Metaglossia: The Translation World

Many writers wonder about the various paths to publication. Is pursuing a traditional publisher the best route for their work, or should they consider the alternate paths that have become seemingly more accessible with the digital age?

When I taught sixth-grade at Sandburg in Anoka, I always took a class period early in the school year to re-address students’ penmanship.

OBJ, others celebrate UK-based Nigerian writer, Opeyemi

Saturday, 20 October 2012
From Left: Nigerian Ambassador to the Republic Of Netherlands, Mrs Nimota Akanbi; chief launcher, former President Olusegun Obasanjo; author of the book: “The Blue Ocean: Peace, Power, Prosperity” Miss Antoinette-Rita Opeyemi; her mother, Kehinde, and Nigeria’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Dr Dalhatu Tafida, cutting a cake at the book launch in London, on Monday. Photo: NAN.

SEYI GESINDE writes on the achievement of a United Kingdom-based Nigerian writer, Antoinette-Rita Opeyemi, who recently launched her new book in UK.

AUnited Kingdom-based Nigerian writer, Antoinette-Rita Opeyemi , has launched her new book entitled: The Blue Ocean: Peace, Power, Prosperity in the United Kingdom.
The 21-year-old author, Opeyemi, who developed a passion for writing at the age of six when she received her first certificate for her creative writing in primary school, said she was able to realise on time that writing was an essential part of her life.

After this self discovery, six years later, precisely at the age of 12, Opeyemi received an invitation from the International Society of Poets for a convention and poetry competition held in Florida, United States and she won a Young Poet Award.

Narrating her experience to E2E, Antoinette-Rita, made it known that while growing up, she gained most of her inspiration from her mother who supported her passion.

She, however, said that the fact that her father’s presence in her development wasn’t there, gave her more inspiration to follow her dream regardless of the circumstances and challenges she faced when pursuing her career in creative writing.

Her belief is that even as a resident in a foreign land, the colour of her skin cannot deter her from realising her dream. “You can’t use the colour of your skin as an excuse anymore,” Opeyemi said.

How to teach writing, reading and thinking
OCTOBER 11, 2012 BY JOANNE LEAVE A COMMENT
“Explicit teaching of writing makes kids better writers” and readers. Does writing improve thinking? Dan Willingham looks at the evidence in The Atlantic.
Not all writing instruction is helpful, Willingham writes. Students learn to write well if they’re taught “the nuts and bolts,” such as “text structure, how to use specific strategies for planning, revising, or editing text, and so on. . . . if a teacher does not show students how to construct a paragraph or a well-written argument, some will figure out it anyway, but many will not.”
Writing instruction improves reading comprehension, but again the details matter. When students write about what they’ve read — analyzing, interpreting, summarizing and answering questions — they build comprehension, Willingham writes. Explicit teaching of writing conventions helps students understand how authors use conventions.
It’s worth noting that these two advantages — better writing and better reading — will probably not accrue if most writing assignments consist of answering short questions, writing in journals, and completing worksheets — exactly the writing tasks on which elementary school kids spend most of their time (Gilbert & Graham, 2010). Students need assignments that include writing in longer formats with some formal structural requirements.
The research is not as clear on the question of whether teaching writing improves thinking, he writes.
There is a certain logic to the idea that students can become better critical thinkers by completing writing assignments. Writing forces you to organize your thoughts. Writing encourages you to try different ideas and combinations of ideas. Writing encourages you to select your words carefully. Writing holds the promise (and the threat) of a permanent record of your thoughts, and thus offers the motivation to order them carefully. And indeed some forms of writing–persuasive or expository essays for example — explicitly call for carefully ordering thinking.

Writing is a very risky business. You have to expose your soul to the world, then look at yourself in the mirror when the world fails to embrace your thoughts.

Writing is a very risky business. You have to expose your soul to the world, then look at yourself in the mirror when the world fails to embrace your thoughts.
Ernest Hemingway, American Author (1899 - 1961) -- Committed suicide, shooting himself with his favorite shotgun.

Edgar Allen Poe, American Author (1809 - 1849) -- A drug-addicted drunkard, he was found lying unconscious on a street in Baltimore, wearing someone else's tattered clothes, and died a couple of days later in a hospital where he had remained incoherent as to what had happened to him.

Virginia Woolf, British Author (1882 - 1941) -- Was depressed, filled the pockets of her overcoat with stones and walked into the River Ouse where her body was discovered several days later.

Tennessee Williams, American Playwright (1911 - 1983) -- Choked to death on a bottle cap in a hotel room in New York. Barbiturates were found nearby in the room.

Jerzy Kosinski, Polish-American Author (1933 - 1991) -- Committed suicide by placing a plastic bag over his head and suffocating to death. His suicide note read, "I am going to put myself to sleep now for a bit longer than usual. Call it Eternity."

John O'Brien, American Author (1960 - 1994) -- Committed suicide by gunshot two weeks after the movie rights to his novel, LEAVING LAS VEGAS, were sold.

Anne Sexton, American Poet (1928 - 1974) -- A Pulitzer Prize winning poet who committed suicide after returning home from a luncheon engagement by donning her mother's old fur coat, removing all her rings, drinking a glass of vodka, locking herself in her garage and starting the engine of her car. Death by carbon monoxide poisoning.

John Berryman, American Poet (1914 - 1972) -- Having been hospitalized many times for depression and alcohol detox, he committed suicide by jumping from the Washington Avenue Bridge in Minneapolis into the Mississippi River.

Seth Morgan, American Author (1949 - 1990) -- The heir to the Ivory Soap fortune whose fiance at the time of his death was singer Janis Joplin, was arrested for DUI in New Orleans. The next day, he rode his motorcycle into a cement embankment below a New Orleans Bridge, with a high blood-alcohol level and cocaine in his system.

Leo Tolstoy, Russian Author (1828 - 1910) -- Gave away his wealth and abandoned his family to become a spiritual hermit whereupon he soon became ill at a railroad station and died shortly thereafter.

Vachel Lindsay, American Poet (1879 - 1931) -- Depressed by failing health and financial woes, he committed suicide by drinking a bottle of lye. His last words were, "They tried to get me -- I got them first."

Rick Fontaine was born at Yale University Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut.

Mary Shelley has some serious staying power. The author was born a whopping 215 years ago today, and her work is more relevant now than ever. Not only is Frankenstein, which Shelley began writing when she was eighteen years old, still ubiquitous in classrooms, but the cultural phenomenon of the cobbled-together monster has and continues to inspire and inform artists of every stripe (Tim Burton’s rebooted Frankenweenie is only the most recent example, we think you’ve probably heard of a few more). To celebrate the life and legacy of this fantastic author, we’ve but together a list of a few 19th century writers who are continually — and sometimes exponentially — culturally relevant in our time. Though some of these authors did garner some amount of acclaim during their own lifetimes, we’d venture that they’re all much more famous and more important to the culture at large today. Click through to check out our list, and as always, add any writers you think we’ve missed in the comments.

If you’re a good writer, you can dominate the blogging world, right? Wrong. Good writers are often surprised to find they stink at blogging. With so much hype over the “Content is King” idea, it’s not surprising to find that many writers simply can’t understand why they are not rocking the blogosphere with their posts.
Do you need to be a good writer to be a good blogger? That’s debatable. But one thing is for sure: good writing skills are not all you need to be a good blogger.
Working in the Kitchen

The best comparison I can think of is a restaurant. If you’re a wiz in the kitchen with delicious recipes and impeccable skills, you can be an awesome chef. The chef of a restaurant is like a writer. You’re the core, the heart of the business.
But running a successful restaurant takes so much more. You have to do administrative work like hiring and balancing the books. You have to design the restaurant, choosing everything from seating to paint color. You have to market your restaurant and make business decisions, like menu prices. You have to be amazing at “front of the house” tasks, like greeting customers and dealing with complaints.
The chef is important, but the restaurant owner is the boss, and for good reason – he or she is the person responsible for the restaurant’s success or failure, and that person needs to know more than how to cook a chicken.
The same is true for a blog. You need more than just writing skills because your responsibilities stretch much farther.

“He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write.

Last Saturday night I attended a party as the culmination of the Woodward Library Summer Reading Program. I read a couple of my old favorites, Jack London’s “White Fang” and Michael Crichton’s “Prey.” I also read Bob Dylan’s and Woody Guthrie’s accounts of themselves and their lives. I stepped into an Amish romance and science fiction about regenerating body parts.
I also ventured into new waters and stretched myself, delving into new reading adventures. At the same time I was busy formatting my books for ebook distribution, studied Nancy Kress’s book, “Dynamic Characters,” dusted off an aging manuscript and started a new book collection of columns such as this one.
Writing this down, I suddenly knew where my time went over the past couple of weeks. A friend wondered where I got my recent energy. I can’t account for it but am glad it arrived when it did. Immersing myself in reading and writing stirs my creative energy and keeps me moving ahead. A far cry from my first high school writing assignment which I considered a form of torture.
I started writing seriously for my own amusement. Then I wrote as a marketing effort. As I moved into middle age, I started wondering about my experiences and those of people I encountered. I found that writing about adventures (of others and my own) helped me make sense of them and gave me a framework in which to begin understanding the world and its inhabitants, myself included.

Information Nigeria is currently seeking versatile and experienced writers who seek a platform to gain popularity, improve their writing skills amongst other...

Leila Aboulela’s latest novel Lyrics Alley, set in 1950s Sudan, was Fiction Winner of the Scottish Book Awards and short-listed for a Regional Commonwealth Writers Prize. It was long-listed for the Orange Prize as were her previous novels The Translator (a New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year) and Minaret. Leila was awarded the Caine Prize for "The Museum" included in her story collection Coloured Lights which went on to be short-listed for the Macmillan/Silver PEN Award. BBC Radio has adapted her work extensively and broadcast a number of her plays including The Mystic Life and the historical drama The Lion of Chechnya. Leila's work has been translated into 13 languages. www.leila-aboulela.com

MAEVE Binchy's wide circle of friends have paid glowing tributes to a well-loved author.

Her husband Gordon Snell was at her side when she passed away after a short illness.

The Lilac Bus author suffered greatly from arthritis, but pals said the determined, independent soul never complained.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny led tributes today, describing her as "a national treasure".

"Across Ireland and the world people are mourning and celebrating Maeve Binchy," he told the Herald.

Maeve (72) had completed an incredible 16 novels over her career which sold more than 40 million copies worldwide.

She had recently revealed to her fans that her health was failing.

"My health isn't so good these days and I can't travel around to meet people the way I used to," she wrote on her website.

"But I'm always delighted to hear from readers."

The author spoke last month at the Dalkey Book Festival where she read from her most recent short story -- poignantly revealing it would be her last.

Fellow author Cathy Kelly said this morning that the key to her success was writing about real people.

THE WRITER and journalist Maeve Binchy (72) died peacefully in a Dublin hospital last night after a short illness. Her husband Gordon Snell was by her side.

She was probably one of the best-loved Irish writers of her generation,

Born at Dalkey, Co Dublin, in May 1940, she was the eldest of four children. She is survived by her brother, Prof William Binchy, and sister Joan. Another sister, Renee, died some years ago. As she wrote on her website: “I was the big bossy older sister, full of enthusiasms, mad fantasies, desperate urges to be famous and anxious to be a saint. A settled sort of saint, not one who might have to suffer or die for her faith. I was terrified that I might see a Vision like St Bernadette or the Children at Fatima and be a martyr instead. My school friends accused me of making this up but I never looked up into trees in case I saw Our Lady beckoning to me.”

She attended the Holy Child Convent in Killiney, then UCD and worked for a time as a teacher at various schools in Dublin before she began writing for The Irish Times. In 1968 she was appointed its Women’s Editor. It was not what her mother intended. Maeve wrote: “My mother hoped I would meet a nice doctor or barrister or accountant who would marry me and take me to live in what is now called Fashionable Dublin Four. But she felt that this was a vain hope. I was a bit loud to make a nice professional wife, and anyway, I was too keen on spending my holidays in far flung places to meet any of these people.” She spent time in those years “on the decks of cheap boats, or working in kibbutzim in Israel or minding children as camp counsellors in the United States”.

Demain matin, C* et moi prenons l’avion pour Norwich. Je suis invité par le British Centre for Literary Translation, de l’université de West Anglia. Le programme de cette année est ici. Nous sommes cinq écrivains invités de différentes nationalités (Norvégien, Japonais, Espagnol, Hollandais, Allemand, et donc Français), chacun de nous co-animera un atelier (workshop) avec son traducteur anglais (dans mon cas ça sera Adriana Hunter qui a traduit un de mes romans en anglais). Les participants seront une dizaine (je crois) de jeunes traducteurs anglophones. Nous allons travailler sur une de mes histoires de La mauvaise habitude d’être soi : L’homme qui était une espèce en voie de disparition....

Mr. Davis, the longtime stand-up comedy partner of Al Franken and a writer who created many of the most memorable sketches on “Saturday Night Live,” died July 19.

Adventure for Young Readers, authors Karen Bonnet and Linda Maria Frank are giving informative, supportive author workshops at venues as varied as libraries, book stores, schools, senior citizen centers, adult education centers, and non-profits,...

Glenn Beck is back at the top of the bestseller list Friday with his new book, "Cowards: What Politicians, Radicals, and the Media Refuse to Say." In fact, it h...

I READ the news every morning while driving to work in Johannesburg. I can’t help it—big signs on the side of the road shout newspaper headlines to me as I wait for traffic to move.

Alger En marge du 5e festival international de la littérature et du livre de jeunesse -

Les participants à la rencontre organisée, mercredi à Alger en hommage à feu Mohamed Yahiatène, ont mis en avant l’exactitude et la fidélité des traductions du défunt, disparu le 16 mai dernier. Dans ce contexte, M. Mohamed Sari, enseignant de langue arabe à l’Université d’Alger, traducteur et écrivain, a souligné que les traductions signées par feu Yahiatène ont concerné des œuvres scientifiques et littéraires et étaient fidèles. Après avoir rappelé le parcours du défunt qui a suivi des études en Lettres et linguistiques, mais aussi en philosophie, M. Sari a indiqué que Yahiatène était un parfait bilingue qui compte sa propre contribution à la bibliothèque nationale. Les amis et proches du défunt ont rendu hommage à ses qualités rappelant sa passion pour la lecture et l’écriture. L’universitaire Khaoula Taleb Al-Ibrahimi, spécialisée en linguistique a évoqué les efforts fournis par le défunt dans la traduction des concepts et de certaines terminologies du terroir qui n’avaient pas d’équivalent en langue arabe en essayant de les adapter et les actualiser. Les participants ont déploré le départ de ce grand professeur universitaire dans le silence. Un de ses collègues, le professeur Abdelkader Bouzida a annoncé l’organisation, à la prochaine rentrée universitaire, d’une journée d’études sur la vie et l’œuvre du défunt à l’Université de Tizi-Ouzou.

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Writer Erica Kennedy has been found dead in her Miami Beach apartment. She was 42.