2013年5月8日 星期三

Granta《格蘭塔》 The Best of Granta Travel , Granta 89: The Factory/ Granta’s List of Young Literary Stars

2005
Granta 89: The Factory  這一期的主題是「工場」,勾起我的許多美好的回憶。加上有篇難得的 JJ訪問翻譯稿,就買來參考。
The business of making things is becoming a memory for much of the western world—the very business that once gave mastery over the east and the south. Factories don't just make objects. They created (and elsewhere go on creating) a way of life.
Contents:
Ian Jack , Motley Notes (read)
Isabel Hilton, Made in China Desmond Barry, A Job on the Line Alec Soth , The Making of Parts Andrew Martin, Chocolate Empires Luc Sante, Plastics (read)
Joe Sacco, In the Milk Factory Neil Steinberg , Fancy Lamps (read)
Liz Jobey , Lister's Mill Tessa Hadley, Buckets of Blood Thomas Healy, Martin and Me (read)
James Lasdun , The Muse in the CellarAdolf Hoffmeister , The Game of Evenings
:這是篇訪問James Joyce 稿(從法文翻譯) 捷克文版  
Ding an sich. German phrase for thing in itself.
 這是J. JOYCE說他受 Swift 影響--( Swift) he was capable d'une serenite dans l'indecence
rl 說可能坐懷不亂乎?


The Best of Granta Travel [Paperback]

Bill Buford (Author)

  • Paperback: 416 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Books (February 4, 1992)
  • Language: English
A collection of 35 travel stories by Neal Ascherson, Bill Bryson, Bruce Chatwin, James Fenton, Martha Gellhorn, Amitav Ghosh, Isabel Hilton, Christopher Hitchens, Ian Jack, Ryszard Kapuscinski, Norman Lewis, Todd McEwen, Patrick Marnham, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Redmond O'Hanlon and others.



 On the Road to Timisoara
Christopher Hitchens 1990
The Best of Granta Travel ,

知名文學雜誌《格蘭塔》推出中文版

Jonathan Worth for The New York Times
《格蘭塔》的國際版本和一些過刊,這本文學雜誌準備擴張更多國際版本。

《格蘭塔》(Granta)是一本發源於倫敦的文學雜誌,問世於維多利亞時期,它的中文版創刊號將在下個月面世,由此在全球使用人數最多的五種語言中,《格蘭塔》將擁有其中四種語言的版本。這份一流的季刊自豪地稱自己為“新寫作雜誌”,其全球化計劃還遠未止步於此。

《格蘭塔》的主編約翰·弗里曼(John Freeman)今年夏天在紐約接受採訪時說:“五年後,我會看到我們有15到17個國際版。我不想徒勞地尋找那個在大學裡學習創意寫作、會訂閱我們雜誌 的學生,我想找到真的想看、真的需要這份雜誌的人,不管他身處何方,這意味着要在全世界範圍內尋找。”
除了英語和現在的中文之外,《格蘭塔》還用西班牙語、葡萄牙語、意大利語、保加利亞語、瑞典語和挪威語出版。外文版不僅刊登翻譯自英文版的文章,還經常有本土作家的原創作品,近年有一些還登上了母刊。(在五大語種中唯獨只缺阿拉伯語版。)

不管用哪種語言出版,每一期的《格蘭塔》都會圍繞着一個主題加以組織,通常是一個地域(英國、芝加哥、俄羅斯、澳大利亞)或一個話題(工作、性、醫 學、父親)。只不過圍繞這個主題的討論是以各種虛構或非虛構的形式進行的,參與者中有知名作家,也有不知名的,他們本身也是這份雜誌讀者群的一個重要組成 部分。

小說家理乍得·魯索(Richard Russo)說:“在我職業生涯之初,登上《格蘭塔》不僅讓我覺得高攀上了一些真正重要的作家並受到這一大家庭的歡迎,還提高了我的名氣,使我為人所 知。”他的最新作品、回憶錄《在別處》(Elsewhere)便脫胎於他最近給《格蘭塔》寫的一篇隨筆。“我們正目睹藝術和文學世界的嬗變,但《格蘭塔》 始終是一份特別兼收並蓄的偉大雜誌。他們做了許多不同的事情,而且做得很好。”

《格蘭塔》是一份文學雜誌,1889年創辦於劍橋大學,它這個很特別的名字源自流經劍橋鎮的一條河。作為一份學生刊物,它給一些剛剛投身寫作的英國 作家提供了發表機會,這些作家後來漸漸成長為二十世紀的傑出人物,包括A·A·米爾恩(A.A. Milne)、E·M·福士特(E.M. Forster、泰德·休斯(Ted Hughes)、邁克爾·傅雷恩(Michael Frayn)、塞西爾·比頓(Cecil Beaton)和史蒂維·史密斯(Stevie Smith)。

經歷了一段財政困難不斷加劇的時期後,《格蘭塔》在1979年死而後生,雜誌進行了改版,並開始關注劍橋社區之外的作家和讀者。四年後,它首次發佈了20位“最佳英國青年小說家”名單,這個每十年做一次的專題使《格蘭塔》在國際上嶄露頭角,成為該刊的一大特色。
第一份名單中能找到許多如今統治着英國文學的作家,如馬丁·艾米斯(Martin Amis)、朱利安·巴恩斯(Julian Barnes)、威廉·博伊德(William Boyd)、石黑一雄(Kazuo Ishiguro)、伊恩·麥克尤恩(Ian McEwan)、薩爾曼·拉什迪(Salman Rushdie)和格雷厄姆·斯威夫特(Graham Swift);之後的第二年還推出了40歲以下作家名單。1996年,《格蘭塔》首次發佈了 兩套“最佳美國青年小說家”。這一名單提攜了許多作家,如麥迪遜·斯馬特·貝爾(Madison Smartt Bell)、傑弗里· 尤金尼德斯(Jeffrey Eugenides)、喬納森·薩弗蘭·福爾(Jonathan Safran Foer)、喬納森·弗蘭岑(Jonathan Franzen)、妮科爾·克勞斯(Nicole Krauss)、洛麗·摩爾(Lorrie Moore)、加里· 施特恩加特(Gary Shteyngart)等等。

在認識到這類名單在文學和營銷上的用處之後,《格蘭塔》的國際版如法炮製:2010年用西班牙語和英語推出了“最佳西班牙語青年小說家”,上個月葡 語版出版了“最佳巴西青年作家”。英文版《格蘭塔》計劃明年做一個巴西作家名單專刊,中文版也有這個打算,緊隨其以英國為主題的創刊號之後。

《格蘭塔》中文版編輯彭倫在上海接受電話採訪時說:“《格蘭塔》的這些項目很有名,我們相信,這樣的名單會廣為流傳,就像是給好奇的中國讀者提供的 指南。在中國,外國文學的讀者群不大,大部分中國人甚至不熟悉塞林格(Salinger)、厄普代克(Updike)這樣的作家。但是我認為,年輕的、受 過良好教育的受眾群正在壯大,上過大學的人,他們想聽到一些新的聲音。”
《格蘭塔》雜誌社是個九鼎大呂的英國機構,不過現在運營它的都不是英國人。2008年入職的主編弗里曼是美國人;他的副手埃拉·奧爾弗里 (Ellah Allfrey)出生於津巴布韋,先是在美國讀書,後來才到英國的喬納森·凱普出版社作編輯;該雜誌的出版人和主要的出資人西格麗德·勞辛(Sigrid Rausing)是一位瑞典女家族繼承人和慈善家。

不過,為英語文學在國際上搶佔灘頭陣地並不是那麼輕鬆的事。《格蘭塔》第一次冒險辦的外文版是西班牙語版,那是將近十年前的事了,書商和批評家們一開始都不知道該如何處理這個以書的形式出版、內容無法分類的雜誌。

西班牙語版《格蘭塔》的聯合編輯奧雷利奧·馬傑(Aurelio Major)解釋說:“西班牙有許多重要的文學雜誌,但是把短篇小說、新聞報道以及其他一些非虛構和新新聞的體裁用如此原創的手法結合起來,還是頭一次。 左翼人士自然是少不了要把《格蘭塔》看成《格拉瑪》(Granma)。”後者是古巴共產黨的機關報、菲德爾·卡斯特羅的喉舌。

弗里曼說,《格蘭塔》的編輯們不是把外文版看作“特許經營項目”,而是將它們看成“在世界各地尋覓文學才俊”的星探。這種思路也有益於該刊的出版部 門“格蘭塔圖書”,這個部門過去簽過不少雜誌培養的作家,並帶領他們完成了更大、更有雄心的計劃。近來這種“異花傳粉”的實例包括賈斯汀·托里斯(Justin Torres)在2011年出版的小說《我們這些野獸》,以及奇內羅·奧克帕蘭塔(Chinelo Okparanta)即將出版的由奧爾弗里編輯的《幸福如水》。

奧爾弗里說:“它就像個圖書館,你可以在裡面挑選出最好的作品。”《格蘭塔》英文版商業上最成功的一期是2010年的巴基斯坦專刊,銷量達5萬多冊。書籍的銷量也有增長,因此《格蘭塔》的經濟狀況比2008年大衰退開始前還要好。

弗里曼說:“我們得到了西格麗德的資助,這對這本雜誌的生存來說至關重要。”但接着他說, 西格麗德·勞辛女士用於資助雜誌的資金“過去三年間削減了一半”,這主要歸功於美國訂戶的大幅增長以及廣告收入的增加,“雜誌的財務狀況比以前好”。

隨着《格蘭塔》的擴張,各外文版之間也開始相互推薦作品,有時候甚至會把倫敦甩在一邊。七個編輯部建立了每周一次的電子郵件傳閱交流,去年4月倫敦書展期間,弗里曼把他的外國同事聚到一起,到勞辛女士家中共進晚餐。

《格蘭塔》巴西版編輯總監羅貝托·菲斯(Roberto Feith)也參加了4月的那次聚會。他說:“在我看來,《格蘭塔》的國際化最有趣的地方是,它在為偉大的作品創造一個交流論壇,這種交流不是《格蘭塔》 英國版上的英語作品單方面地流向其他國家,而是四通八達和富有交互性的。這種交流過程究竟會把我們帶向何方,目前還不得而知,但一定會是一段有趣的旅 程。”
翻譯:貝小戎




Granta季刊 89 號』(2005年春),都是英國版
Granta 89: The Factory 這一期的主題是「工場」,勾起我的許多美好的回憶。加上有篇難得的 JJ訪問翻譯稿,就買來參考。…….

 

Granta 77: What We Think of America



The September 11 attacks on the US provoked shock and pity in the rest of the world, but mingled with the sympathy was something harsher: anti-Americanism. It wasn't confined to the West Bank or Kabul. It could be heard in English country pubs, in the bars of Paris and Rome, the tea stalls of New Delhi. ‘Hubris’ was the general idea: in one opinion poll, two-thirds of the respondents outside the US agreed to the proposition that it was ‘good that Americans now know what it’s like to be vulnerable’.
Is the US really so disliked? If so, why? In this issue twenty-four writers drawn from many countries describe the part America has played in their lives – for better or worse – and deliver their estimates of the good and the bad it has done as the world's supreme political, military, economic and cultural power.

List price: £10.99
Online price: £7.70
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In this issue

Pankaj Mishra: Jihadis
J. M. Coetzee: Youth
Francis Spufford: The Habit
Thomas Dworzak: Autumn in Afghanistan
Blake Morrison: Have You Decided to Love Me Yet?
Ziauddin Sardar: Mecca
Plus: Episodes and Opinions from Twenty-Four Writers
Hanan al-Shaykh, Ian Baruma, Amit Chaudhuri, Haim Chertok, Aleksa Djilas, Ariel Dorfman, Benoît Duteurtre, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, John Gray, Ramachandra Guha, Lu Gusum, James Hamilton-Paterson, Michael Ignatieff, Ivan Klíma, Doris Lessing, Yang Lian, David Malouf, Fintan O’Toole, Orhan Pamuk, Harold Pinter, Karim Raslan, Raja Shehadeh, Tara Bray Smith and Ahdaf Soueif.



Granta 89: The Factory

Memoir, reportage and fiction including Isabel Hilton in a Chinese factory, Luc Sante on serving his time in the working class and a strip by Joe Sacco on a group of Chechen refugees
Published: Spring 2005
List Price: £10.99
Online price: £7.70 (Online discount)


書業

《格蘭塔》文學新星名單更關注女性和「世界公民」

Nadav Kander
《格蘭塔》最近宣布的英國最優秀的年輕小說家的名單中,最年輕的女作家是28歲的海倫·歐耶米。

從1983年開始,每隔10年,倫敦文學雜誌《格蘭塔》(Granta)就會選出20位它認為最優秀的英國年輕小說家。這個名單已經成了文學界的風向標,因為很多初露頭角就被選出來的作家,之後不管在口碑上還是商業上都繼續獲得了成功,比如馬丁·艾米斯(Martin Amis),帕特·巴克(Pat Barker)和薩爾曼·拉什迪(Salman Rushdie)。
周一晚上,通過BBC直播的儀式,《格蘭塔》宣布了第四批名單。這批名單與之前的相比,有很大不同,很可能會引發熱烈的討論——那就是,在21世 紀,英國人的定義是什麼。這批作家中有很大一部分在英國之外出生或者是移民的子女,來自很多國家,比如巴基斯坦、尼日利亞、匈牙利、中國、澳大利亞和牙買 加。而且其中的女性作家首次超過了男性,有12位之多,1983年時只有6位,1993年和2003年也分別只有6位和8位。
將在該雜誌的春季版刊登的小說節選,有一半是部分或完全發生在英國之外。甚至有些小說里的人物都不是英國人,比如納迪法·默罕默德(Nadifa Mohamed)的《菲爾森》(Filsan)中的主要人物是個索馬里女軍官,而本傑明·毛爾科維奇(Benjamin Markovits)的《你不必這樣生活》(You Don’t Have to Live Like This)是關於路易斯安那州一名法國後裔努力在耶魯大學求學的經歷。
“我們並不是刻意如此,”《格蘭塔》的編輯約翰·弗里曼(John Freeman)這樣說。他是小說家評選小組的7名成員之一,“我們只是想找出最令人興奮的作家,碰巧這一代最擅長講故事的人是那些有着非常複雜的家園情感的人。
33歲的泰耶·澤拉西(Taiye Selasi)的第一本小說《加納必須走》(Ghana Must Go)最近剛剛出版。《格蘭塔》的選集中收錄的是她的短篇小說《司機》(Driver)。這個故事發生在加納,是以一個年輕、上進的私人司機的口吻講述的。澤拉西的祖籍在加納和尼日利亞,出生在倫敦,在馬薩諸塞州的布魯克萊恩長大,在耶魯大學和牛津大學就讀過,現在住在羅馬。
“有無數種選擇,”本月她在紐約宣傳自己的小說時說,“帝國主義的其中一個後果是,在你週遊世界回到故鄉之後,發現周圍的人也稱自己是英國人。如果 一個故事發生在阿卡拉,而裡面的人物在倫敦待過很長時間,那麼它與一個發生在騎士橋的關於茶葉的故事相比,就更不像英國小說嗎?”
對《格蘭塔》來說,這些名單已經成了一種全球性的品牌。1996年,它發佈了第一份美國最優秀的年輕小說家名單,如今這也成了一項十年一次的活 動,2010年它進一步擴展,增加了西班牙語小說家名單,去年又增加了巴西年輕小說家名單。弗里曼說,《格蘭塔》的巴西版和中國版將於年底刊登今年入選英 國名單作家的作品節選。
周一宣布的名單中包括兩位曾入選2003年名單的作家,扎迪·史密斯(Zadie Smith)和亞當·瑟爾維爾(Adam Thirlwell)。入選的最年輕的女作家是28歲的海倫·歐耶米(Helen Oyeyemi),她已經出版了4本小說和兩個劇本。入選的作家中有好幾個39歲,其中一位是莎拉·霍爾(Sarah Hall),她的作品節選來自她正在創作的小說,這個故事一部分發生在愛達荷州的野狼保護地,另一部分發生在她的故鄉,英格蘭北部的湖區。
“我是這個名單中的老太太,”霍爾在位於倫敦東北部的諾里奇的家中接受電話採訪時開玩笑說。她被選中突顯了2013名單的另一個重要特點:不那麼關注倫敦,即使是那些可能被看作是“傳統”英國人的作家們也是如此。
“不像美國那樣,英國沒有地域寫作傳統,在美國,來自南方的作家非常受推崇,”她說,“英國人覺得我是個怪人,是個來自北方的怪女孩,人們覺得她很前衛,因為她寫的是鄉村的故事。”
桑吉夫·薩霍塔(Sunjeev Sahota)來自旁遮普省的錫克教徒家庭,他甚至在作品中把國外和本地融合到了一起。他提交給《格蘭塔》評委會的節選,來自他正在創作的第二部小說《到 達》(Arrivals)。這部小說講述的是印度移民“隱秘的生活”,其中很多人是非法居留在英國,在謝菲爾德和利茲等北部城市的建築工地幹活。
除了美國人弗里曼,評選小組中還有兩個人與《格蘭塔》有關:出生在津巴布韋的副主編艾蘭·奧芙瑞(Ellah Allfrey)以及該雜誌的出版人西格麗德·勞辛(Sigrid Rausing),後者是居住在倫敦的一位瑞典女繼承人兼慈善家。評選小組的另外四位成員中有兩位評論家兼編輯:《每日電訊報》(The Telegraph)的加比·伍德(Gaby Wood)和《蘇格蘭人報》(The Scotsman)的斯圖爾特·凱利(Stuart Kelly),還有兩位小說家:羅米虛·古奈塞可拉(Romesh Gunesekera)和A·L·肯尼迪(A. L. Kennedy),他們都曾兩次入選1993年和2003年的名單。
英國名單一直都會引起爭議,通常集中在獲選作家與落選作家的優點比較上(除了上面提到的作家,另外12位獲選的作家分別是:娜奧米·阿爾德曼 [Naomi Alderman],塔什米娜.阿南[Tahmima Anam],內德·博曼[Ned Beauman],詹尼·費根[Jenni Fagan],亞當·福爾茲[Adam Foulds],郭小櫓,史蒂文·霍爾[Steven Hall],喬安娜·卡瓦納[Joanna Kavenna],羅斯·瑞信[Ross Raisin],卡米拉·沙姆希[Kamila Shamsie],大衛·紹洛伊[David Szalay]和艾維·懷爾德[Evie Wyld])。今年肯定也不例外,而且鑒於獲選作家的世界性背景,今年的反應甚至可能更熱烈。
“右翼媒體肯定會說這是世界末日,說這些姓氏怪異的外國人來這裡佔領了我們的小說領地之類的話,”肯尼迪預測道。她又補充說,“這是野獸的本性”,但這是沒道理的,因為如今的倫敦“是充滿了各種聲音的集合體”,這些聲音需要在文學中反映和表現出來。
對那些有幸入選的作家來說,事業會有明顯的提振,他們像是被放到了外國出版社的雷達顯示屏上,那些出版社把《格蘭塔》看作一種人才預先偵察系統。
“它意義重大,我當時沒有完全意識到這一點,”肯尼迪提到她第一次入選名單時的情況時這樣說,“如果你的第一部小說得到那麼多宣傳,一切都會好很多。你的出版商會更喜歡你,你的編輯會更樂於出版你的下一部作品,對國外的發行也非常有幫助。”
本文最初發表於2013年4月16日。
翻譯:王艷

British Writers, World Citizens: Granta’s List of Young Literary Stars

Literature in Any Language: Journal Takes That Literally

Every 10 years since 1983, the London-based literary magazine Granta names the 20 writers it considers the Best of Young British Novelists. The list has come to be regarded as a bellwether in the literary world, since so many of the writers singled out at that early stage of their careers — starting with Martin Amis, Pat Barker and Salman Rushdie — have gone on to great critical and commercial success.
On Monday night, in a ceremony broadcast on the BBC, Granta announced its fourth list, whose character differs substantially from that of its predecessors and is likely to generate an animated discussion about what it means to be British in the 21st century. A majority of the writers were either born outside Britain or are the children of immigrants, from countries as far-flung as Pakistan, Nigeria, Hungary, China, Australia and Jamaica. And, for the first time, a majority are women — 12, to be exact, compared with only 6 in 1983, 6 in 1993 and 8 in 2003.

Half of the excerpts that are to be published in the magazine’s spring edition take place partly or entirely outside Britain. Some, like Nadifa Mohamed’s “Filsan,” whose main character is a female Somali Army officer, or Benjamin Markovits’s “You Don’t Have to Live Like This,” about a Louisiana Cajun trying to make his way through Yale, do not even feature British characters.
“We didn’t set out to do this,” said Granta’s editor, John Freeman, who served on the seven-member panel that selected the novelists. “We just wanted to find exciting writers, and it happens that the big storytellers of this generation are people with a very complicated sense of home.”
Taiye Selasi, 33, whose first novel, “Ghana Must Go,” was recently published, is represented in the Granta collection with a short story called “Driver,” set in Ghana and told from the point of view of the striving young chauffeur of a wealthy man. Born in London into a family with roots in Ghana and Nigeria, Ms. Selasi grew up in Brookline, Mass.; studied at Yale and Oxford; and now lives in Rome.
“The options are endless,” she said this month while in New York to promote the novel. “One of the legacies of imperialism is that after you’ve gone far and wide and then come back home, other people can call themselves British too. A story in Accra with characters who have spent huge amounts of time in London — is that any less British than a story over tea in Knightsbridge?”
For Granta itself, the lists have become something of a global trademark. In 1996 it published its first Best of Young American Novelists list, now also a once-a-decade event, and has recently extended that franchise to include Spanish-language novelists in 2010, and young Brazilian novelists last year. Granta’s Brazilian and Chinese editions will publish excerpts by the authors on this year’s British list by the end of the year, Mr. Freeman said.
The list announced on Monday includes two writers who are carry-overs from 2003, Zadie Smith and Adam Thirlwell. The youngest of the women chosen, Helen Oyeyemi, is 28 and has already published four novels and two plays, and several are 39, among them Sarah Hall, who contributed an excerpt from a novel in progress that takes place partly on a wolf preserve in Idaho and partly in her native Lake District in the north of England.
“I’m the grande dame of this list,” Ms. Hall said jokingly during a telephone interview from her home in Norwich, northeast of London. Her presence underlines another notable feature of the 2013 list: less of a focus on London, even among writers who might be considered “traditionally” British.
“Regional writing does not have the pedigree here that it does in America, which honors writers from the South,” she said. “In the U.K., I am considered strange, this exotic girl from the North who is told she is avant-garde because she is writing about the country.”
Sunjeev Sahota, the son of Punjabi Sikhs, has even managed to combine both the foreign and regional streams in his work. The excerpt submitted to the Granta jury on his behalf, from a second novel he is now writing, is called “Arrivals” and examines what he calls “the hidden lives” of migrants from India, many of them in Britain illegally, working construction in the northern cities of Sheffield and Leeds.
Besides Mr. Freeman, an American, two other people associated with Granta served on the panel: the deputy editor, Ellah Allfrey, who was born in Zimbabwe, and the magazine’s publisher, Sigrid Rausing, a Swedish heiress and philanthropist who lives in London. The jury’s other four members were two British critics and editors, Gaby Wood of The Telegraph and Stuart Kelly of The Scotsman, and two novelists: Romesh Gunesekera, and A. L. Kennedy, who was on the Granta list in both 1993 and 2003.
The British list has always provoked debate there, usually focused on the merits of those selected, as opposed to those who were left off. (Besides the names mentioned above, the other 12 are Naomi Alderman, Tahmima Anam, Ned Beauman, Jenni Fagan, Adam Foulds, Xiaolu Guo, Steven Hall, Joanna Kavenna, Ross Raisin, Kamila Shamsie, David Szalay and Evie Wyld.) This year promises to be no exception, and reactions may be even more heated because of the cosmopolitan backgrounds of the writers who have been chosen.
“The right-wing press will undoubtedly say it’s the end of the world, it’s all these foreigners, people with funny surnames, coming over and taking our novels, yada, yada, yada,” Ms. Kennedy predicted. “It’s the nature of the beast” but unjustified, she added, because London today “is a teeming mass of different voices” that need to be reflected and represented in literature.
For writers fortunate to make the list, the distinction is clearly a career boost, putting them on the radar screens of foreign publishers, who use Granta as a kind of advance talent detection system.
“It was huge, in ways that I didn’t fully understand at the time,” Ms. Kennedy said of her first appearance on the list. “If you get that much publicity for your first novel, everything works better. It makes your publisher like you more, makes your editor happier about your next project, and is enormously helpful abroad.”

知名文学杂志《格兰塔》推出中文版

When the first issue of its new Chinese-language edition appears next month, the London-based literary journal Granta, a publication that has existed in English since the Victorian era, will have a presence in four of the five most widely spoken languages. But plans for the globalization of a leading quarterly that proudly calls itself “the magazine of new writing” don’t stop there.
《格兰塔》(Granta)是一本发源于伦敦的文学杂志,问世于维多利亚时期,它的中文版创刊号将在下个月面世,由此在全球使用人数最多的五种语言中,《格兰塔》将拥有其中四种语言的版本。这份一流的季刊自豪地称自己为“新写作杂志”,其全球化计划还远未止步于此。
“In five years I could see us with 15 or 17 foreign editions,” John Freeman, the editor of Granta, said in an interview in New York this summer. “Rather than beat our heads against the wall trying to find the one creative writing student at a university who will subscribe, I want to find the people who really want and really need the magazine, wherever they are, and that means looking at the world.”
《格兰塔》的主编约翰·弗里曼(John Freeman)今年夏天在纽约接受采访时说:“五年后,我会看到我们有15到17个国际版。我不想徒劳地寻找那个在大学里学习创意写作、会订阅我们杂志 的学生,我想找到真的想看、真的需要这份杂志的人,不管他身处何方,这意味着要在全世界范围内寻找。”
Besides English and now Chinese, Granta is also published in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Bulgarian, Swedish and Norwegian. The foreign-language editions not only feature translated versions of articles that originally appeared in the English-language Granta, but many of the editions also commission original work by local writers, some of which has in recent years made its way into the parent magazine. (Arabic is the only language in the top five that doesn’t have its own edition.)
除了英语和现在的中文之外,《格兰塔》还用西班牙语、葡萄牙语、意大利语、保加利亚语、瑞典语和挪威语出版。外文版不仅刊登翻译自英文版的文章,还经常有本土作家的原创作品,近年有一些还登上了母刊。(在五大语种中唯独只缺阿拉伯语版。)
Jonathan Worth for The New York Times
《格兰塔》的国际版本和一些过刊,这本文学杂志准备扩张更多国际版本。
Regardless of the language in which Granta is published, each issue is organized around a single theme, usually a place (Britain, Chicago, Russia, Australia) or a subject (work, sex, medicine, fathers). But the chosen subject is addressed through various fiction and nonfiction genres, supplied by writers both celebrated and unknown, who also make up a significant part of the magazine’s readership.
不管用哪种语言出版,每一期的《格兰塔》都会围绕着一个主题加以组织, 通常是一个地域(英国、芝加哥、俄罗斯、澳大利亚)或一个话题(工作、性、医学、父亲)。只不过围绕这个主题的讨论是以各种虚构或非虚构的形式进行的,参 与者中有知名作家,也有不知名的,他们本身也是这份杂志读者群的一个重要组成部分。
“Early in my career being in Granta not only made me feel like I was riding on the coattails of some really important writers and being welcomed into the family, but stepped up my reputation and gave me some name recognition,” said the novelist Richard Russo, whose latest book, a memoir called “Elsewhere,” grew out of a recent essay he wrote for Granta. “The world of arts and literature is changing before our eyes, but Granta continues to be extraordinarily eclectic and a great magazine. They do a lot of different things there, and do them all well.”
小说家理查德·鲁索(Richard Russo)说:“在我职业生涯之初,登上《格兰塔》不仅让我觉得高攀上了一些真正重要的作家并受到这一大家庭的欢迎,还提高了我的名气,使我为人所 知。”他的最新作品、回忆录《在别处》(Elsewhere)便脱胎于他最近给《格兰塔》写的一篇随笔。“我们正目睹艺术和文学世界的嬗变,但《格兰塔》 始终是一份特别兼收并蓄的伟大杂志。他们做了许多不同的事情,而且做得很好。”
Granta was founded in 1889 as a literary magazine at Cambridge University, its unusual name deriving from a river that flows through the town. As a student publication it provided an early outlet for British writers who would go on to be prominent in the 20th century, including A. A. Milne, E. M. Forster, Ted Hughes, Michael Frayn, Cecil Beaton and Stevie Smith.
《格兰塔》是一份文学杂志,1889年创办于剑桥大学,它这个很特别的 名字源自流经剑桥镇的一条河。作为一份学生刊物,它给一些刚刚投身写作的英国作家提供了发表机会,这些作家后来渐渐成长为二十世纪的杰出人物,包括 A·A·米尔恩(A.A. Milne)、E·M·福斯特(E.M. Forster、泰德·休斯(Ted Hughes)、迈克尔·傅雷恩(Michael Frayn)、塞西尔·比顿(Cecil Beaton)和史蒂维·史密斯(Stevie Smith)。
In its modern incarnation, though, Granta dates to 1979, when, after a period of mounting financial difficulties, the magazine retooled and began to focus on writers and readers beyond the Cambridge community. Four years later it published its first list of 20 “Best Young British Novelists,” now a decennial feature that has given Granta international visibility and become part of the magazine’s identity.
经历了一段财政困难不断加剧的时期后,《格兰塔》在1979年死而后生,杂志进行了改版,并开始关注剑桥社区之外的作家和读者。四年后,它首次发布了20位“最佳英国青年小说家”名单,这个每十年做一次的专题使《格兰塔》在国际上崭露头角,成为该刊的一大特色。
The initial list included many of the writers who now dominate British letters, among them Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, William Boyd, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie and Graham Swift; a new listing of writers under 40 is due next year. In 1996 Granta published the first of what are now two sets of “Best Young American Novelists.” The lists gave early lifts to the careers of Madison Smartt Bell, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jonathan Franzen, Nicole Krauss, Lorrie Moore, Gary Shteyngart and others.
第一份名单中能找到许多如今统治着英国文学的作家,如马丁·艾米斯 (Martin Amis)、朱利安·巴恩斯(Julian Barnes)、威廉·博伊德(William Boyd)、石黑一雄(Kazuo Ishiguro)、伊恩·麦克尤恩(Ian McEwan)、萨尔曼·拉什迪(Salman Rushdie)和格雷厄姆·斯威夫特(Graham Swift);之后的第二年还推出了40岁以下作家名单。1996年,《格兰塔》首次发布了 两套“最佳美国青年小说家”。这一名单提携了许多作家,如麦迪逊·斯马特·贝尔(Madison Smartt Bell)、杰弗里· 尤金尼德斯(Jeffrey Eugenides)、乔纳森·萨弗兰·福尔(Jonathan Safran Foer)、乔纳森·弗兰岑(Jonathan Franzen)、妮科尔·克劳斯(Nicole Krauss)、洛丽·摩尔(Lorrie Moore)、加里· 施特恩加特(Gary Shteyngart)等等。
Recognizing the literary and marketing utility of that device, Granta’s international editions have followed suit: “The Best of Young Spanish-Language Novelists” appeared in Spanish in 2010 and in English last year, and last month the Portuguese-language edition published “The Best Young Brazilian Writers.” The English-language Granta plans to devote an issue to the Brazilian list next year, as does the Chinese edition, right after its inaugural issue, whose theme is Britain.
在认识到这类名单在文学和营销上的用处之后,《格兰塔》的国际版如法炮 制:2010年用西班牙语和英语推出了“最佳西班牙语青年小说家”,上个月葡语版出版了“最佳巴西青年作家”。英文版《格兰塔》计划明年做一个巴西作家名 单专刊,中文版也有这个打算,紧随其以英国为主题的创刊号之后。
“Granta is quite famous for these projects, and we believe such lists travel well and are just like a guide for curious Chinese readers,” Peng Lun, editor of the Chinese edition of Granta, said in a telephone interview from Shanghai. “The readership for foreign literature is not very big here, and Chinese people are mostly unfamiliar even with writers like Salinger and Updike. But I think there is a growing audience of young, educated people, university graduates, who want to get to know these new voices.”
《格兰塔》中文版编辑彭伦在上海接受电话采访时说:“《格兰塔》的这些 项目很有名,我们相信,这样的名单会广为流传,就像是给好奇的中国读者提供的指南。在中国,外国文学的读者群不大,大部分中国人甚至不熟悉塞林格 (Salinger)、厄普代克(Updike)这样的作家。但是我认为,年轻的、受过良好教育的受众群正在壮大,上过大学的人,他们想听到一些新的声 音。”
Though Granta is a venerable British institution, it is run these days by people whose origins are not. Mr. Freeman, who joined the magazine in 2008, is an American; his deputy, Ellah Allfrey, was born in Zimbabwe and partly educated in the United States before becoming an editor at the British publishing house Jonathan Cape; while the magazine’s publisher and chief benefactor, Sigrid Rausing, is a Swedish heiress and philanthropist.
《格兰塔》杂志社是个九鼎大吕的英国机构,不过现在运营它的都不是英国 人。2008年入职的主编弗里曼是美国人;他的副手埃拉·奥尔弗里(Ellah Allfrey)出生于津巴布韦,先是在美国读书,后来才到英国的乔纳森·凯普出版社作编辑;该杂志的出版人和主要的出资人西格丽德·劳辛(Sigrid Rausing)是一位瑞典女家族继承人和慈善家。
Establishing international beachheads for literary writing in English hasn’t always been easy however. Granta’s first foreign-language venture was in Spanish, begun nearly a decade ago, and booksellers and critics initially did not know what to make of a magazine published in book format with content that seemed to resist classification.
不过,为英语文学在国际上抢占滩头阵地并不是那么轻松的事。《格兰塔》第一次冒险办的外文版是西班牙语版,那是将近十年前的事了,书商和批评家们一开始都不知道该如何处理这个以书的形式出版、内容无法分类的杂志。
“Spain has had many important literary magazines, but not one that mixed short fiction, reportage and other forms of nonfiction and new journalism in an original way,” Aurelio Major, co-editor of Granta en Español, explained. “And of course on more than one occasion the left-wing public has confused Granta with Granma,” the Cuban Communist Party newspaper that acts as Fidel Castro’s mouthpiece.
西班牙语版《格兰塔》的联合编辑奥雷利奥·马杰(Aurelio Major)解释说:“西班牙有许多重要的文学杂志,但是把短篇小说、新闻报道以及其他一些非虚构和新新闻的体裁用如此原创的手法结合起来,还是头一次。 左翼人士自然是少不了要把《格兰塔》看成《格拉玛》(Granma)。”后者是古巴共产党的机关报、菲德尔·卡斯特罗的喉舌。
Mr. Freeman said that Granta’s editors have come to think of the foreign-language editions “not as franchises, but as scouts” for literary talent all over the world. That approach has also worked to the advantage of the magazine’s book publishing arm, called Granta Books, which has a history of signing up writers nurtured by the magazine and steering them through larger, more ambitious projects. Recent examples of that cross-pollination include Justin Torres’s 2011 novel, “We the Animals,” and Chinelo Okparanta’s forthcoming “Happiness, Like Water,” which Ms. Allfrey is editing.
弗里曼说,《格兰塔》的编辑们不是把外文版看作“特许经营项目”,而是 将它们看成“在世界各地寻觅文学才俊”的星探。这种思路也有益于该刊的出版部门“格兰塔图书”,这个部门过去签过不少杂志培养的作家,并带领他们完成了更 大、更有雄心的计划。近来这种“异花传粉”的实例包括贾斯汀·托里斯(Justin Torres)在2011年出版的小说《我们这些野兽》,以及奇内罗·奥克帕兰塔(Chinelo Okparanta)即将出版的由奥尔弗里编辑的《幸福如水》。
“It’s like having a library of the best writing to pick from,” she said.  In English, Granta’s most commercially successful issue was one in 2010 devoted to Pakistan, with more than 50,000 copies sold. But book sales have also grown, putting Granta in a stronger economic position than before the Great Recession began in 2008.
奥尔弗里说:“它就像个图书馆,你可以在里面挑选出最好的作品。”《格兰塔》英文版商业上最成功的一期是2010年的巴基斯坦专刊,销量达5万多册。书籍的销量也有增长,因此《格兰塔》的经济状况比2008年大衰退开始前还要好。
“We’re supported by Sigrid, and that’s essential to the magazine’s existence,” Mr. Freeman said. But the amount Ms. Rausing has spent to support the magazine “has been cut in half in the last three years,” he continued, thanks largely to subscriber growth in the United State and more ads. “Financially the magazine is doing better than it was,” he added.
弗里曼说:“我们得到了西格丽德的资助,这对这本杂志的生存来说至关重要。”但接着他说, 西格丽德·劳辛女士用于资助杂志的资金“过去三年间削减了一半”,这主要归功于美国订户的大幅增长以及广告收入的增加,“杂志的财务状况比以前好”。
As Granta expands, the various foreign-language editions are making recommendations to one another directly, sometimes even bypassing London. A weekly round-robin e-mail exchange among the seven editions has been instituted, and last April, during the London book fair, Mr. Freeman brought his foreign colleagues together for a dinner at Ms. Rausing’s home.
随着《格兰塔》的扩张,各外文版之间也开始相互推荐作品,有时候甚至会把伦敦甩在一边。七个编辑部建立了每周一次的电子邮件传阅交流,去年4月伦敦书展期间,弗里曼把他的外国同事聚到一起,到劳辛女士家中共进晚餐。
“To me the most interesting aspect of the globalization of Granta is that it’s creating a forum for the exchange of great writing that is not limited to a flow of English-language writing from Granta U.K. to each of the other countries but moves in all directions,” said Roberto Feith, editorial director of Granta’s Brazilian edition and an attendee at the April gathering. “We have yet to see where this process is going to take us, but it’s going to be an interesting ride.”
《格兰塔》巴西版编辑总监罗贝托·菲斯(Roberto Feith)也参加了4月的那次聚会。他说:“在我看来,《格兰塔》的国际化最有趣的地方是,它在为伟大的作品创造一个交流论坛,这种交流不是《格兰塔》 英国版上的英语作品单方面地流向其他国家,而是四通八达和富有交互性的。这种交流过程究竟会把我们带向何方,目前还不得而知,但一定会是一段有趣的旅 程。”
翻译:贝小戎


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