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3203 SE Woodstock Blvd, Portland, OR 97202, USA

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Translator Shelley Fairweather-Vega has seen three novels from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan released in her translation in the past six months: Talasbek Asemkulov’s novel, A Life At Noon, and Hamid Ismailov’s Of Strangers and Bees and Gaia, Queen of Ants.  She will give a reading from her recent works and speak with Russian professor Naomi Caffee about the special challenges of translating fiction from this little-known part of the world. Topics include: what makes contemporary Central Asian literature different from the Russian literature more readers know well; how to help English-language readers find their way in a culture that is new to them (or whether it is up to the translator to help them at all); the ethics of translating and publishing work from this part of the world; and how translators begin to make these kinds of decisions. Fairweather-Vega will also discuss her own career path as a professional translator and share some of the daily ups and downs of translation as a job and an art form.

Shelley Fairweather-Vega is a certified Russian to English translator and an enthusiastic Uzbek to English translator in Seattle, Washington. An academic background in international politics, plus a passion for puzzles, led her to a career in translation. Since 2006, she has worked as a freelance translator for attorneys, academics, authors, and activists around the world, with a special focus on Central Asia. Her poetry and prose translations have been published by multiple US and UK publishers and in Critical Flame, Translation Review, Words Without Borders, poetry and short story anthologies, and more. She runs FairVega Translations and its sister company, FairVega Russian Library Services, which helps public libraries build and improve their Russian-language collections. She is the president of the Northwest Translators and Interpreters Society and a co-founder of the Northwest Literary Translators. Visit her online for more information.

Sponsored by the Division of Literature & Languages. Free and open to the public.

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