainian reading community, why, why does it happen and, but it's very, the, the answer is very simple. The point of view, and this novel is a Jewish point of view, moreover, is the point of view of small, of a small, very marginalized group of the Jews, marginalized even within the Jewish community. So it's quite, it's absolutely natural that these, the group of the main heroes, these Jews, Jacob Franks, Sacht, they deal, first of all, with those whom they depend on, with Polish aristocracy, with church administration, with the king or the royal people from the royal court, etc. They do not communicate much with the other marginalized groups like Ukrainians. This is some, maybe some bitter truth we have to accept, we have to understand from our past. The real, very objectively represented landscape, multicultural landscape, and we, we see a real place of different national groups and these territories in, okay, and then it's 18th century but still many things, many stories from that time are actual for us. That's fascinating all stuff. Alison and Esther, is it time to turn the floor open the floor for questions from the audience. It is, it is. Thank you for such a masterful moderation Susan. Oh, been wonderful to listen to every the, the, the threads and the themes that flow in among all of these translators has been been wonderful. So, when this question came in rather early I think it was after the self introductions that we had. This is directed to Olga. The question is, you are the only translator on the panel, they noticed, who translates into a language that is not your native one. That is remarkable. How did your Brazilian Portuguese become native. How is your work received in Brazil, which we talked about. And you mentioned that there are other Brazilian translators so Yeah, well I'm Polish. I was, I was born in Poland. I learned Portuguese. It's not my mother tongue, but I treat it as my mother tongue because as I said before, I feel that I'm able to communicate better in Brazilian Portuguese than in my own mother tongue in Polish. I cannot explain it. It's just something that it's it's unexplainable to me. And while I've lived in Brazil, my family and my closest family, my husband is is Brazilian so I have daily contact with the language. And I also, I, well, I think that I can, I, when I write, I express myself better in Brazilian Portuguese than in Polish. So I, for example, I prefer to do translations from Polish to Brazilian Portuguese than from Portuguese to Polish. And I just feel more comfortable doing it. As to the reception. Well, I think it was, I think it was good. I mean, you would have to ask the readers. Yeah, I think you addressed that earlier and I think I mean the question that came from the viewer is one that has, we've addressed repeatedly in this conference translating the future. There's been a series called motherless tongues multiple belongings, in which I think it's nothing that the translation community around the world but especially in the United States is addressing who has the right for the authority to translate into this language or that language. I wanted to just point out, was it there was a moment earlier when everyone was asking. Did Barbara get to ask, do you have a question for the other translators I wanted to make sure that you. Yes, a question to whom want to answer. Probably, the novel has changed the oldest life. And, of course, I think, and I'm glad to know if this change also the work in the professional life of one of you in a certain way. It is something extended for us change from before the novel after the war, the novel in your work in your job. That's a great question. Nobody wants to. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Barbara, for this question. Yes, indeed, it changed. And I can, I think I can put that in a, in a very simple way I hope this doesn't sound too simple. It is just the continuation of the work is much easier. And in former times, especially when I started doing translations, I had to knock on dozens hundreds of doors. And now for the first time, really, the publisher was knocking and asking, do you want to. This is, it is, it is very simple, but it is also essential because this knocking on hundreds of doors is very exhausting if you have to do it for a long time. So it has changed the professional life quite a lot. Okay, it's the same experience I have in this moment for this reason I asked before I spent a lot of time trying to convincing Italian publisher to publish not only Olga. No, but also other Polish authors and I had a lot of difficulties. Now are the publishers that are calling me please, can you translate the next year or into two years or into three years. And so, yes, it's good for us. Yeah, of course, of course it's good. And I mean, I mean, we all know that it's, it can be a very hard job, and that it needs really a lot of time. I mean, translating is not only translating. We all know that translating is living with the texts you translate translating means that you that you order books from all over the country sometimes even from abroad because you need some background information. You actually, for me, I can say that every book is like doing a little, a little kind of studies. It's like around maybe maybe not exactly a bachelor, but I would say the books of Jacob were more than a bachelor. A PhD, no doubt. And for this reason, it is, it is just, it is just nice. It feels nice when you hear that knock, then from the publisher side, you do not have to talk by yourself. We have one more question, which I think is a fascinating one that. Okay. Oh, did you want to say something else? Like our stuff was head wanted to. Okay. May I ask one question one short question vice versa to Barbara concerning books of Jacob and her translation. When I was translating, probably it's this question is more proper to Barbara than to larger and Lisa because they were translating this novel together. The different experience is when you translate this, such a noble alone. When I was translating this book, I felt that I lost, I lost connection where the outer world for some long period of my time and of my life and my friends said me that I, I became very boring because after a couple of minutes of conversation. I always was beginning to talking about books of Jacobs and I was telling I was retelling some stories from the book and was it was extremely boring. It was such such a huge extent of absorption of drowning into the text. Barbara, do you feel the same. This is the question. Yes. And what this job on the books of Jacobs and that's a reminder, all of my, all these crazy here, 20 because I start in January, and I plan to finish at the end of the year. I planned each day, how many pages and, and, and then I didn't know very well the Jewish culture. So I have to study a lot, not only with books, but also with serial on TV. And thanks Netflix. I, I, and the poor husband I have will watch a lot of serial on Netflix also about the people, Jewish culture, Jewish serial in a dish, because I like also to hear how that it sounds. And I spent a lot of time in this studio on on on this book. And I didn't lost all the friends of my friends, but quite I think that I have to work a lot and it's clear to find that to find them again. And that to, to, to, to try to live a normal life again because this year is very particular not only for the couple for the couple in general. And, yes, this is the same, the same experience. Thank you that you remember me how I'm living in this period. I forget it. So the question that's come in, which is quite brilliant is in drive your plow over the bones of the dead. Olga has her protagonist, Janina Lusheko, and her friend dizzy, engage in the act of translating William Blake's poems. As translators. What was your impression of Olga's dramatization of the act of translation. She seems to be placing translation not only as a bridge between peoples and cultures, but also as a bridge between these lonely individuals. What was the experience of translating into your native tongue, an act of English to Polish translation. Anybody. I can say something about that because I had to translate it from English into English. And I was a bit rebellious about that the kind of through all my toys out of my pram at the beginning and said, I can't turn Blake into non Blake, this is nonsense and Olga was going to please try and Jennifer completely gave me inspiration. We don't work together Jennifer and I will leave each other in peace. But she really helped me because she just quietly said in her subtle way just said, Well, you know I think I would do something with that. And that was, you know, red rag to ball. So then I thought, well, how can I recreate five different versions before trained by Blake, which is totally counterintuitive to me to translate Blake into English. And I realized that the translation in Polish weren't actually terribly good. So all I had to do was do bad versions and follow what was bad about the Polish. But it felt very odd and it's the thing people have asked me about the most about translating that book. So I'm curious to hear what other people say about doing that. I'm just wondering, because I did it in Portuguese. What was difficult was that here in Brazil, there are almost no official translations of like there was just one, but it was very hard to get to it so what I did was was look for these translations also on the internet, like very amateur translations and I think I inspired myself on that crowd sourced Blake. The question is, when you translate Blake from Polish, is it still Blake in the end? I had the same problem. I had to look for the original. There was no translation into Romanian. I had to offer the original and then the Polish base because otherwise I would have gone further from the text. So I had to keep the Polish translation though, but I, there was a footnote explaining. So we're, we're actually starting to run, we are running down on time. But I'm going to ask in closing one final question. I think most people who are watching this have some connection they already are familiar with Ogletokartia's work. But since she does have so many styles and modes for people who might be coming to her work for the first time, where would you suggest that they start? Which book would you tell them to start with or essay or story? I will put in a plug for Jenny Croft's translation of the night, which you'll find on the Words Without Borders site at wordswithoutborders.org. That's the end of my commercial interview. I'm going to say any of the short stories are such a wonderful short story writer and I think that can get overlooked because Tony and I are planning on putting together a collection of short stories to have a whole book, but that hasn't happened yet. But you can easily Google Ogletokartia and Antonia Lloyd-Jones or Ogletokartia and Jennifer Croft and you can find some really wonderful short stories published in magazines of the last 20 years. And otherwise I think House of Day, House of Night would be where I would start translated by Antonia. We need to bring that back into print. All of you publishers out there watching because they're not available. And the copies that are available online are very pricey at this point. So let's make it accessible. So I think we are at the end of our time. This has been amazing. It's gone by in a heartbeat. I can't believe that it's been two hours. We could go on for much longer. And also this entire conference has gone by in a heartbeat. We started in May. We began the planning two years ago. And now we're at the end. So I want to thank all of you that I'm seeing on my screen right now, as well as the grand total of 86 participants who gave their time and energy and beauty and love and knowledge to this conference. And who helped Alison and I immensely to get through a difficult time. Barbara, you had books of Jacob. Alison and I had the conference. And I hope someday that we'll have a giant party somewhere wonderful where all 86 of you will gather in a single place and we will celebrate everything that all of you have done. Thank you. We thank you, Alison and Esther for this brilliant programming. I am sure that many other people thought that Tuesdays were the highlights of their weeks. Thank you. Thank you for saying that, Susan. Again, and for the last time, we'd like to thank our partners HowlRound, Penn America, the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center CUNY, the Coleman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and the Marnie Siebel Theater Center, and to the Princeton Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication, Boston University Center for the Humanities, the East Central European Center at Columbia University, and the Polish Cultural Institute New York for their support of today's event. And thank you to all the viewers out there who have extended the reach of translating the future much further than we ever imagined. Thank you. Bye. Thank you.