Translators are the most important emissaries we have for bringing Norwegian literature out into the world. Their work is of decisive significance and to spotlight this work, we started the interview series entitled “Translator of the month”. Here we will get to know some of those who translate from Norwegian and learn about their challenging work of transmitting Norwegian literature into all the different languages of the world.

The translator of the month for November is Kerri A. Pierce, who translates into American English. She has selected and translated three short stories in the November edition of Words without Borders and she has also written an introduction to the featured short stories by Gunnhild Øyehaug, Merethe Lindstrøm and Laila Stien. Kerri is a translator of both fiction and non-fiction from Norwegian, and she has also translated from Danish, Swedish, German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and Faroese.

Read more about Kerri here.

Those of you who understand Norwegian can read the interview here.

Now that things have calmed down after the Frankfurt Book Fair we are busy harvesting the fruits of a hectic week of meetings, idea development and establishing collaborations in preparation for Frankfurt 2019. In just a year’s time it will happen: Norway will take over the role as Guest of Honour after Georgia and we will embark on the most important year ever in the history of the export of Norwegian literature.

When you visit Frankfurt Book Fair for the first time, it’s handy to go along with colleagues who’ve already been there before. And it’s particularly handy to be there with colleagues who are very tall or who dash around in colourful, polka-dotted coats that make them easy to spot in a crowd. Because the site of the fair is just as enormous as everybody told you, it’s full to the brim with publishing people from all over the world – and the tempo is higher than you could ever have imagined.

One important aim when Norway is guest country at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2019 will be the promotion and highlighting of Norwegian children’s and YA literature – which is among the best we have to offer!
NORLA has set up a brainstorming group to help us come up with great ideas about what we can and should do to make as much as possible out of the whole event; it will be holding its inaugural meeting today!

The participants are:
Kristin Jobraaten (Ena publishing), Taran L. Bjørnstad (NBU, Norwegian Writers For Children), Birgitte Eek (NBI, The Norwegian Institute for Children’s Books), Harald Rosenløw Eeg, Bjørn F. Rørvik and Stian Hole. Heading the group is NORLA’s Andrine Pollen, Coordinator Literary Programme Frankfurt 2019.

We are looking forward to cooperating with this great group and establishing wonderful ideas for the guest of honour program for children and young adults.

Today, NORLA had the pleasure of welcoming four new translators to Oslo for the seventh season of our translators hotel at Hotell Bondeheimen:

The four translators are:
Jarka Vrbová (Czech)
Rasim Muratovic (Bosnian)
Sara Culeddu (Italian)
Agné Guigaité (Lithuanian)

We look forward to spending the next two weeks in their company!

October’s translator of the month was Anne-Marie Soulier, who translates into French and is extremely active in a very special area of Norway’s literary treasure: poetry.
She was born in Lunéville in 1945, but spent many years living abroad (in Germany, Norway, Algeria and England) before settling down in Strasbourg. She worked for many years at the university, where she mainly taught English. Nowadays, she works primarily on the translation of Norwegian poetry and has just completed translations of both Hanne Bramness and Olav H. Hauge. In addition, Anne-Marie has published several collections of her own poetry, often in collaboration with different artists, and some of her poems have also been set to music by composers.

You may read more about Anne-Marie here.

Read our interview (in Norwegian) here.

NORLA recently launched the website Books from Norway. The website provides foreign rights buyers with information in English about Norwegian titles. In addition to being a platform for rightsholders and rights buyers, Books from Norway is made for translators of Norwegian literature.

Foreign publishers have requested a comprehensive website containing information in English about Norwegian titles. In accordance with the objectives of the Frankfurt project, NORLA has responded to this challenge and created the website Books from Norway.

As of today, only 452 days remain until 1 January 2019. Starting on this day, Norway has Guest of Honour status in connection with the Frankfurter Buchmesse 2019. Throughout the entirety of 2019 Norwegian literature and culture will be spotlighted in Germany. How we look forward to this!

We invite you to take a closer look at our selected titles for the autumn of 2017 here.

You may also find our lists of titles in different genres from 2016/2017 and previous years, in our “Highlights” lists, here.

In conjunction with the celebration of the Feast of St. Jerome on 28 September in Oslo, NORLA’s Translator’s Award was conferred for the twelfth time.

The award is given annually to a translator of Norwegian literature and was established to spotlight the contribution made by foreign translators to Norwegian literature. The award shall go to a translation talent and is intended as measure to encourage the ongoing investment in Norwegian literature.

We at NORLA want to showcase the crucial work translators do, and this week we will be celebrating the patron saint of translators, St. Hieronymus. Even though our task is promoting Norwegian literature, we like to use the occasion of “Hieronymus day” to recommend good books that have been translated well into Norwegian.
Thank you to all the translators out there who make the worlds literature available to us!

If you happen to read Norwegian you may read our book tips here.
(And if you don’t, you might still be able to figure out the titles, as all are translations into Norwegian).