In Another Voice:
Translation Competition
UPDATE: WINNERS ANNOUNCED AND EPISODE OUT
Over the last year, our global community has suffered and continues to suffer immense and sustained loss, but we have also been reminded how important international, intercultural communication is and will always be.
In an attempt to bring international artists together, In Another Voice Podcast is thrilled to announce a translation competition working with the poetry of three incredible poets.
For a special pandemic episode, we’re asking anyone from anywhere to submit a translation of one of the three poems we’ll be featuring. The winner will receive a cash prize of 35GBP and will also get the chance to meet the poet, workshop their translation with them, and have their translation featured on the episode.
The poems are in Russian, Spanish and French, and all translations should be into English. The competition opens April 5th, 2021 and closes May 1, 2021 at Midnight BST.
Get Involved!
Rules + Info
The competition is open to anyone.
You may submit one translation of one of the poems provided below. Please only submit one entry.
The translation must be into English.
Joint submissions will not be accepted.
The competition will close May 1, 2021 at midnight BST.
Please translate the poem into English in a way that it can be read as a poem in itself! Consider rhyme, rhythm, and meaning: this is much more valuable than a word for word translation, and is what we’ll be looking for.
Please email us, or DM us on our Instagram or Twitter with any questions.
Instructions
Select one of the poems provided below, and translate it into English.
To submit, please email podcastinanothervoice@gmail.com with the subject line “[language of poem]- Translation Submission”. (e.g. Russian-Translation Submission).
Attach your translation as a Word Document or a PDF. Please ensure your name is not anywhere on the document, as judging will happen anonymously.
Submissions close May 1, at midnight BST.
Winners will be announced May 31 on our social media and will be contacted by email to receive their prize.
Ready? Here are the poems:
Meet the poets.
Chloé Savoie-Bernard.
Chloé Savoie-Bernard is a writer who works various forms: poetry, short story, literary criticism, and translation. As an editor she works at L’Hexagone, a publishing house in Montréal and at Estuaire, a literary poetry journal. She is also developing a practice in performance. She has published several books, most notably Des femmes savantes, (Triptyque, 2016) and most recently Fastes (Hexagone, 2018). Her next book of poems, Sainte-Chloé-de-l’amour, is forthcoming next fall. She has contributed to various magazines, including Granta, Spirale, and Lettres Québécoises. She lives in Montreal, Canada, where she just completed her doctoral dissertation on women's literature in Quebec 1970-1990s from Université de Montréal. For her, poetry is a political statement in a world based on speed. Centering themes such as movement, sexuality, and loneliness, her practice finds ways to interrogate images, feelings, assumptions, while exploring language, its barriers and its magnitude. You can find her on Instagram, at @chloesavoiebernard.
Jairo Martín de la Fuente.
Jairo Martín de la Fuente was born in Valladolid, Spain, 2nd June 1992. At an early age he developed a taste for reading. After mandatory education, high school and several-months stays in London, he enrolled at the University of Valladolid for Hispanic philology, and he spent one of those years abroad (in Lodz, Poland).
After finishing his degree, he worked as a Spanish teacher for different organisations in Poland, as well as in multiple immigrant integration organisations in Spain. He moved to Seville to take a Master's degree in Creative Writing, combining this with freelance proofreading of literary texts. During the Master's course, he developed his taste for literature even more. This Master's degree gave him the opportunity to enjoy a dual-degree scholarship, so he flew to Lyon, France, to study another Master's degree in Research and Hispanic Studies.
During his studies, he never left aside his literary output, so he concluded his first book, Aprovechando que el Pisuerga pasa por Valladolid. A lover of art in all its many forms, especially literature, passionate about travelling and learning about different cultures, Jairo Martín is the confluence of all these influences that make up the poet's universe.
Poetry is how I express what burns inside me, to bring out my longings and needs, to share them with others and thus be able to grow. Poetry is as necessary as the economy, without poetry we would cease to exist.
Find Jairo on Instagram @jairomd
Xenia Dyakonova.
I was born in Leningrad (St Petersburg) in 1985, and became interested in poetry in my early childhood. My interest was undoubtedly fuelled by my family, which was full of writers, translators, and philologists. Before bedtime I was not read fairy-tales, like a normal child, but poems.
My great-grandfather translated, into a wonderful Russian verse, the Epic of Gilgamesh from Akkadian. He was one of the first readers of my own poetry, when I was about 10 years old and could only imitate Mayakovski. But he spoke to me like he would to an adult, and his advice remains as important to me now as it was then. For instance, he dissuaded me from writing “from behind the mask” of an invented character and encouraged me to pursue honesty in my work. Now I understand that honesty in poetry is not an inherent quality, but an art, which you must study your whole life.
For nearly 20 years now, I’ve lived in Barcelona; I write in Russian and Catalan. Adam Zagajewski, a great Polish poet whom I had the great honour of knowing, said that poetry is a journey from something concrete to the abstract and back. This is exactly what I always look for in poetry.
For more of Xenia’s work, please check Folio Verso; “Gorky” Magazine for her Poems or Publications; and “The Emigrant Lyre”.