Posts Tagged ‘Brussels’
Bains Connective Come Together
Bains Connective is a multidisciplinary arts laboratory based in Brussels. They recently published the ‘Come Together’ issue in its Thematics series, featuring a series of essays and interviews on different approaches to becoming a community. Find out more about Bains Connective and their work on their brand-new website. I took care of the proofreading for ‘Come Together’.
Watteau: The Music Lesson
The exhibition Antoine Watteau (1684-1721): The Music Lesson runs at the Bozar Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels from 8 February until 12 May. I worked on the translation of the English audioguide.You can find more info on the exhibition on the Bozar website. The leaflet below shows a detail of La Partie carrée.
Belgian Architecture Beyond Belgium
The Belgian architecture review A+ is bringing out a special issue in English at the end of the month devoted entirely to ‘Belgian Architecture Beyond Belgium’.
This special issue provides the first overview of the export of Belgian architecture. It opens with a historical synthesis of Belgian architecture on the international stage in the 19th and 20th centuries. This is followed by three round-table discussions on the subject of Belgian architecture outside Belgium featuring key players in the field, whether architects, town planners, engineers or academics. Twenty-five international projects by Belgian architectural firms are then given concise presentations illustrated with photographs and plans.
My fellow translator Gregory Ball provided the English translation of the introduction, and I translated all other materials from Dutch and French into English. I was also responsible for proofreading the entire issue.
Daan van Golden: Apperception at WIELS
Apperception, an exhibition of works by the Dutch artist Daan van Golden, opened today at WIELS, the contemporary art centre in Brussels. The exhibition provides an overview of van Golden’s work from the 1960s until today. It mostly consists of paintings, although it does also include a series of van Golden’s photographs of his daughter Diana. Apperception runs until 29 April 2012.
The painting pictured below on the cover of the visitor’s guide is entitled White Painting and dates from 1966. I was responsible for the English translation of the visitor’s guide.
Grand Hotel Europa, a tribute to literary translators
A lot of people were at the Flagey arts centre in Brussels this past Friday for Grand Hotel Europa, a tribute to literary translators organized by the European Platform for Literary Translation PETRA. And although I’m not a literary translator, I was one of those attending the event.
The evening started with a panel discussion featuring the Croatian writer Dubravka Ugresic, the Japanese-to-Dutch translator Luk van Haute, and the Arabic-to-English translator and researcher Alice Guthrie. They discussed various aspects of translation, from the changes made by translators to the original and the differences between “big” and “small” languages with regards to the book market. It was an interesting warm-up to the main event, which was held in the main hall.
The main event began with a brief talk entitled “Found in Translation” by the American writer Michael Cunningham, who talked of the writer, translator and reader each as translators in their own right: the writer translating his ideas into words, the translator turning one language into another, and readers each translating the words into their own mental images. Cunningham’s talk was followed by a live translation into three languages (French, Dutch, and a third one I couldn’t recognize) of a short text from Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet: their translations were shown live on a big screen in real time, and it was interesting and amusing seeing the differences in their approaches, even on such a short text. Alberto Manguel then gave a talk entitled “Translation: A Miracle” in which he gave an overview of translation in South America from La Malinche (who acted as Cortes’s translator in the early 16th century) until today. Dubravka Ugresic, a Croatian writer living in the Netherlands, finished off the evening with a talk entitled “Out of Nation Zone”, a witty and perceptive view of translation from the perspective of a woman writing in a “small” language. I left Flagey with some food for thought.
PaTRiCK LeNNoN TRaNSLaTioN 