Adam Thorpe discusses translating Madame Bovary, 7 Feb 2013, Cardiff University

Respected novelist and poet, Adam Thorpe, will give a lecture entitled ‘My Nights with Emma B’ in the Optometry Building, Cardiff University on 7 February 2013 at 7pm.

Adam Thorpe

Adam Thorpe is a celebrated novelist, poet and playwright, who has recently branched out into the world of translation. His writing in various genres has garnered recognition throughout his career. His first collection of poetry, Mornings in the Baltic (1988), was shortlisted that year for the Whitbread Poetry Award. His first novel, Ulverton (1992), an episodic work covering 350 years of English rural history, won great critical acclaim worldwide.

After producing three novels in as many years, Adam Thorpe accepted a Vintage commission to translate Flaubert’s Madame Bovary with the idea that it would be a break from creating. Three exhausting years later, he was prepared to accept that literary translation is one of the hardest – if poorest paid – disciplines of all. Yet its addictive nature led him to accept a further commission to translate Zola’s Thérèse Raquin. Thorpe discusses his experience of the translator’s art and its perils, pains and peculiar satisfactions.

A panel, entitled ‘Why do we need a 20th translation of Madame Bovary?’, will take place from 3 to 5 pm on 7 February in Room 1.29 of Cardiff University’s Law Building. Panellists include Adam Thorpe, Alexis Nuselovici (Cardiff), Kate Griffiths (Cardiff), Amanda Hopkinson (City), Anthony Mandal (Cardiff) and Bradley Stephens (Bristol).

For further information on how to register for this lecture or this panel, please contact Kate Griffiths: GriffithsKS@cardiff.ac.uk

This lecture is part of Cardiff University’s Distinguished Lecture Series, which brings eminent and influential guest speakers to the University in order to showcase their work to a wider audience. It is also supported by the School of European Languages, Translation and Politics’ Research Group on Politics of Translating and the Languages, Cultures and Ideologies Research Unit. The lecture is hosted by the University’s College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and is free and open to all, but booking is essential.

http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/europ/research/groups/translating/index.html

http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/europ/research/researchunits/lci/index.html

Visiting speaker, 12 Dec 2012: Rupert Gatti on Open-Access publishing

Rupert Gatti (Cambridge) will be presenting his paper, ‘Open Access Publishing in the Humanities and Social Sciences’, at 4pm on Wednesday, 12 December 2012. The talk will take place in the Cardiff Humanities Building, Room 2.48.

Please note: this paper was originally scheduled to run at 2.30pm but is now running at 4pm.

Abstract
The nature and methods of academic book publishing is transforming radically in the wake of external pressures and the rising costs of scholarly monographs. Open-Access publishing is increasingly being perceived as a solution to the problem facing both institutions, whose library budgets are being cut year-on-year, and scholars, who are attempting to disseminate their work to the widest audience possible. One company that is responding to this situation is Open Book Publishers: an imprint run by academics for academics, which is changing the nature of the traditional academic book. Its books are published in hardback, paperback, PDF and e-book editions, but they also include a free online edition.

We are in the midst of what journalists are calling an ‘academic spring’. Researchers are realising that the high cost of academic books and journals means that only a select readership can access their work. Open Access (that is, making texts free to read online) helps spread educational materials to everyone, globally, not just to those who can afford it. It is increasingly becoming a requirement for publicly funded research to be made available in Open Access format and we are able to achieve this quickly and effectively. Open Book Publishers, a signatory of the Budapest Open Access Initiative, shows that an Open Access model of publishing can be sustainable. In his talk, Rupert Gatti will discuss the transforming landscape of academic publishing and its implications, as well as talking more specifically about Open Book Publishers and its vision.

You can read more of Rupert’s reflections on open-access publishing in his article for the Guardian Online and on the Open Book Publishers YouTube channel.

Autumn 2012 speakers’ programme available

The CEIR speakers’ programme for the autumn 2012 session is now available, by visiting http://cardiffbookhistory.wordpress.com/events/speakers/. Fuller details and abstracts to follow shortly.

Visiting speaker, 24 Apr 2012: John B Thompson on trade publishing in the present day

John B. Thompson will be presenting his paper, ‘Merchants of Culture’, at 5.15pm on Tuesday, 24 April 2012. The talk will take place in the Cardiff Humanities Building, Room 2.48.

Abstract
These are turbulent times in the world of book publishing. For nearly five centuries the methods and practices of book publishing remained largely unchanged, but at the dawn of the twenty-first century the industry finds itself faced with perhaps the greatest challenges since Gutenberg. A combination of economic pressures and technological change is forcing publishers to alter their practices and think hard about the future of books in the digital age.

In his book, Merchants of Culture (2010, 2012)—the first major study of trade publishing for more than 30 years—Thompson situates the current challenges facing the industry in an historical context, analysing the transformation of trade publishing in the United States and Britain since the 1960s. He gives a detailed account of how the world of trade publishing really works, dissecting the roles of publishers, agents and booksellers and showing how their practices are shaped by a field that has a distinctive structure and dynamic. By reconstructing this dynamic he is able to shed fresh light on how bestsellers are made and on why many thousands of books and authors find themselves marooned in an industry increasingly focused on short-term growth and profitability. Against this backcloth Thompson analyses the impact of the digital revolution on book publishing and examines the pressures—both economic and technological—that are re-shaping the field of trade publishing today.

The outcome of nearly five years of research, this major new book will establish itself as an exemplary work in the study of contemporary culture and will be essential reading for anyone interested in books and their future.

Visiting speaker, 30 Mar 2011: Claire Parfait on global literature and American publishing

Claire Parfait will be presenting her paper, ‘Global Literature and American Publishing’, at 1pm on Wednesday, 30 March 2011. The talk will take place in the Cardiff Humanities Building, Room 2.48.

Abstract
This paper looks at the evolution of the American book trade over the last decades, with a special focus on: 1) the best seller system and its consequences and 2) the ‘translation gap’. While few foreign authors are translated and published on the American market, the common complaint that American works monopolize best seller lists in European countries seems to have been greatly exaggerated.

About the speaker
Claire Parfait teaches American studies and book history at the University of Paris 13, where she heads the Centre de recherches sur les aires anglophones et francophones (Centre for the Study of Intercultural Relations in English- and French-Speaking Countries). She is the author of The Publishing History of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1852–2002 (2007), and co-directed with Marie-Françoise Cachin, Diana Cooper-Richet and Jean-Yves Mollier, Au bonheur du feuilleton: naissance et mutations d’un genre (2007). She has published various articles on book history and African American studies and is currently, with Marie-Jeanne Rossignol, working on an annotated translation of the Narrative of William Wells Brown, A Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself (1847).

Download a flyer for the talk (PDF).