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.

To replace the other meeting places that will not be available this autumn, NORLA are hosting a number of digital alternatives.

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!

Visit us on Instagram

Click here for a compilation of all the book covers

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.

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.

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.

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.

Our July translator of the month is Kor de Vries from the Netherlands. He mainly translates fiction and throughout a long career has translated almost 60 books from Danish. Kor is also a consultant for Scandinavian literature and has previously worked as a lecturer in Danish at the University of Groningen, and as a Danish teacher.
His translation of Lotta Elstad’s novel I Refuse to Think will be published in July.

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.

NORLA’s offices are closed for holidays in July. However, on our Facebook page we have the pleasure of introducing a new writer every day. We look forward to sharing highlights from last year’s packed Guest of Honour program at Frankfurter Buchmesse, as well as a presentations from other sources.
We recommend that you sit back to be entertained and also enlightened.

On Instagram we post Book cover of the day, displaying Norwegian books published abroad through translation subsidy from NORLA. See all covers here.

If you happen to read Norwegian, you might also enjoy our personal reading tips for the summer, here.

We wish everyone a great summer and happy reading!

June sees the celebration of Pride Month worldwide, and on Saturday June 27 a digital parade show will be live streamed from Oslo (12:00 CET, GMT +1).
At NORLA, we are happy to join in the celebration by sharing a selection of gay themed books available for children and young adults. The list is made by IBBY Norway (International Board on Books for Young People), and here you may read more about the books originally published in Norwegian.
HAPPY PRIDE!

Norway as Guest of Honour at Frankfurter Buchmesse 2019 is the country’s largest overall cultural initiative abroad. The main goals set for the initiative by NORLA were achieved. The goals were to renew the foothold of Norwegian literature in Germany, to create new international interest in Norwegian literature, to showcase Norway as a modern cultural nation and to revitalize the relationship between Norway and Germany through cooperation on literary and cultural projects.

The Frankfurter Buchmesse is beyond doubt the world’s most important book fair when it comes to the sale of foreign rights and international dissemination of literature in all genres. The Norwegian guest of honour status was used as an arena for the presentation of a myriad of voices from Norway, as well as sparking the joy of reading and, not least, it served as a platform for promoting freedom of speech.