News
News from NORLA
NORLA’s autumn selected titles are ready!
We at NORLA are very proud and happy to present our selected titles for this autumn: 24 great books divided into fiction and non-fiction, for both adults, and children and young adults.
This year we have also made short films where the authors and illustrators present their titles. You may watch the films on YouTube.
NORLA goes on the air in week 38
To replace the other meeting places that will not be available this autumn, NORLA are hosting a number of digital alternatives.
Back to the normal allocation of translation support
On 15 April, NORLA introduced a new, temporary guarantee scheme for translation support. There was a need to support writers, translators, publishers and literary agents during an uncertain phase of the corona pandemic.
Jonas Rasmussen - Translator of the Month
September’s translator of the month is Jonas Rasmussen (b. 1975) from Sweden. Rasmussen – in addition to being a translator, primarily from Danish but also from Norwegian – is also an author himself. From Danish he has translated about twenty works in various genres with his main emphasis being poetry collections. But he has also translated novels, books for children and young adults and a biography. From Norwegian he has so far translated two books; Steffen Kverneland’s Munch (Placebo Press, 2015) and Mona Høvrings Because Venus Crossed an Alp Violet on the Day I Was Born (Lil´lit Förlag, 2020). Rasmussen has studied at Lund University’s Writers’ School and has a master’s degree in literary studies, as well as a master’s degree in library and information science. He lives in Lund and made his debut as a translator in 2007 and as a writer in 2008.
See Norwegian Books in Translation – Every Day!
Every day on Instagram, we share great translations of Norwegian books, as Instagram stories. Since 2004 alone, NORLA has supported the translations of over 5,500 books into 67 languages. And it’s a pleasure to show some of these books to you!
Click here for a compilation of all the book covers
The Autumn Book Season is Underway
This year a quite different autumn book season is underway. Many events, book fairs and festivals are postponed until next year. However, the Frankfurter Buchmesse is in full swing adapting itself to what will be a very different book fair this year, both digitally and physically – and NORLA is planning on taking part in several ways. We look forward to following up on last year’s Norway as Guest of Honour initiative and the contact we made with translators, publishers and booksellers.
Happy Women in Translation Month 2020!
Women in Translation, or WIT, is a global collaborative project to help remedy the discrepancy between the amount of works by women published in English translation, and how they are critically received. WITMonth is held held every August, to help promote women writers from around the world who write in languages other than English. Here at NORLA we would like to share our own contribution to WITMonth with you.
Jean-Baptiste Coursaud - Translator of the Month
August’s Translator of the Month is Jean-Baptiste Coursaud, from France. In 2008, Jean-Baptiste was appointed a Knight First Class of the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit because of his work promoting Norwegian literature in France. His CV reveals that it is exactly 20 years since he began working as a translator; time he has spent unusually well since he can look back on more than 100 translations from Norwegian alone. Jean-Baptiste also translates from Swedish and Danish, which means that in total he has translated almost 150 books since 2000! As a Frenchman, living in Germany, he really understands the art of juggling many languages. He has Norwegian literature “under his skin” almost – and has even tattooed several Norwegian quotes onto large parts of his body! He has really dedicated his life and body to Norwegian literature, which is why we are keen to learn more about his path to becoming a translator.
New dissemination grants for translators
We are now offering funds to translators who have ideas about how literature can be circulated either digitally, or in the usual manner, within the parameters allowed by the COVID-19 situation.
It could be a digital reading series, or a series of seminars; smaller, physical events in libraries; or other, totally different measures for the creative dissemination of Norwegian literature. Send us a short project description and a budget. We can provide grants of up to NOK 5-7,000 for these types of projects. The application deadline is ongoing.
Read more in Norwegian here.
Summer Greetings from Margit Walsø
When the summer holidays approach it is always exciting to summarise the activities we at NORLA have carried out in our effort to open doors to Norwegian literature around the world. But this spring was turned upside-down due to the COVID-19 situation, and this meant that many of the meetings we had been looking forward to were cancelled. There were no physical book fairs in Leipzig, London or Bologna, and no international guests in Lillehammer for the Norwegian Festival of Literature.
Luckily, however, we have been able to meet digitally. Many organisers have turned things round by grasping the opportunities available within modern technology. The Norwegian Festival of Literature reinvented itself and, in collaboration with NRK, Norway’s public broadcaster, became the biggest digital festival in the Nordic region. By doing this they reached hundreds of thousands of people who would have been otherwise unable to participate. For the first time, NORLA arranged webinars for international publishers and translators who should have been our guests at this year’s festival in Lillehammer.
