Conversation & Series

Translating the Future: “21st-Century Translation: What Has the Future Brought Us?” with Gabriella Page-Fort, Samantha Schnee, and Chad W. Post

Tue, Jul 7, 2020

1:30 PM–2:30 PM

Livestream via HowlRound; Register for link below

Watch the video recording of this conversation below:

Join us for Week 9 of Translating the Future as we continue our series of conversations between translators with “21st-Century Translation: What Has the Future Brought Us?” featuring Gabriella Page-Fort, Samantha Schnee, and Chad W. Post.

As technology has permeated every aspect of our lives, how has it affected literary translation? Hear from three of the most engaged industry professionals about the ways in which they have used data and technology to raise awareness and to determine what and who gets translated, as well as the promises and dangers that it represents for the future.

Free and open to the public, the livestream will start at Tue, July 7th, at 1:30 PM (EDT).

The conversations will be hosted by Esther Allen & Allison Markin Powell. This week’s co-host is Sean Bye. *Viewers can submit questions during the livestreaming at [email protected].

Speaker Bios:

Gabriella Page-Fort is Editorial Director of Amazon Crossing, where she has worked since 2010. Her list includes award-winning authors from around the world, such as Oksana Zabuzhko, Dolores Redondo, Laura Restrepo, Johary Ravaloson, and Keiichiro Hirano. She was named Publishers Weekly Star Watch “Superstar” in 2017. In her spare time, she is a literary translator from French and Spanish and a musician.

Samantha Schnee is the founding editor of Words Without Borders. From 2014-2017 she was a trustee of English PEN, where she chaired the Writers in Translation Committee, tasked with disbursing the PEN Translates and PEN Promotes grants. Her translation of Carmen Boullosa’s Texas: The Great Theft (Deep Vellum, 2014) was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award and shortlisted for the PEN America Translation Prize. She won the 2015 Gulf Coast Prize in Translation for her excerpt of Carmen Boullosa’s The Conspiracy of the Romantics and recently completed a translation of Boullosa’s latest novel, The Book of Anna.

Chad W. Post is the director of Open Letter Books, a press at the University of Rochester dedicated to publishing contemporary literature from around the world. In addition, he is the managing editor of Three Percent, a blog and review site that promotes literature in translation and is home to the Translation Database, the Best Translated Book Awards, and the Three Percent and Two Month Review podcasts. He is also the author of The Three Percent Problem: Rants and Responses on Publishing, Translation, and the Future of Reading. His articles and book reviews have appeared in a range of publications including The Believer, Publishing Perspectives, the Wall Street Journal culture blog, Bookforum, Rolling Stone, and Quarterly Conversation, among others. In 2018, he received the Ottaway Award for the Promotion of International Literature.

Translating the Future:

Visit Translating the Future page here for the complete conference Program, video recordings of previous events in this series, as well as archival audio recordings, articles, the original program, and more history from PEN’s 1970 World of Translation conference.

This conference and conversation series is co-sponsored by PEN America, the Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center, CUNY, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, with additional support from the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.