Claire Keegan & Jorge Fondebrider: from New Ross to Buenos Aires

In celebration of St Patrick's Day, Literature Ireland presents a discussion between author Claire Keegan and her Argentinian (Spanish language) translator, Jorge Fondebrider. Sinéad Mac Aodha moderates.

The discussion touches on Claire's latest novel, Small Things Like These; the beginnings of stories; the practice of writing fiction; translation and the relationship between author and translator.

"...It begins when you make an incision in time. Fiction is a temporal art, it's based on time that's irreversibly passing in one direction. A day is a day, it is the same for everyone in every language, no matter where you are or what you're doing. And everybody knows what a days is. And I think maybe that is one of the reasons translation is possible, because of that shared knowledge." -- Claire Keegan

Claire Keegan’s works have been translated into many languages with the support of Literature Ireland, including into German, Slovene, Czech, Bulgarian, French, Spanish (Argentina), Chinese, Polish, Hebrew, Turkish and Swedish.

Jorge Fondebrider is an Argentinian poet, critic and translator. Jorge is an active promoter of Irish culture in Latin America. He has translated all of Claire Keegan's books, and has introduced to a wide Spanish speaking audience authors such as Anthony Cronin, Joseph O’Connor and Moya Cannon. Together with Gerardo Gambolini, he choose and translated the texts for Poesía irlandesa contemporánea (1999), the first bilingual anthology of contemporary Irish poetry published in a Spanish speaking country.

The audio of this recording will be released in podcast form next week, on the Talking Translations channel.

Literature Ireland

Literature Ireland is the national agency in Ireland for the promotion of Irish literature abroad. We work to build an international awareness and appreciation of contemporary Irish literature, primarily in translation. Literature Ireland is funded by Culture Ireland and the Arts Council. Learn more at http://www.literatureireland.com/