On the Town: Translators and writers gathered in the National Library in Dublin to celebrate a 10th birthday this week. Since the establishment of the Ireland Literature Exchange (ILE), 800 Irish books have been translated into 40 languages.
The ILE, which was set up 10 years ago to promote the translation of Irish books into other languages, "forms an essential part of Ireland's cultural representation abroad", said John O'Donoghue TD, the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism.
Siobhán Parkinson's book, Sisters No Way, was translated into Latvian last year; Celia de Fréine's poetry collection, Faoi Chabáistí is Ríonacha, is available in Romanian and Bulgarian; and Marita Conlon-McKenna's award-winning trilogy, Under the Hawthorn Tree, was recently translated into Arabic.
"It's about children surviving and children facing terrible things. That's why it travels so well," said Conlon-McKenna, whose book is already available in Russian, Japanese, Braille and other languages.
Hans Christian Oeser, who translated Pat McCabe's The Butcher Boy into German, was at the birthday party, as was Thomas Kabdebo, who has translated Michael Longley's poetry into Hungarian.
Translators "take our literature and transform it into the languages of the world . . . are the unsung heroes of literature", said Sinéad Mac Aodha, director of ILE.
Writer Anne Enright recalled a recent trip to Budapest and spoke about the "exceptional importance to a writer of those inter-cultural exchanges". Her novels, What Are You Like? and The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch, have been published in Germany, France and the Netherlands.
Others at the party included writer Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, poet Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, and Peter Sirr, whose seventh collection of poems, Nonetheless, was launched this week along with a collection of Selected Poems from his first six books.