We speak so easily of world literature, but who determines what works belong to this and which world we are actually talking about? Who decides what is published and in what languages it is translated into? And, most of all, what is not published or translated? What role do authors, publishers, agents, translators and readers play? Doesn’t the canon of world literature primarily reflect the hegemonic division of the world in which only that which confirms its image is translated and received while the many literatures of the world most constantly be discovered anew?
With: Larissa Bender, Anita Djafari andNicole Witt. Moderated by : Nora Bierich

In 2004, the prize of the Association of German-Language Translators of Literary and Scholarly Works (VdÜ) was awarded to translation-friendly publishers or personalities in public life for the first time – in 2021, it goes to the friend of literature and advocate for greater diversity in the German literature community Anita Djafari. The laudation will be held by the new associate chairperson of the VdÜ, Ingo Herzke. This non-endowed prize in the form of a work of art will be personally presented to Anita Djafari by the artist Konstantin Déry and the jury (Christiane Buchner, Frank Heibert, Eva Profousová) will also attend.

Are especially short texts especially easy to shape? Over the course of an open workshop, haikus will be collaboratively written, translated and brought into all of the languages that are represented within the group. Following this, the poems will be etched as dry-point and printed.
[For all age groups]
By: Natsuyo Koizumi and Karla Reimert Montasser

For Anne Birkenhauer, translation is an art and a lifestyle, a way of being in the world. She has lived in Jerusalem for decades and translates the works of David Grossman, Dan Pagis, Jehuda Amichai and many other Israeli authors into German. How has the Jewish reading and learning culture shaped her life, her understanding of herself and her understanding of translation? Which special resistances does the translator encounter between the different gravitational fields of the Hebrew language and the German language? How does she find the tone? A profile.
With: Anne Birkenhauer. Moderated by : Marie Luise Knott

Reading literature often means reading literature in translation. One reader likes the translation, another reader less so. Why is that? Are there arguments or is it simply a matter of taste? How do you recognize the special art of translation, how do you judge it when you can’t read or understand the original? Experts from a variety of literary areas spoke about possible criteria and then apply these subsequently to “surprise texts”: a slam where everyone wins.
With: Albrecht Buschmann, Sieglinde Geisel, Maria-Christina Piwowarski and Olga Radetzkaja. Moderated by: Frank Heibert

The renowned Hungarian poet and translator Ágnes Nemes Nagy has often referred to the isolated nature of the Hungarian language as its “world literature death”. Over the course of a collective poetry lab, poets, translators and sound artists come together in order to create new translations of Nagy’s highly visual poems and to make them able to be experienced both in word and in sound. To bring things to a close, the participants present their collaborative translation process as a polyphonous performance.
With: Christian Filips, Orsolya Kalász, Christina Kunze, andyvazul, Ute Wasserman, Eva Zador. Project manager: Orsolya Kalász