Week 14:
Work, work, work...
French:
First week for at least two months, that I didn't read any French. With the exception, that is, of a few pages at the beginnings of several books, but none of them seemed to be the "right" one just now. There are times, when every book is the wrong one...
Ume Sami:
I read an illustrated bilingual book,
Elin Marakatt/Anita Midbjer - Lilli, áhtjájjá jah guaksagh/Lilli, farfar och norrskenet. I actually thought that it was in Northern Sami, but I borrowed the wrong copy at the library
.
Yiddish:
Read
A. A. Milne - Vini-der-Pu. Delightful book, unfortunately it was printed in Latin transcription, except a few lines at the beginning of each chapter.
Started reading a bilingual book
יעל סטראָם/עמיל זינגער-פֿוער - שלמהל-בױמל מיטן מזלדיקן דרײדל / Yale Strom/Emil Singer-Fuer - Shloyml Boyml and His Lucky Dreydl (
click). When reading Yiddish, I very much depend on finding similarly sounding German words. Often that is successfull, but sometimes less so... The
זילבערנע פֿאַנע (zilberne fane) turned out not to be a "silberne Fahne" (silver flag), but a "silberne Pfanne" - a silver pan. Slight difference.
Other:
Finished reading C
aitlin Doughty - From Here to Eternity. Traveling the World to Find the Good Death (in English) and
Gaston Dorren - Lingo. En språkresa genom Europa (in Swedish).
Read
Katarina Taikon - Katitzi Z-1234 (in Swedish).
Started reading
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o - The Perfect Nine (in English) and
Judith Schlansky - Verzeichnis einiger Verluste (in German). Both from this year's International Booker Prize longlist. Ngũgĩ's book I got from the library, Schalansky's I happened to have in my book shelves.
International Booker Prize:
The International Booker is awarded to a book translated into English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland the preceding year. Two weeks ago, this year's
longlist was announced. This year I somewhat proudly realised that I might be able to read almost half of the books (6 out of 13) in the original language. Then however I began to wonder about the range of languages the books were translated from: four books from Romance languages (2 each from Spanish and French), another four from Germanic languages (German, Dutch, Danish and Swedish). The remaining five - representing all the other languages - come from Chinese, Georgian, Gikuyu, Arabic and Russian. A bit eurocentric, unfortunately.