Sunday, September 21, 2008

Translation Contest

Deadline for submitting translations: November 3, 2008



Please translate only the selected parts:

Source 1: Jamaica Kincaid - collection of short stories At the bottom of the river (Blackness)
Target Audience: general readership

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Source 2: Gabriel Okara - The Voice
Target Audience: general readership
About the novel (from the back cover):
Okolo (which translated means 'The Voice') lives in Amatu. He comes back from studying with a desire to find out the meaning of it, of life. Chief Ozongo and the elders think that his questioning attitude threatens their traditional position. The chief sends his sinister messengers to find Okolo. He takes temporary refuge with Tuere, a girl branded as a witch. But he is dragged before the council and exiled. He goes up the river to a town. But he is trapped again, partly by hypocricy and partly by his own indiscretions.

'As interesting as the story itself is the language in which it is told. Okara appears to have made an attempt to render into English the expressive idiom of his own native tongue Ijaw." Bernth Lindfors in Books Abroad

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Source 3: Edwin Morgan - The First Man on Mercury

Target Audience: general readership
More info and the text of the poem: http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/literacy/findresources/edwinmorgan/poems/thefirstmenonmercury/poem.asp

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Source 4: Edwin Morgan - Message clear

Target Audience: general readership

The text of the poem: http://www.elgin.free-online.co.uk/misc/message.htm

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Source 5: Chuck Palahniuk - The Nightmare Box (short story)

Target Audience: general readership