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Home > News > Thermoelectrics: An old, new tech
Thermoelectrics: An old, new tech
May 1, 2016 by Nate Seltenrich
A sprawling business park, near a patchwork of former salt ponds on the Hayward shoreline, houses more than its share of biotech and energy startups bent on changing the world. Tucked inside these nondescript boxes are companies making innovative batteries to store power from solar and wind farms, ingestible sensors called smart pills to help patients monitor medication intake and, at the offices of Berkeley-born Alphabet Energy, devices to convert wasted exhaust heat into clean, renewable power.
The PowerCard is Alphabet's most basic thermoelectric device for turning waste heat into electricity.
As physicist Thomas Seebeck discovered in 1821, certain materials that efficiently conduct electricity but not heat can transform any temperature differential into voltage by exploiting the flow of electrons from a warmer area to a cooler one. Engineers, inventors and entrepreneurs have tried to capitalize on the phenomenon ever since, using thermoelectrics to power radios, refrigerators, pacemakers and spacecraft. Others have attempted to turn waste heat from engines and industrial sources into electricity on a larger scale, but with limited success due to the low efficiency and high cost of thermoelectric devices.
Until now, that is. Seven-year-old Alphabet Energy is producing the most efficient thermoelectric devices ever made for waste-heat recovery, using abundant, cheap and scalable materials. CEO Matt Scullin, who founded Alphabet as a materials science graduate student at Berkeley in 2009, is working toward creating and cornering a new thermoelectrics industry by harnessing a vast resource: combustion exhaust heat from cars, trucks and power plants.
To illustrate the potential size of the thermoelectrics market, Scullin offers a back-of-the-napkin calculation. On average, two-thirds of all energy produced is lost as heat. With global annual energy consumption around 104,000 terawatt hours (about 33 percent of the total energy produced), it follows that 208,000 terawatt-hours are lost as heat in the process. If thermoelectrics could recover a conservative 5 percent of that, at the going rate of 10 cents per kilowatt-hour, that's a waste stream theoretically worth $1 trillion per year.
"Waste heat is everywhere," Scullin says. "It is an absolutely huge opportunity."
Alphabet Energy CEO Matt Scullin and engineer Jordan Chase measure the PowerCard's properties in the company's Hayward lab.
But there's a greater good behind it all, too. By improving the efficiency of generators and engines while potentially displacing large amounts of energy produced by carbon-emitting sources, Alphabet's technology could be a boon for climate-change mitigation. According to estimates using government data by the industry group Heat Is Power (where Scullin is on the board of directors), waste-heat recovery at existing U.S. oil, gas and manufacturing plants alone could save enough energy to power 11.4 million homes a year.
Scullin first started thinking about waste heat and thermoelectrics in 2005, while pursuing his Ph.D. dissertation under co-adviser Arun Majumdar, then a professor of mechanical engineering at Berkeley. "He kind of turned me on to the idea of waste-heat recovery," Scullin says of Majumdar. "Waste heat to me from the get-go was really, really interesting just because of the sheer size of the opportunity. I recognized that if we could just take a small fraction of this waste heat it could make a huge impact, but I was confused as to why this wasn't being done already."
Scullin found that existing approaches to large-scale waste-heat recovery were too complex and too costly. The solution, he came to believe, lies in simpler thermoelectric devices, particularly if they could be designed around cheap, abundant materials. Through a larger Department of Energy (DOE)-funded effort at Berkeley to develop thermoelectric generators for use in vehicles, he began studying a class of materials known as complex oxides — but eventually encountered an even better idea: using silicon nanowires to potentially quadruple the efficiency of other known thermoelectrics.
Scullin completed his dissertation, then promptly scuttled the technology he'd been studying in favor of taking a silicon nanowire product to market. "I love to tinker, I love to mess around with things," Scullin says in retrospect. "It's probably one of the main reasons I founded Alphabet."
Majumdar, who went on to direct the Advanced Research Projects Agency at the DOE and currently teaches at Stanford, says Scullin's timing was perfect. "When we actually discovered that silicon was great and showed all these amazing properties, he was on a parallel project. He was watching all that happen."
Co-founder, scientific advisor and MacArthur Fellow Peidong Yang on a plant tour with his family, Scullin and engineer Lindsay Miller (Ph.D.'12 ME).
Scullin co-founded Alphabet in 2009 with Peidong Yang, materials science and chemistry professor and faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab — and a partner in the DOE thermoelectrics project — after the pair licensed a patent from Berkeley Lab and the university's intellectual property office. Yang, whose research group led the development of the silicon nanowire technology starting around 2002, was named a MacArthur Fellow last fall for his work with semiconductor nanowires and nanowire photonics. He currently sits on Alphabet's scientific advisory board.
In 2014, with silicon nanowire technology still in development, Scullin and Alphabet licensed another promising new thermoelectric, this time from Michigan State University. Based on an affordable and readily available mineral called tetrahedrite, it offered impressive efficiency: not as good as silicon nanowires but still better than anything else available.
Within a year, Alphabet had shipped its first products.
The PowerCard, which resembles a tortilla chip-size solar panel, is Alphabet's most basic thermoelectric device for turning waste heat into electricity. As with all Alphabet technology, its preferred heat source is vehicle and generator exhaust at 300 to 600 degrees Celsius (572 to 1112 degrees Fahrenheit). A single PowerCard made with tetrahedrite can generate up to 9.2 watts of power simply by being exposed to pressurized hot air: no moving parts or emissions required.
The tiny cards can be sold individually, but they're also at the heart of Alphabet's fully enclosed, drop-in thermoelectric generator. The PowerModule, which measures 20 inches long, 24 inches wide and three inches thick — about the size of an extra-large pizza box — contains from a few dozen to more than 100 PowerCards, depending on whether the modules are destined for industrial use in generators or for vehicle use.
Alphabet's products are modular and work across scale to capture waste heat to convert to electricity. The E1 system is packed inside a standard ocean freight-sized container and designed for heavy manufacturing and industry.
Commercial application in vehicles is the holy grail for thermoelectrics, Scullin says. The PowerModule can be inserted directly into a vehicle's exhaust system: hot air goes in one end and out the other, just as with a muffler or catalytic converter, while it silently converts the energy in the waste heat into usable electricity, which is in turn fed back into the vehicle, offering a mileage improvement of up to 5 percent.
Another challenge is navigating the auto industry itself, which isn't exactly known for turning on a dime. But the company has already made inroads by teaming with a U.S. manufacturer of exhaust systems to explore automotive applications, and last year it signed the first-ever commercial deal for thermoelectric waste-heat recovery with a global automobile manufacturer, which has yet to officially announce the deal. Scullin is hopeful that the PowerModule could find its way into production vehicles "relatively quickly."
The task ahead for Alphabet comes down to the bottom line, says Majumdar. "The technology has to be at a scale where it can produce electricity at a lower cost than the retail cost of electricity. If someone can do that in a cost-effective way, it's a big deal."
Scullin believes Alphabet's thermoelectrics already offer an attractive return on investment in both industrial and automotive applications. "The economics of this can be very, very good to the customer. They are already as good as solar, and we see how much solar has been adopted," he says. "Waste heat is one of the greatest untapped resources that we have."
Thermoelectrics history timeline (from Alphabet Energy):
Topics: Alumni, Energy, Industry, Materials science


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Mr Peabody and Sherman 3D on Blu-ray – The DVDfever Review
Mr Peabody and Sherman is one of those films which beings with something a little different, this one featuring a nice subtle reworking of the Dreamworks logo, with Sherman sat in the moon.
I have to confess I am not at all familiar with the original cartoons – an offshoot from Rocky and Bullwinkle. While I remember them being on TV in the '80s, despite one of those episodes featuring in the extras, I'm quite sure the BBC broadcasts didn't last 23 minutes, so I expect they were cut down, as that would happen a lot – same as with the name-brand censorship which saw Top Cat renamed 'Boss Cat'. Also, I often stay away from CGI films for kids as they usually seem to bereft of ideas and any sort of reason to exist, but this one seemed different. It also has the added attraction of time travel, something with which I've always been fascinated.
Mr Peabody (voiced by Ty Burrell) is a talking dog, with Sherman (Max Charles) as his adopted son, and since Mr Peabody was rather an outcast in his youth, he spent his time boning (pun not intended) down to fill his head with knowledge, including how to build a time machine called the "WABAC" (pronouned "way back")
Thankfully, it doesn't dumb down into too much schmaltz, such as the exchange:
Sherman: "I love you, Mr Peabody"
Mr Peabody: "I have a deep regard for you too, Sherman"
In a world where everyone has unfeasibly large heads, together, they use it to learn the lessons of history first-hand, taking in such sights (and times) as The French Revolution, Leonardo Da Vinci, the wooden horse of Troy and King Tutankhamun, the latter coming into play as, while Sherman's a bit of a show-off in school, he ends up in trouble after classmate and nemesis Penny (Ariel Winter) torments him, then he responds by biting her, and at one point they all go back to Ancient Egypt where she's about to marry said 'Tut'.
I could see a great sequel or two coming out of this film, but with a budget of $145m, it didn't make as much as hoped at the box-office, leading to DreamWorks Animation having to take a $57 million write-down on behalf of the film, so any further escapades are sadly unlikely.
There's a lot of superb use of 3D in this film, such as when Peabody's nose is almost sticking out of the screen, such is the effect, and an early underground surfing scene is a hell of a delight.
It's taken a surprisingly long time for this title to come out on Blu-ray and DVD, but I guess they wanted to aim for the Christmas market, given the early October release date.
Any downsides? Well, one of the end credit songs, Kid, is sung by Peter Andre. I wonder if he picked up his copy of the 3D Blu-ray in Iceland?
Go to page 2 for a look at the presentation and the extras.
The Girl On The Train – The DVDfever Review
Easy A on Blu-ray – The DVDfever Review
Transformers: Age of Extinction 3D on Blu-ray – The DVDfever Review
Fortitude Episode 9 – The DVDfever Review
The Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 2 on Blu-ray – The DVDfever Review
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Posted in Blu-ray, Movies, Reviews Tags: Alex Schwartz, Allison Janney, Ariel Winter, Craig Wright, Danny Elfman, Denise Nolan Cascino, Dennis Haysbert, Guillaume Aretos, Jasper Johannes Andrews, Jay Ward, Jenna Hukkinen, Jess Harnell, Josh Rush, Joshua Rush, Karan Brar, Lake Bell, Lauri Fraser, Leila Birch, Leonardo Della Bianca, Leslie Mann, Luisa Wietzorek, Max Charles, Mel Brooks, Mr Peabody and Sherman, Patrice A Musick, Patrick Warburton, Peabody's Improbable History, Peter Andre, Rob Minkoff, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Stanley Tucci, Stephen Colbert, Stephen Tobolowsky, Steve Valentine, Tom McGrath, Ty Burrell, Zach Callison
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Author: Andy Hanley
Andy has been writing for UK Anime since 2006, and was the site's editor-in-chief until August 2017. Contrary to popular belief, Andy is not actually a robot.
A Certain Scientific Railgun Vol. 4
Kazuma Kamachi / Motoi Fuyukawa
After padding out the climax of its last major arc with some more light-hearted fare in its previous volume, we return our attention to an all-new plot as this fourth volume of the series commences - although when I say "new", this particular story actually slots neatly into a major storyline from the (unreleased outside of Japan) series from which this manga spins off, A Certain Magical Index.
With normality restored to Academy City following the "Level Upper" incident, everything seems to be peaceful enough in the world, even if narrow short-cuts around the city are suddenly teeming with people for some reason, much to Kuroko's frustration. It doesn't take long before we find the reason behind so many people suddenly taking unorthodox routes to go about their business - someone has been leaving cash cards hidden in normally unused locations around the city containing various amounts of money; a situation that has unsurprisingly given rise to a "treasure hunt" of sorts as news about money being strewn around the city travels fast amongst its residents.
When a mixture of being dragged around the city by Saten, idle curiosity and blind luck combine, Mikoto Misaka finds herself on the trail of the generous culprit who has been leaving these cash cards laying around - but what is this person's goal exactly? The truth appears to be closer to home than Misaka could comfortably imagine, as rumours about her being the centrepoint of an experiment in cloning espers with her ability and skills well and truly come back to haunt her. Even when Misaka herself seems to have put any worries surrounding those rumours to rest, she soon finds herself face to face with... herself?
Having already impressed us to various degrees within its first three volumes, this fourth instalment of A Certain Scientific Railgun is an almost perfect example of everything that makes this series so enjoyable. Here is a manga which has no qualms about employing comedy, even in the midst of some action or otherwise important moments of plot progression, but it also knows when to knuckle down and focus on what's going on when it really comes to the crux of its story - witness the brutal ending to this volume which leaves us cruelly hanging and waiting for the fifth volume to arrive in a few months time.
All of this is backed up by the continuing expressive quality of the manga's artwork, which is clean, clear and largely rather adept at being both attractive when it wants to be but visceral and violent when required of it - throw in a solid translation from Seven Seas Entertainment (although our copy did have one very slight printing error on a single page, for reference) and there's nothing to get in the way of drawing you into this series.
Drawn in is exactly what you'll be by this volume too - it was almost literally impossible to put down until I'd read it cover to cover, as it revealed its story in a compelling mix of light-hearted and entertainment and darker, more sinister plotting. This is undoubtedly the high point of an already enjoyable series so far, and I for one will be waiting impatiently to see where it goes next.
A fantastic example of what this series is capable of - entertaining and fun, with dark undertones that are put to full use by the end of the volume.


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Cenovus continuing crude by rail ramp up while competitors shut down
Feb. 14, 2019, 7:21 a.m. |
Image: Joey Podlubny/JWN
CALGARY — The CEO of Cenovus Energy Inc. says the company is going ahead with plans to raise its crude-by-rail shipments to 100,000 barrels per day this year, despite criticism from other major producers that Alberta's forced production cuts have destroyed rail's profitability.
The Calgary-based company is confident that the province will encourage growth in crude-by-rail as an alternative to delayed new export pipelines going forward, Alex Pourbaix said Wednesday on a conference call.
"I remind everybody that although we are in a very low differential (price) period right now, we are literally six weeks into this curtailment initiative," he said.
"I think there's been a lot of noise…but I do expect that the government is going to act to continue to look at those volumes to ensure they're at the right level to incent rail to get on."
Pourbaix's comments are in sharp contrast to criticism of the provincial program's affect on rail economics by Steve Williams, CEO of Suncor Energy Inc., and Rich Kruger, CEO of Imperial Oil Limited.
Kruger said Imperial would reduce its rail shipments of crude to "near zero" this month from about 168,000 bbls/d in December because the difference between western Canadian and U.S. benchmark oil prices had narrowed to the point that it didn't cover the additional cost of using rail to send oil to the U.S. Gulf Coast refining complex.
Pourbaix said in an interview that Cenovus isn't making much, but it isn't losing money on the 20,000 bbls/d of oil it is now shipping by rail into the U.S. and he expects profitability to improve as the company begins receiving and filling about 4,000 newly built rail tankers in the next few weeks.
He pointed out Western Canadian Select bitumen-blend oil is at times fetching a premium to New York-traded West Texas Intermediate prices at Gulf Coast refineries because of a shortage of competing crude from Venezuela and Mexico.
Cenovus also announced Wednesday it has increased its shipping commitment on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf Coast from 50,000 to 150,000 bbls/d.
Pourbaix said part of the increase is being provided at no cost by the Alberta government, without being specific.
When the province committed a year ago with builder TransCanada Corp. to take 50,000 bbls/d on the pipeline, it agreed that it would stand aside if there was private sector demand, Premier Rachel Notley said later at an event in Calgary.
"Not surprisingly, (TransCanada) discovered there's tremendous demand within the private sector…so we were pleased to be able to do that with Cenovus," she said.
Cenovus had mixed news on a 50,000-bbl/d expansion at its Christina Lake thermal oilsands operation in northern Alberta.
It said wells in the project are being injected with steam five months ahead of schedule and capital costs are about 25 per cent lower than expected but production, which could start in the second quarter, could be delayed depending on the curtailment plan and access to markets.
Cenovus reported a $1.36-billion net loss from continuing operations in the fourth quarter of 2018 due to low oil prices, voluntary production cuts, a writedown on its conventional oilfields and a non-cash hit due to inventory accounting at its U.S. refineries.
The company missed analyst earning expectations as its net loss for the year climbed to $2.9 billion.
Like Suncor and Imperial, Cenovus reported lower prices for its upstream oil production blamed on a lack of pipeline access to U.S. markets, but better profit margins at its refining operations in part due to the lower cost of feedstock.
CIBC analyst Jon Morrison said in a report that the earnings report was negative, but the setbacks shouldn't last long.
"Specifically, differentials are tight right now, reflective of the Alberta production curtailments, and although we expect diffs to widen in the second half of 2019, Cenovus should be more protected through the crude-by-rail agreements that were previously announced," he said.
The loss amounted to $1.10 per share for the quarter ended Dec. 31, compared with a profit of $620 million or 50 cents per share in the last three months of 2017, when its results were boosted by the sale of assets in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Venezuela oil woes add urgency to Canadian pipeline, rail plans
Imperial shutting down crude by rail, blames curtailment program
Alberta oil cuts may backfire as rail shipments collapse


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Hanson Bridgett LLP
August 25, 2021 - San Francisco, California
Ninth Circuit Upholds 'Significant Nexus' Test for Federal Permitting of Wetlands Projects
by Nathan Metcalf
Ninth Circuit reaffirms the "significant nexus" test for determining whether filling certain wetlands in 2007 violates the Clean Water Act
The narrower test for determining the Clean Water Act's jurisdiction under the 2020 Navigable Waters Protection Rule did not apply since it postdated the 2007 filling of the wetlands.
Wetlands in California are also subject to State Wetlands Procedures so that, even if the Biden Administration yet again redefines the Clean Water Act's jurisdiction, the state will continue its significant role in regulating wetlands.
For decades, wetlands have plagued regulators. The federal government can regulate water quality under the Clean Water Act, while land use regulation is typically a state and local power. The transition from land to water, however, is not always clear. Difficulties delineating where the land ends and where the water begins—as with marshes, swamps, bogs, or wetlands—make it challenging to know whether you need a federal or state permit, both, or neither.
The Ninth Circuit recently addressed this challenge in Sackett v. EPA. There, the court held that construction work that filled in wetlands required a federal permit. This holding may have limited practical application for future projects in California. But the court's analysis provides a helpful reminder about challenges that landowners and project proponents face when determining whether projects involving wetlands require a permit.
Background on federal regulation of wetlands
Both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers regulate "waters of the United States" under the Clean Water Act. The Act prohibits, in part, dredging or filling "waters of the United States" without a "section 404 permit."
But what is a "water of the United States" has been notoriously unclear. In its 2006 opinion Rapanos v. United States, the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in on the issue with a fractured decision that enjoyed no majority opinion. Justice Scalia's plurality opinion found that "waters of the United States" extend only to relatively permanent, standing, or flowing bodies of water and to wetlands with a continuous surface connection to those permanent waters. But Justice Kennedy's concurring opinion—to which no other justice joined—found that the Clean Water Act also requires some "significant nexus" between wetlands and traditional navigable waters.
Shortly after Rapanos, the Ninth Circuit held in Northern California River Watch v. City of Healdsburg that Justice Kennedy's "significant nexus" test was the controlling law from the fractured Rapanos decision.
The Obama and Trump administrations then spent over a decade playing regulatory volleyball. First, the Obama Administration followed Justice Kennedy's "significant nexus" test to define "waters of the United States" broadly. Then, as we reported, the Trump Administration replaced that definition with a narrower rule that tracks Justice Scalia's plurality opinion that requires wetlands to have a continuous surface connection to permanent waters.
Now, the Biden Administration recently announced that it will again revise the definition of "waters of the United States."
Background in California's regulation of wetlands
Recognizing that these ebbs and flows in federal jurisdiction over wetlands created uncertainty and potential regulatory gaps, California's State Water Resources Control Board outlined steps for establishing a statewide wetland permitting program. These efforts led to the State Wetland Definition and Procedures for Discharges of Dredged or Fill Material to Waters of the State ("State Wetlands Procedures"), which went into effect on May 28, 2020. The State Wetland Procedures not only intend to fill potential federal regulatory gaps, but also intend to provide a uniform definition that regional water quality control boards must follow.
The Sacketts' wetlands project
While Sackett v. EPA did not involve California property, the Ninth Circuit case still has implications for California properties. The Sacketts' property is 300 feet from the navigable Priest Lake, one of Idaho's largest lakes. Across the street is a large wetlands complex that drains into a tributary, which feeds a creek that empties into Priest Lake. After the Sacketts bought their property, they obtained building permits and began backfilling wetlands on their property with sand and gravel. The EPA then inspected and took photographs of the property.1
The EPA issued a compliance order in 2007 requiring the Sacketts to immediately restore the wetlands, otherwise risk over $40,000 in civil penalties per day.
The Clean Water Act can regulate wetlands on the Sacketts' property
The Sacketts challenged the compliance order in 2008, and the case has wound through the courts ever since. This journey includes a trip to the Supreme Court in 2012, which held that the compliance order was a "final agency action" subject to judicial review.2
The case then made its way back to the Ninth Circuit. After the district court affirmed the EPA's authority to issue the compliance order, the EPA withdrew the order. Still, the Sacketts maintained their appeal. The Ninth Circuit then found in the EPA's favor for three reasons.
First, the EPA withdrawing the compliance order did not moot the case. Unless the EPA would disavow the prior jurisdictional determination of the Sackett's property, the EPA could later return with another compliance order. Thus the parties' dispute remained "alive and well."
Second, the court rejected the Sacketts' argument that Justice Scalia's narrow plurality opinion in Rapanos controlled. The court instead reaffirmed its holding in Healdsburg that, at least in the Ninth Circuit, Justice Kennedy's "significant nexus" test controls.
Third, the court applied the regulations in effect when the EPA issued its 2007 compliance order. While the 2020 Navigable Waters Protection Rule later narrowed the Clean Water Act's scope, that regulatory change was not retroactive. So the new rule could not affect the Sacketts' case.
For these reasons, the Ninth Circuit applied the "significant nexus" test. It then found that the wetlands on the Sacketts' property were adjacent to and could significantly affect the integrity of navigable water (Priest Lake). The court thus found that the Clean Water Act can regulate the Sacketts' property.
Takeaways from Sackett for California properties
Given Sackett, developers and public agencies in California should consider these four takeaways:
The 2020 Navigable Waters Protection Rule currently regulates federal permitting of dredging or filling wetlands, which follows Justice Scalia's test that wetlands have a continuous surface connection to a relatively permanent body of water.
But if a project fills wetlands before June 22, 2020, then the Navigable Waters Protection Rule does not apply and may be subject to Justice Kennedy's significant nexus test.
As the Biden Administration considers revising the Navigable Waters Protection Rule, we can expect the Clean Water Act's regulation of wetlands to change again soon.
Whatever changes may come from the federal government, you should consider whether your projects require a waste discharge requirement or similar authorization under California's State Wetlands Procedures.
Unfortunately, knowing whether and how federal or state laws regulate wetlands is complicated. You often may need a wetlands scientist or a lawyer to assist. But whomever you enlist to delineate wetlands on your property, be sure they consult the State Wetlands Procedures.
For more information about how these laws may affect you, please watch the August 31, 2021 "Rules on Projects Impacting Wetlands and Other Waters," presented to the Bar Association of San Francisco and featuring Hanson Bridgett attorney, Sean Herman.
Should you have any further questions or concerns about how these laws affect you,contact our Water Law attorneys.
1 The photographs can be found in the appendix of the Ninth Circuit's Sackett opinion
2 Sackett v. EPA, 566 U.S. 120 (2012)
Read full article at: https://www.hansonbridgett.com:443/Publications/articles/2021-08-25-wetlands-permitting


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<p id="walker_andrew" data-toggle="tooltip" title="">
    Andrew Walker
     is an Associate Professor in computational geophysics at the University of Leeds. After
     a degree in geology, a PhD in mineral physics, and ten years of
     postdoctoral research, he now holds a personal fellowship from
     the Natural Environment Research Council in the Institute of
     Geophysics and Tectonics. Andrew's research focuses on modelling
     the way that the Earth's interior deforms from the atomic to the
     planetary scale.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
class Interface
{
private:
	bool opened;
	std::string input;

public:
	Trainer trainer;

	void Start();
	void ShowMenu();
	int	 ProcessInput();
	void Close();
	bool IsOpen();
};


When I moved from Berkeley to Ithaca, I didn't have enough room in my luggage to take my 6 (literally 6, maybe more actually) jars of peanut butter with me. Consequently, they've been sitting at my mom's house waiting for me.
This morning, I decided to make the familiar toast with peanut butter and banana. I reached in the cupboard for one of my jars because sadly my mom buys JIF, which is just really no good in my opinion. I pulled out one that I hadn't seen in a while: PB2.
Have you heard of PB2?
PB2 is powdered peanut butter. Sounds weird, right? According to the site, "PB2 is made with premium quality peanuts that are slow-roasted to our specifications and pressed to remove the fat." 2 tablespoons of dried powder (mixed with 1 tbsp of water) provides only 54 calories, which is nothing compared to the nearly 200 that 2 tablespoons of peanut butter would provide.
I forgot I even had it! So I decided to use it this morning. I mixed it up in a small bowl then spread it on my toast.
Honestly, if you try this, try it on something (i.e. pb and j, pb banana) not by itself. On its own, I don't find it to be particularly delicious. The texture isn't really the same as peanut butter. Peanut Butter is creamier and thicker (…gets stuck on the roof of your mouth), although I guess adding less water could make PB2 thicker. Even so, I still don't think the texture would be the same, as they advertise.
I'm not a dietitian or doctor, but I always thought the fat in peanut butter was good for you. Cutting out the fat seems like cutting out some of the good stuff. However, if you're looking to cut calories I see where this could be a good option. I still prefer natural peanut butter.
Have you tried PB2? Any thoughts on it or the idea of it?
Note: I bought this product on my own a while ago, it was not given to me to review.
January Recipe Challenge: Food Around the World!
I don't buy JIF either. I refuse to buy any nut butter with added palm oil. And most of the time, the oil being added is hydrogenated.
I've never tried PB2, but like you, I also like the fat in natural peanut butter.
I actually kinda liked PB2 plain! I thought it sortof tasted like a Reese's cup, though it certainly isn't as good as real pb!!
lol– that's a lot of peanut butter! I've always wanted to try PB2, but never have. I need to track some down!
My in-laws had PB2 at their house and I meant to try it before I left! I'm excited to try it, though, I've heard great things. Plus, it is a STEAL nutritionally speaking!


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Category: Uncategorized (Page 1 of 2)
January 17, 2023 / Susan Walton / 0 Comments
I have had my first public exposure for a piece of literary translation done off my own bat – and on the website of a prestigious literary journal at that!
Publication on the Asymptote website
Back in my January 2022 post I said I was going to submit my translation into English of a short story called 'Eurgylch a meicroffon' to literary magazines. It is from Cylchoedd, the latest collection by Sian Northey. I called the story 'Halo and Mic' in English. I had in my sights two literary magazines: Trafika Europe and Asymptote.
Sian Northey is also the author of the novel I translated during my period of being mentored as an emerging literary translator, Yn y Tŷ Hwn. It is the book for which I'm currently seeking a publisher; its English title is This House. Publication of one of her short stories would bring us both some exposure.
I heard nothing for two months after submitting to Trafika Europe. I then submitted the story to Asymptote – 'the premier site for world literature in translation', according to its own website. In June I was told it had been accepted for publication in the autumn.
More submissions of This House to publishers
Pitches for This House made earlier in 2022 to publishers H, I, J and K had already been politely rejected by two of them and ghosted by the other two. Publisher F, to whom I'd submitted in 2021, eventually decided in June that they didn't want to publish This House.
Because the publication of 'Halo and Mic' was going to be a useful enhancement when submitting This House to publishers, I decided to stop making any new submissions until I could point (virtually) to it, and go 'Look! Look!'
Other attempts at exposure
I also tried another couple of tactics in 2022 to gain exposure. I entered the John Dryden Translation Competition. I didn't even make the longlist.
However, I did make the longlist of publisher Louise Walters Books' brilliantly conceived Page 100 Competition. The concept is simple: you send in page 100 of your unpublished manuscript. Page 100 of This House made the longlist, and you can read the winning and shortlisted entries here, along with Louise Walters' commentaries on them. Louise is even going to email brief feedback on each of the long- and shortlisted entries – what a star!
Emyr Humphreys
In October I was contacted by Emyr Humphreys. He is being mentored to translate from Welsh to English as part of this year's National Centre for Writing's Emerging Translator Mentorships programme. Emyr is part this year's equivalent of the group I joined for an industry weekend in January 2020. He's trying to make links between Welsh-to-English literary translators.
The project for his menteeship is to translate the novel Y Dydd Olaf ('the last day') by Owain Owain (1929–93). This novel is considered something of a cult classic and, until recently, was out of print. It was republished in 2021 by Gwasg y Bwthyn.
Co-incidentally, I had been reading Owain Owain's short story collection Y Peiriant Pigmi ('the pygmy machine'), looking for a Welsh short story to translate which didn't reference Wales' history, mythology or the rural landscape and way of life. In other words, rather like 'Halo and Mic', something out of time and place, something dependent wholly on imagination.
I hadn't started on anything, but Emyr's project prompted me to do so. Who knows – the reissue of Y Dydd Olaf, and Emyr's translation, when published, might be the beginnings of an Owain Owain revival!
'Gwyddau Gwylltion' / 'Wild Geese'
In Y Peiriant Pigmi I'd been taken with an extremely short story called 'Gwyddau Gwylltion', which means 'wild geese'. It is so untethered from time and place that what's going on is open to interpretation. However, the reader's mental construction might be as (un)steady as what's going on in the mind of the storyteller. It's an intriguing story.
In contrast to the opacity of what's happening in the story, the writing style is very carefully structured and very stylised and mannered. It could be regarded as a thousand-word prose poem.
I've mostly translated living authors that I know, and it was odd not to have someone to say 'What d'you think?' 'Are you happy with this?' to. For this reason, I asked fellow translator Tim Gutteridge if he'd read over it, which he kindly did. His suggestions helped me revisit a few points, then it was ready to go.
I wanted Owain Owain's estate to be aware of what I was planning, and to be happy with the translation. One of his children has a fairly public profile in Wales, so I contacted him and he acted as a bridge to the rest of the family.
They were all happy with the translation, and I received a lovely message from one member of the family saying that reading my translation had motivated them to re-read the original. Even if my translation of 'Gwyddau Gwylltion' never gets published, this message was personally so gratifying.
I submitted 'Wild Geese' to a literary magazine that places special emphasis on showcasing work by new or early-career writers. As yet, I have had no word about whether it's going to be published or not.
Picking up on making submissions of This House, but this time with a published short story to point at
In the midst of being busy with 'Wild Geese', the 'Halo and Mic' short story appeared on the Asymptote blog's Translation Tuesday thread.
The story's introduction includes the opinion that it is:
a cracking piece of Welsh fiction … In Susan Walton's translation, nuances in speech and register are captured to delightful effect …
Even if pitched-to publishers only glance at the intro, the endorsement is there. Time to get busy …
I had seven publishers to approach. Publisher M, which I'd been tipped to try during my visit to Hay Festival, politely but swiftly rejected This House.
However, the next one on the list – publisher N – is considering us. At the time of writing, I'm holding off making further pitches until publisher N comes to a decision.
Fleeing the Fascists
While all this was going on, my latest commissioned translation of a children's/young adults' novel came out: Fleeing the Fascists. It's set in Wales and Germany before, during, and in the aftermath of, the Second World War. In researching the book, the author had made links with a journalist in Germany. He works for a daily paper in Bielefeld, the city where parts of the story are set.
When the English version came out, Markus Poch, the journalist, contacted Elke Klos, head of English at the Brackweder Gymnasium school in the city, and told her about the book. According to this article, Elke intends to read excerpts of Fleeing the Fascists with her English learners. More exposure, but in an unexpected arena – and what an honour to have one's translation used to teach English!
Elke Klos holding up Fleeing the Fascists.
Another reason to be cheerful …
A recent Irish Times article had the headline:
Gains in translation for fiction readers and publishers
The article is by Fiona O'Connor of the University of Westminster, London and in it she says:
translation has become a disruptive innovation in what has been termed a monoglot and insular world – that of British publishing. … Shattering the 3 per cent translations rule holding sway for decades, UK and Irish sales of translated fiction grew to 5.63 per cent.
Hurrah for the disruptors!
Words ©Susan Walton 2023. Photos of man in a stream by Marvin Meyer, and wild geese by Manfred Antranias Zimmer are on Unsplash. Photo of the cover of Cylchoedd is ©Gwasg y Bwthyn 2020 and of Y Dydd Olaf is ©Gwasg y Bwthyn 2021. The photo in the screenshot of the Asymptote blog appears to be by Pexels on Pixabay. The photo of Elke Klos is ©Markus Poch/Wesfalen-Blatt 2022.
June 23, 2022 / Susan Walton / 0 Comments
… but not the global emergency sort
The cultural climate in relation to Wales and the Welsh language also seems to be warming, if this newspaper headline is anything to go by.
I've been aware of an increasing media focus* on Wales and Welsh in the last few months. Even before Wales qualified for the football World Cup.
This recent Radio 4 programme in the series One to One is only the latest. It explores what it means to be a Welsh person in England (Emma Garland), and English in Wales (Mike Parker).
A cynical person might think
that this sudden interest in Wales is a move to set against the growing interest in independence for Wales.
Quote from Adam Price, leader of Plaid Cymru
Is it a deliberate policy of trying to neutralise the feeling of being ignored/abandoned by Westminster?
An uncynical person
might interpret it as a realisation: 'Wow, it's 2022 and now we're more attuned to diverse voices and cultures within the UK, we can see that we've got this whole home-grown one right in our midst.' Or – depending on your degree of Unionism – 'We've got this whole home-grown one right next door to us'.
Whatever the reason
my fervent hope is that BBC-listening, heavyweight-newspaper-reading and politics-following publishers will clock all this and think: 'Yes, we think novel-reading people are ready for a gem of a story translated from Welsh. It's not an oddity, it's interesting. Let's take a look at this Susan Walton and her translation of Yn y Tŷ Hwn from the Welsh.'
Climate change (the emergency sort)
A little aside: if you are interested in the accelerating change in the earth's climate (and who isn't?) you might like to take a look at my other blog, where I post my original writing: 'Sgwennu Sue.
I've been writing the words: 'Pan fydd yr holl iâ'n toddi, bydd y môr yn cyrraedd fan hyn' and 'When all the ice melts, the sea will be up to here' over and over and over on Post-it notes.
One of the Post-it notes
Starting to open up …
It's now eighteen months since I finished my period of being mentored and when I finished the final version of This House, a translation into English of Yn y Tŷ Hwn by Sian Northey. Now, as covid repercussions diminish, some publishers are starting to open submission windows, and in-person cultural events are happening.
Submissions, submissions
In early January, when I last posted on this blog, This House had already been rejected by publishers A–E, and was awaiting an outcome from publishers F and G. It was swiftly rejected by G, and the outcome from F is still unknown after six months, so I'm presuming it's not wanted.
Multiple submissions
Over the next few months, I'm not going to wait for the outcome of one submission or query before making the next. This means multiple submissions and queryings – but my spreadsheet is my friend. Bids H, I and J have already been sent.
Raising awareness of the Books Council of Wales
The other new tactic is to make submissees aware of possible Books Council grants that are available to publishers.
It's only recently dawned on me how ignorant publishers outside Wales are about these. Because many source countries whose literature is translated into English help with this process financially, I'd presumed that publishers would automatically assume the same thing would be true of Wales – not so, it seems.
Meanwhile, on the border …
I had rolled over a booking for two nights' camping at Hay Festival since 2020, the year of being mentored. I decided to take the plunge this year, albeit without plunging into the enclosed performance spaces: I'm still being very cautious where I take my nose and windpipe.
Garden at The Bean Box, Hay on Wye
Still, my main reason for going was to cruise and chat, and this I did – round the town and round the festival. And very interesting and enjoyable it was, especially watching an episode of Radio 3's The Verb being recorded. Daniel Morden's opening a – re-telling of the legendary origins of the bard Taliesin – was magnificent.
Whilst flâneuring about, I had the pleasure of running into one of my Sue Proof anchor clients. It was lovely to see her in person and have a chat over lunch.
The dark underbelly
Dead books in Hay on Wye
The photo is of a commercial unit just next to the campsite I stayed on. It shows the other side of Hay. The campsite supervisor told me that these are dead books. This is the dark underbelly of 'the town of books': when Amazon divests itself of stock, it sells them to the warehouse chap. When he doesn't sell them in Hay, this is how they end up.
My latest commissioned translation for the publishing house Gwasg Carreg Gwalch came out in the spring. It was chosen by the Books Council of Wales as one of its books of the month for May. That's it in the front: Faster Than the Swords.
My next commissioned translation, Fleeing the Fascists, is almost done and will be coming out in September. This is the cover of the Welsh original, but the English will likely have the same design.
Ffoi Rhag y Ffasgwyr (English title Fleeing the Fascists)
*Long footnote
As well as the 'One to One' programme mentioned above, between February and June 2022 on BBC Radios 3, 4 and 6Music, I noticed:
— Welsh comedian and national treasure Tudur Owen had a two-part dramatised story on Radio 4, and was a guest on both Start the Week and The News Quiz
— a couple of months later, there was an entire Start the Week programme on the theme of Welsh identities
— mention of St Dwynwen's Day (the Welsh lovers' day) was shoe-horned into a question in Counterpoint where Bryn Terfel happened to be singing the music in the question (but not in Welsh, nor was it Welsh music)
— Katherine Stansfield's poem 'Beware Welsh Learners' was on Poetry Please; it finishes with a line in Welsh: 'Bore da, bore da.' (Kath was, co-incidentally, one of the tutors on the course I attended at Tŷ Newydd)
— there was a three-part series on Radio 4 from Jeremy Bowen called This Union: Being Welsh
— Free Thinking on Radio 3 had an entire programme called 'Speaking Welsh'
— the 6Music Festival came from Cardiff this year, with Welsh being used as an equal language to English in the trailers for the event
— Cerys Matthews presented a programme on Radio 4 called 'Youth Unites', celebrating the centenary of the Peace and Goodwill messages sent by the youth of Wales to the youth of the world by the Urdd Gobaith Cymru (oh, and guess what the topic is for 2022? – the climate emergency)
On top of the i newspaper trumpeting Wales' soccer achievements with its headline in Welsh, there have been these newspapery events:
— The Sunday Times changed its style guide for naming our highest mountain – it's now Welsh language first for Yr Wyddfa
— to the bafflement of most of the UK press, Guto Harri, newly appointed Director of Communications for Boris Johnson, gave his first press interview to Golwg 360, which is a Welsh-language news website
— the English translation of Manon Steffan Ros' Welsh bestseller The Blue Book of Nebo was selected for inclusion in a list of children's and YA books in The Guardian
— The Bookseller recently devoted multiple spreads to the literary scene in Wales.
Words ©Susan Walton 2022. Photo of i newspaper ©Non Tudur, 2022. Photos of 'can't wait to be independent so we don't have to deal with this crap anymore' t-shirt, 'when all the ice melts' PostIt note, The Bean Box cafe in Hay on Wye, and dead books in Hay on Wye ©Susan Walton 2022. Photos of letter 'H' by Nikhil Mitra, letter 'I' by Michael Dziedzic, and letter 'J' by Zyanya BMO, all on Unsplash. Photo of Books Council of Wales books of the month from that organisation's social media accounts. Video of the Urdd Gobaith Cymru's Peace and Goodwill message from that organisation's YouTube channel. Cover of Ffoi Rhag y Ffasgwyr ©Gwasg Carreg Gwalch, 2022.
January 6, 2022 / Susan Walton / 2 Comments
The year 2021 slips away; 2022 starts to gather pace.
We are now one year on from when I finished my period of being mentored, and finished the final version of This House.
This House is a translation into English of Sian Northey's first novel, Yn y Tŷ Hwn, which I worked on throughout 2020. I was posting monthly on this blog during 2020, but decided to post just six-monthly updates from then on, to document my search for a publisher.
You can read my experiences with Publishers A, B, and C in my mid-2021 post, here. When I left off, I was about to pitch to Publisher D. Unlike with Publishers A and B, I did not get a polite letter of rejection. I got …
… nothing. One presumes one is rejected after a certain time has elapsed since the pitch.
The search comes closer to home
Publisher E
I decided to take a different approach. With Sian Northey's help, we approached a publisher based in Wales. As Sian is a well-known figure on the literary scene in Wales, there was no need to persuade this publisher that Yn y Tŷ Hwn was 'like' anything. It would be aware of Sian's work and likely readership. I was aware of the quality of its products.
Nevertheless (can you tell what's coming?), we got a very polite and super-supportive email … of rejection.
Publisher F
Although Publisher F's website says it does not intend to publish novellas (This House is novella length), I'd met a representative of this publisher at a seminar, pre-Covid-19. I wrote to this editor. They said Publisher F would be happy to consider This House. Progress!
Again, because they were already aware of Sian as an author, there was no need to sell This House as being 'like' anything this publisher already produces.
Publisher F told me in December 2021 that This House had cleared the first hurdle. It is now being considered by the entire editorial panel. We wait.
The joker in the pack – Publisher G
Per the well-known law of sod, while This House was being considered by Publisher F, Publisher G – a UK-wide publisher – tweeted in late November that it was opening a submission window during December. The call for submissions included literary novels and novellas.
I let both Publisher G and Publisher F know of my situation, and both said they would allow simultaneous submissions on this occasion, so I submitted to Publisher G at the end of December.
There was no time to investigate this publisher's products 'in the flesh', and in any case it would seem that it is just now expanding into literary fiction – there don't seem to be any literary fiction novels or novellas available on its website.
Once more, we wait.
The champagne is still on ice
In my last monthly post of 2020, as my year of being mentored under the Literature Wales scheme drew to a close, I wrote:
So maybe now, at the end of 2020, I can put the bubbly on ice, but not pour it for a while yet.
Well, at the end of 2021 the bubbly remains on ice, one year on from that. Will Publisher F make me an offer? Will Publisher G?
I have a few things in progress on the literary translation front. I've entered the John Dryden Translation Competition with an excerpt from This House. A win in this competition would raise my profile with those publishers I approach in the future. However, I won't know whether I've been successful until much later in the year.
Cylchoedd by Sian Northey
Again, to raise both my profile and Sian's, I shall shortly be submitting my translation of a short story from Sian's latest collection, Cylchoedd, to the Asymptote and Trafika Europe journals/websites for literary translations. If it is accepted by either or both, this will be a small lever in furthering my search for a publisher for This House.
Whatever else happens (or doesn't) …
… I have a successful proofreading and copy-editing business. I also regularly translate children's novels and other books, for money. I've recently finished the English version of Rhedeg yn Gynt na'r Cleddyfau, an adventure story set at the time of the Rebecca Riots in Wales. It'll be out in 2022.
Rhedeg yn Gynt na'r Cleddyfau (English title Faster than the Swords)
I've just started the translation of another children's novel which will also come out in 2022, to coincide with the centenary of the Urdd Gobaith Cymru. It's set during the Second World War, and starts with children of 'undesirables' being sent out of Germany on one of the last Kindertransports before war is declared. They end up with their exiled father in Aberystwyth, in Wales, but I can't say more than that or I'd spoil the story.
My creativity comes out in other ways too. During the autumn of 2021, I've been doing part of an environmental art project. I shall restart this soon, when the weather improves.
Words ©Susan Walton 2022. Photo of hourglass by Paula Guerreiro; photo of letter 'E' by Girl with red hat; photo of letter 'F' by Hello I'm Nik; photo of letter 'G' by Scott Evans; photo of champagne by Thomas Owen – all on Unsplash. Photo of Cylchoedd cover ©Gwasg y Bwthyn 2020; photo of Rhedeg yn Gynt na'r Cleddyfau cover ©Gwasg Garreg Gwalch 2021.
July 12, 2021 / Susan Walton / 5 Comments
Well, here we are: just over six months since the end of my amazing year of being mentored. And almost two years since I made that fateful, original application to Literature Wales to be mentored as an early career literary translator.
Wales Book of the Year
Earlier this month, the shortlists for the Wales Book of the Year award were announced. They gave me pause for thought and were, in part, what engendered this post. One of the authors shortlisted for best Welsh-language novel is Megan Angharad Hunter. Like me, she was a delegate at the mentoring workshop held at Tŷ Newydd in March 2020.
At the end of 2020, I said I'd only post again on this blog when there were developments with This House (which is my title for my translation of Yn y Tŷ Hwn). However, Megan's appearance on a Book of the Year shortlist prompted me to write a round-up of this year so far.
In search of a publisher – Publisher A
My year of being mentored kicked off with an industry weekend at the National Centre for Writing in Norwich in January 2020. There, one thing we did was practise making a pitch to three real-life independent publishers.
A few weeks later one of the three publishers emailed me to ask for a sample of This House and reviews and background material about the author, Sian Northey. Sian and I scrabbled about for anything in English about her work and I duly sent this off with the sample.
Then Covid-19 hit and this publisher wrote to say his outside reader was sick and that we might have quite a wait …
In November 2020, I contacted Publisher A to see what was happening. He said he'd chase it up.
In January 2021 he said he'd chase it up again.
In February he wrote a very polite and supportive email … of rejection.
Yn y Tŷ Hwn rights change hands
In 2019, Gwasg Gomer, the original publisher of Yn y Tŷ Hwn, announced it was to wind down its publishing side and concentrate on printing only. All three of Sian's novels were published by Gomer, so we knew a change was coming.
Y Lolfa in Tal-y-bont
Sian told me early in 2021 that Gomer was selling these titles to Y Lolfa. I contacted Lolfa's managing director to introduce myself and my project, and also to find out when the rights would be legally transferred. The first of April, I was told – so I decided to wait until April before contacting any more publishers.
A changed submissions landscape, post-2020
By the beginning of 2021, I had already compiled a list of publishers to whom I wished to pitch This House. Of necessity, they are all publishers that will accept unagented submissions. I'd done much of my original research in the run-up to the subsequently cancelled 2020 London Book Fair. I'd noted which publishers would only accept submissions during certain 'windows'.
When I updated my list in early 2021, I found that many of the 'window' periods publicised in 2020 had been withdrawn. Often these companies had put a note on their website saying they were swamped because of the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Several I'd had my sights on are now inaccessible to me.
More detailed research into publishers I wish to target
In compiling my original list of publishers I was to target, I'd obviously already looked at their websites to make sure they had an interest in publishing novels and novellas, and a back catalogue that included translations into English.
To research the ones that were still accepting unagented submissions, I decided to buy two paperbacks from each. This was so I could see and feel their product for myself, both to judge the quality and (hopefully) to have something relevant to say about one of their books when the time came to pitch to each publisher. Using a combination of Amazon's 'Look Inside' function and reviews on the Good Reads website, I hoped my selection of these pairs would result in novels I would also enjoy reading.
So far I have made three rounds of purchases this way. I've found quite a variety in the size and choice of typeface; cover design; paper quality; and thoroughness of proofreading.
In search of a publisher – Publisher B
Preparing to pitch to Publisher B, my purchases from them were a novel written in English and a novella translated from Dutch. I loved the novel and, although it wasn't a translation, its setting was a Celtic country with enough dialect words in the dialogue to require a glossary. The novella had an interesting premise but it felt like an intellectual exercise stemming from that premise. Both books were nicely produced: good covers and reasonable typefaces and paper.
I pitched to Publisher B in April, once the rights for Yn y Tŷ Hwn had been safely transferred to their new owner. Straight after pitching, I received a polite email confirming receipt, which is always good.
In early June I asked if they were still considering it, and they still were.
As I was writing this blog post, I received a very polite and supportive email … of rejection.
In search of a publisher – Publishers C and D
While waiting for Publisher B to come to a decision, I pushed ahead and bought pairs of paperbacks from the next two publishers on my target list – in the hope that they don't put the 'closed' sign on their websites anytime soon!
Publisher C
Publisher C's books were a novel translated from French (but set in England) and one in Italian (but set in Finland). I was not impressed with the French one. It looked as if it had been self-published: the cover design had been thrown together, the paper was coarse and it was set in an unimaginative typeface. I found the story quite turgid and so didn't finish it.
The Italian one – although weird – was a good read. It had also been produced with higher production values than the French one. However, the cover image was very unexciting. As I was reading it, I realised that not one of the Finnish words that should have had accents had any. None. Epic proofreading fail!
Publisher C has now been crossed off my list.
Publisher D
Publisher D's books were translations from German and Arabic. When they arrived, they looked as if they'd come from different publishing houses. The German one had a cover as boring as publisher C's Italian one. (I'm starting to wonder if this is a thing: does a boring, monochrome cover signal to the discerning reader that there's a complex European novel in translation within?) The Arabic translation's cover, however, was really eye-catching and well-designed. The paper was different too: much better quality, and the page layout was nicer.
I've read the German story, which was slight but insistent, but I had trouble with a graphic description of cruelty to an animal in the Arabic one. I haven't yet picked it up since.
Publisher D will definitely be pitched to.
Other translators' blogs
Over the last few months, I've been reading the blogs of two other translators, both of which I learned about through the Translators Association.
Daniel Hahn's Translation Diary gives a blow-by-blow account of his work on Jamás el fuego nunca, a novel by the Chilean writer Diamela Eltit, for Charco Press.
Co-incidentally, Tim Gutteridge also translates from Spanish. His blog is an entertaining and educational read too.
A nugget
Now and again since the end of 2020 I've looked at seminars and presentations online about writing and translation. Not as many as I did in 2020, but then I'm not in full mentee-mode any more and I have my proofreading clients' wants to attend to. Through Sam Jordison (of the independent publisher Galley Beggar Press), who gave one of the Warwick Thursdays talks, I learned this amazing sales statistic: the average number of copies of sold for a literary fiction title in English is around
Two hundred and sixty. 260! That puts the sales of Yn y Tŷ Hwn – over four times that for a novella in a minority language – in an interesting light.
Words ©Susan Walton 2021. Photo of phone calendar by Behnam Norouzi; photo of letter 'A' by Tanzim Akash; photo of letter 'B' by Dan Gold; photo of letter 'C' by Nikhil Mitra; photo of 'D' shape by Catcap; photo of figure '2' by Possessed Photography; photo of figure '6' by Clem Onojeghuo; photo of figure '0' by Bernard Hermant – all on Unsplash. Photo of Y Lolfa in Tal-y-bont by 'Ddraig Ddu' from www.waymarking.com.
January 5, 2021 / Susan Walton
December was a very productive month for my project of producing a literary translation into English of the Welsh novella Yn y Tŷ Hwn. For a start, it's now got an English name: This House. It's official – the author, Sian Northey, has approved the title change. That is the title I shall pitch to a potential publisher.
Last month also saw the final 'meeting' with my mentor. After the meeting, I spent the last few days before Christmas doing a whole-text re-edit. I also tied down the last few loose ends with Sian (thanks, Sian!).
On Christmas Day, when lockdown travel rules in Wales were relaxed for one day, I filmed this little video on my phone of the sort of landscape in which This House is set. Excuse the sniffles on the sound – there was a pretty cold wind and my nose was running!
https://saesnegsue.sueproof.wales/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/nant.mp4
At the start of 2020
It's just over a year since I found out that I'd been awarded a year's menteeship as an early career literary translator. Almost a year has passed since I posted my first, introductory post on this blog, in January 2020.
I used a photo of an unopened bottle of champagne as the featured image in that first post. I privately thought that I would have done well if I could illustrate a post at the end of the year with a bottle opened in virtual celebration. It's not quite time to do that.
Back in January I aimed to produce a text as nuanced and subtle in English as the Welsh original. I think I have. I also hoped Sian Northey would like it. On Christmas Eve, I gave Sian the English text to read over when she gets time. (She's probably been a bit busy since then.)
Spin-off benefits of the project
Just being part of something different for a year has brought many benefits.
I'm a professional proofreader and copy-editor, trading as Sue Proof. The project has been an entrée into a new bunch of people who might want to use my services.
I'd been considering joining the Translators Association (and, yes, they do spell it without the possessive apostrophe) for a while. It's part of the Society of Authors (SoA), and once I'd joined the SoA I was sent the Society's magazine. A real-world, paper magazine, with small ads and everything.
So, for £34.80 I placed an advert for Sue Proof.
Result: proofreading work in 2020 worth about £3.4K, with follow-up jobs already in the diary for 2021 from two of those new clients.
Of course, at the beginning of the year I thought that I'd be networking physically – not least at the London Book Fair and Hay Festival – but it was not to be.
However, the online networking I'm part of has been invaluable. I've joined two online forums for translators: the Translators Association Members' group on Groups.io, and the Emerging Translators' Group, which is a Google group. Both are a fantastic resource, with a very friendly 'no question is too stupid' attitude.
As a user of Facebook, I've joined The Cwtch – the SoA Wales Discussion Group. I've also 'attended' the first meeting of a nascent network for translators of less-translated languages, of which Welsh is one.
Not to be forgotten are the residential courses at the National Centre for Writing in Norwich and Tŷ Newydd, the National Writing Centre of Wales that I went on earlier in my menteeship year. These introduced me to more new bunches of literary people.
Dragon Hall, the National Centre for Writing in Norwich
Increased and varied reading
In a normal year I read about a book a month, and I usually read a lot of non-fiction. In 2020 year I read over twice that number of books, and it wasn't all due to lockdown. The increase was partly the result of reading many more novels. A fair few of those were novels in translation, for purposes of professional development. I've discussed some of them in past posts.
The pursuit of novels that This House is 'like', for when I pitch to publishers, accounts for many of the other additional books I read last year. This need to cite similar works to the one you're pitching (called 'comps' in the jargon) was one of the project's revelations.
Despite being very different in subject and setting, my best fit so far is Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin. This is because of its small cast of characters, the limited and limiting physical setting, the interiority of the main character, and its theme of reflection on past events that might, or could, have turned out differently. I've been told that it's the 'vibe' of works referred to as comps that's important, rather than the subject matter. However, if you replace the copious alcohol drinking in Giovanni's Room with the copious tea drinking in This House, maybe they're not that dissimilar …
The drawback
When I signed up to be mentored and to produce This House from Yn y Tŷ Hwn, I didn't know how much time it would swallow. I worried about this a lot at the beginning, especially as the menteeship meant signing up for two residential courses which took chunks of time out of one quarter of my Sue Proof 2020 business year.
As things have panned out, the project accounted for about +25% on the hours I worked in 2020, compared to the mean number of hours worked in the three years 2017–19. I made the choice on occasion to turn down paid work so I could accommodate the project without having to work too many weekends.
. . . or maybe not such a drawback?
However, when Sue Proof's business income for 2020 is compared to its mean business income for the three years 2017–19, it's at +20%. (And that's not including the Chancellor's coronavirus grant.) So the extra exposure and extra marketing the project afforded Sue Proof has, roughly, paid for the extra time devoted to it. That feels good, before I even start pitching to publishers to try and sell This House.
Looking ahead to the rest of 2021
I have been cast onto the rough sea of publishing to pitch my book. I need a publisher; unlike an author, I'm not in a position to self-publish. But I am prepared: I have been compiling a list of likely potential publishers since March 2020, when I thought I'd be going to the London Book Fair.
So I'll paddle my little raft onwards, with no mentor support, into the waves of 2021. I will only be posting on this blog if anything important happens from now on, rather than monthly. At the moment, the project feels like this:
I hope, before too long, it'll feel like this:
Words and images ©Susan Walton 2020 except for the champagne photo by Thomas Owen on Unsplash; the ice bucket photo by Siora Photography on Unsplash; the pound coin photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash; the photo of a winter full moon (a 'wolf moon') rising over Moelwyn Bach by Llinos Griffin of Gwefus, used with permission.
Time, tenses, and blurb-bingo
December 1, 2020 / Susan Walton / 0 Comments
One year ago . . .
On 27 November 2019, I received a phone call from Literature Wales telling me of my success in being awarded this:
New opportunity for 2020. One place on the Mentoring Scheme will be ring-fenced for an early career translator/writer, working on literary translation from Welsh to English OR English to Welsh.
I was so discombobulated I had to take the rest of the afternoon off work. I started a new notebook straight away. The first page reads:
New project – new notebook. Got to get stuff out of my head so I can carry on with my paid work. Disbelief – I genuinely thought it would go to a bright young thing. When can I tell Sian?
The question about when could I tell Sian Northey, 'my' author, turned into 'when can I tell anyone at all?' My award was supposed to be a secret until mid-January 2020. That was when Literature Wales was going to announce the beneficiaries of its bursaries and menteeships, all together.
I can now fully sympathise with anyone who's been told they're going to get an honour or an award, but can't spill the beans. Christmas get-togethers (remember them?) last year were spent replying, 'Oh, you know, the usual' to enquiries about how my work was going.
What really I wanted to say – or scream, possibly – was, 'Fantastically well! I've been recognised as an emerging literary translator, and I'm going to be mentored throughout 2020!' Then everyone would have congratulated me and, with any luck, bought me a drink.
Time and tenses
I knew a year ago that one of the things I have trouble with in my translations is tense. Now obviously I know the difference between a straightforward past tense and present tense. I just demonstrated it right there with 'I knew a year ago' and 'I know the difference'.
My problem comes in two parts. The first is that – in common with many languages – tenses in Welsh (my source language) don't necessarily map tidily onto tenses in my target language, English. The second problem is that I've never been taught English grammar properly. I'm like a musician who plays by ear.
My mentor has suggested many tense changes to my translation of Yn y Tŷ Hwn. This is an example from the opening chapter; verbs are in bold.
In my first draft, I'd translated this passage:
Dynas gin oedd hi wedi bod erioed. Ond rhyw chydig fisoedd yn ôl, yng nghanol ei hantur fisol i'r archfarchnad cafodd ei denu – heb unrhyw reswm, bron – gan botel o single malt drud. Cyfiawnhaodd y penderfyniad trwy resymu y byddai'n debygol o yfed llai o ddiod nad oedd yn arbennig o hoff ohono.
Ond yn fuan roedd hi wedi ymserchu yn yr hylif euraidd.
She'd always been a gin woman. But a few months back, in the middle of her monthly shopping expedition to the supermarket, she was drawn to – for almost no reason – a bottle of expensive single malt. She justified the decision by reasoning that she'd probably drink less of something she didn't especially like.
But before long she'd taken a liking to the golden liquid.
My mentor suggested this:
She'd always been a gin woman. But a few months back, in the middle of her monthly shopping expedition to the supermarket, she'd found herself – inexplicably – being drawn to a bottle of expensive single malt. She'd justified the decision by reasoning that she'd probably drink less of something she didn't especially like.
But before long she was growing fond of the golden liquid.
And at present it reads:
She'd always been a gin woman. But a few months back, in the middle of her monthly shopping expedition to the supermarket, she'd found herself drawn – almost inexplicably – to a bottle of expensive single malt. She'd justified the decision by reasoning that she'd probably drink less of something she didn't particularly like.
But before long she'd developed a taste for this golden liquid.
Is there a hack?
Well, perhaps not a hack, but at least some illumination. I turned to Editing Fiction at Sentence Level by Louise Harnby, a fellow member of the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading (CIEP).
Louise is excellent on which past tenses are needed in fiction. Here's an excerpt from her book:
When past tense flops – understanding past perfect
Less experienced writers can end up in a pickle when referencing
events that happened earlier than their novel's now. The crucial
thing to remember is that when we set a novel in the past tense,
anything that happens in the story's past will likely need the past
perfect, at least when the action is introduced.
• What you want the reader to experience: Now – the present
of your novel
• What tense you should write in: Simple past or past
progressive (she stood; she was standing)
• What you want the reader to experience: Something that
happened before (i.e. in the novel's past)
• What tense you should write in: Past perfect or past perfect
progressive (she had stood; she had been standing)
So all I need to do is go through 100+ pages of my Word version of Yn y Tŷ Hwn and check whether the tense of every verb matches its time …
Maybe that is what'll be filling the Christmas get-together voids this year.
Blurb bingo
In readiness for our December meeting, my mentor has set me the task of writing a blurb for Yn y Tŷ Hwn that isn't just a translation of the Welsh one, and that includes a quote relevant to one of the novel's themes. I've never taken much notice of blurbs, so more discovery for me here. More literary fieldwork, so to speak.
Did you notice those novels in the main picture at the top of this post? I read all their blurbs. This is what my highly unrepresentative sample revealed about them:
blurb length varied from 70 to 170 words, excluding any quotes from the text itself or author biographical details
blurbs are nearly always in the present tense, regardless of whether the novel is mainly written in the past tense or the present continuous
some blurbs have a sort of headline sentence: a micro-blurb in a nutshell so you don't even need to read the blurb
many blurbs incorporate quotes from the text
most blurbs give a geographical location, many give a time location – sometimes indirectly – and often they give the story set-up.
Then I played blurb-bingo with words that cropped up repeatedly. The winning words were powerful, moving, scintillating, literary and love.
My blurb for Yn y Tŷ Hwn
Here's a sneak peek at my homework, before my mentor gets to see it; maybe it's too long for a blurb at 140 words plus a quote. I quite like the micro-blurb bit (in bold), but I'm not convinced about the text quote. We'll see what the mentor makes of it in December.
A delicate but powerful novel about how decisions taken almost by chance have unforeseen consequences
Anna has lived alone for decades. She is marooned in, and cocooned by, an isolated house called Nant yr Aur in the Welsh mountains. Her only constant friends are farmer Emyr and his wife, Dora.
The arrival of Siôn, a young man who seems strangely at home in Nant yr Aur, leads to an unpicking of Anna's past.
She started to write a letter in her head to Siôn.
'Dear Siôn,
I had been expecting to see you before you left the other morning. I hope you will return to Nant yr Aur, because …'
She started to chew the end of the imaginary biro before resuming in her head.
'… because your presence in Nant yr Aur felt right.'
As Anna's relationship with Siôn develops, her perspective on the solidity of her past shifts. Uncertainty, distortion, illusion and subtle betrayal are gradually exposed. Ultimately, a quietly devastating revelation changes the lives of both of Siôn and Anna.
Sian Northey writes with economy and precision, setting out what the life of a middle-aged woman with an emotionally complicated past feels like from the inside.
Fantasy cover design
Actual cover of Yn y Tŷ Hwn
Fantasy cover for my translation: 'Cwm Dyli cottage' by Rob Piercy
Oh, and while we're on fantasy cover content, the watercolour of the red cottage is my choice of a front cover picture. It's by fabulously talented landscape painter Rob Piercy.
Imagine the quote-strapline at the top – 'By now there were new stars in existence, and their light had yet to reach Nant yr Aur' – then, in big letters, the title 'This House'. At the bottom, it should say 'Sian Northey' (of course), followed by 'Translated by Susan Walton'.
I live in hope.
Words and images ©Susan Walton 2020 except for clock photo by Fredrik Öhlander on Unsplash; Glenmorangie photo by Anubhav Arora on Unsplash; bingo photo by Tomppa Koponen from Pixabay; cover of Yn y Tŷ Hwn ©Gwasg Gomer, used with permission; Cwm Dyli Cottage ©Rob Piercy, used with permission.
There's a deadline looming
November 4, 2020 / Susan Walton / 0 Comments
That face is just about how I feel at this stage in my year of being mentored.
I had my second meeting with my mentor at the end of September, but because I haven't had the concentration ability or the brain space since then I haven't gone through their comments and suggestions. I have a deadline looming – my next commissioned translation – and that's what's taking centre stage at the moment.
Drws Du yn Nhonypandy
Drws Du yn Nhonypandy (English title The Black Pit of Tonypandy)
The backdrop of the story is the South Wales miners' fight for a living wage in 1910, and their lockout and strike. The then Home Secretary, Winston Churchill, sent in the Metropolitan Police to quash the miners and riots ensued. Troops were then added to the mix to reinforce the police presence. Because of this, Churchill's name is still derided in many quarters in Wales.
During the Tonypandy Riots
South Wales Welsh and South Wales English
One of the challenges of translating Drws Du yn Nhonypandy has been the South Wales Welsh speech of all the characters. Myrddin ap Dafydd, the author and commissioner of all my published translations to date, always wants to retain some Welsh words in the dialogue, but I wasn't sure how much additional 'flavour' to transfer from one language to the other.
The sorts of words Myrddin wants me to retain are the equivalent of 'lad', 'dear', 'mate' etc. These words are tags in the dialogue. They remind readers that the characters would really be speaking Welsh. They don't hinder the action or understanding, but they give the reader a gentle nudge.
The original Welsh dialogue in Drws Du yn Nhonypandy is rendered on the page how people from the Rhondda speak. Here is an example:
"O's rhaid iti ga'l cymaint o ddŵr ar y llawr, grwt?"
In standard English, that would be:
"Do you have to get so much water on the floor, lad?"
How much dialect and accent is too much?
Before I started editing the first draft, I asked Myrddin how far he wanted me to go in conveying the way people in the Valleys speak English. I suggested three levels.
The first level was to take our usual approach. That means that, in this book, I would include a sprinkling of Welsh words, including 'crwt'. The word means 'lad' or 'boy' in South Wales Welsh ('grwt' is the mutated form of the root word 'crwt'). This level looks like this:
"Do you have to get so much water on the floor, crwt?"
A second, deeper level would be for me to reproduce the English accent of the Valleys. I suggested limiting this way of speaking to one or two peripheral characters. An example of such a character is Tal, a grizzled miner who is also a promoter and trainer of bare knuckle boxers. Here he is, in conversation with Moc.
"Elli drefnu gornest i Wil 'ma?"
"Dim problem, Moc. Ma fe'n fachan teidi gyda'i ddyrne. Gawn ni gwpwl o rowndie yma rhyw noson wythnos nesa, ife?"
"Na, un fowr y tro hyn, Tal. Lan ar y mynydd. Yn erbyn un o fois Gilfach-goch. Beth am bnawn Sadwrn?"
In the Welsh, both Moc and Tal speak in the same way. A standard translation would be:
"Can you arrange a bout for Wil here?"
"No problem, Moc. He's a tidy with his fists, that boy. We'll have a couple of rounds here one night next week, is it?"
"No, a big one this time, Tal. Up on the mountain. Against one of the Gilfach-goch lads. What about Saturday afternoon?"
Here it is again, but in this version I've rendered Tal's speech only into a form of English with similar contractions and accent as in the original Welsh text:
"No problem, Moc. 'Ee's tidy with 'is fists, your lad. We'll 'ave a couple o' roun's 'ere one night next week, is it?"
Myrddin and I agreed that the third level – to turn all the dialogue into South Wales-accented English – would be too much. There would be a danger of it becoming a caricature of the 'look you, boyo' variety. It would be difficult to read and a distraction from the story.
Whereas the readership of the story in Welsh will at least have heard the South Wales variety of Welsh, those reading the English could be from anywhere in the world. English might not even be their native language.
Back to Yn y Tŷ Hwn – I feel the influence of being mentored
As I progressed with the first draft of Drws Du yn Nhonypandy, I noticed that some of the lessons from the first meeting with my mentor on Yn y Tŷ Hwn are already spilling over into my paid work.
The mentor pointed out that, so long as an idea in the same part of the text, it doesn't necessarily have to be placed in exactly the same order as in the original language. An example of this in Yn y Tŷ Hwn is:
Roedd 'hel pricia' yn hen, hen jôc rhwng y ddau. Rhy hen a rhy gymhleth i'w hesbonio i neb, bron iawn nad oedd hi ei hun, erbyn hyn, yn sicr o'i tharddiad. Ond pobl gwneud dryga oedd pobl hel pricia, a phobl ddiflas oedd pobl firelighters. A rŵan dyma'r ddau ohonyn nhw'n bobl firelighters.
This would translate straightforwardly as:
'Collecting kindling' was an old, old joke between them. Too old and too involved to explain and, by now, she wasn't even sure herself of its origins. 'Kindling people' were full of mischief; 'firelighters people' were boring. And now here they both were: firelighters people.
but which my mentor suggests could be rendered as:
Long, long ago, this in-joke had grown between them (how it had started was lost to time). It was a way of reducing everybody to two sorts, the 'kindling people' (full of mischief) and the 'firelighter types' (boring). And now here they both were: firelighter types.
Just for the record, I have this passage rendered like this at the moment, but it may yet change:
The difference between 'users of firelighters' and 'collectors of kindling' was an old, old in-joke between them. Its origins were lost in the mists of time, but the gist of the joke was that 'kindling people' are full of mischief and 'firelighter types' are boring. And now here they both were: firelighter types.
I really do hope I can do some proper homework on my being-mentored project in November . . .
(The picture is for illustrative purposes only. It's not even my office.)
Words ©Susan Walton 2020; Cheeky Tongue photo ©Ruth Elkin on FreeImages; cover of Drws Du yn Nhonypandy ©Gwasg Carreg Gwalch 2020; the photo of the police lined up across the street in Tonypandy is in the public domain; photo of the toddler is by Janko Ferlič on Unsplash; the photo of boxer Amby McGarry is by Newmans of New York and was printed in the supplement to the National Police Gazette, #1565, Saturday, August 10, 1907; photo of kindling is by Alison Dueck on Unsplash; photo of me ©Chris Jones, 2012.
Holding a thought through a deluge of work
August 27, 2020 / Susan Walton / 1 Comment
The illustration at the top of this post is part of a painting called Holding a Thought. It was painted by K. I remember him doing it, and the state of mind he was in when he did it. I've been in a similar state of mind for much of August 2020.
As I said in the last post, K had ideas coming out of his ears, but for a while there was so much going on in his earning-a-living life (and he had the pressure of being self-employed) that months were going by when there was no space or time to realise a big project he had in his head.
He painted Holding a Thought to express how this felt – he was holding this precious thing that might easily get engulfed by shades of quotidian life.
It's been a year …
My diary for 28 August 2019 reads:
I was awake and couldn't go back to sleep. Got up and started my application to be mentored into translating adult literary fiction. Back to bed about 7 and woke up at 10. In the meantime the fucker announces he's going to ask the queen to prorogue parliament – timing and duration to get a no-deal Brexit through.
Both of those events seem a long time ago now. A very long time ago.
Holding a thought
I learned of my application's success in late 2019, and in January 2020 I went off to the Norwich industry weekend. Tŷ Newydd gave me the space to more or less finish my first draft, and lockdown meant I could polish it.
I had my first 'meeting' with my mentor at the end of June and made good progress on further finessing the text in July.
But my a golden thought about my translation project has been almost swamped during August. K's painting came into my head – it illustrates the feeling exactly.
The reason the golden thought has been so flattened is proofreading. I'm not complaining at all about having had a bonanza month. It is, after all, my living; I am self-employed too.
During August I have proofread just shy of 195,000 words in five separate jobs for four clients. Two of the clients were new, which always means more auxiliary work around the job. I think that's the most proofreading I've done in one month since I started my business in 2008.
So – as I say – not complaining at all. Meanwhile, the Yn y Tŷ Hwn project box has hardly been opened. But I'm holding that thought.
The 'arias' – a step by step example
In July's post, I mentioned my metaphor of 'arias' for the parts of the text that 'carry' the rest. I have done some work on those in August, so I thought I'd illustrate the various iterations that one of them has gone through. It's in the first chapter.
Here's the Welsh original:
Duw a ŵyr yn union pam y cychwynnodd hi yno'r diwrnod hwnnw. Roedd ei chyfarfod wedi'i ohirio, roedd ganddi bnawn rhydd o'i gwaith, roedd hi'n braf, roedd wedi clywed cân o'i phlentyndod ar y radio, a honno wedi mynnu aros yn ei phen trwy'r bore. Efallai mai dyna pam. Hoffai feddwl mai ffawd oedd o i gyd, cyd-ddigwyddiad wedi'i gynllunio gan rywun, gan rywbeth.
My first attempt, done in 2012, well before I was awarded the menteeship, ran:
God knows why, exactly, she headed there on that day. Her meeting had been postponed, she had a work-free afternoon, it was a beautiful day, she'd heard a song from her childhood on the radio, which had stuck in her head all morning. So maybe that was why. She liked to think all this was fate: co-incidences arranged by someone, something.
The first draft for the present project reads:
Goodness knows exactly why she headed there on that day. Her meeting had been postponed, she had a free afternoon, the weather was fine, she'd heard a song from her childhood on the radio which had been stuck in her head all morning. Maybe that was why. She liked to think it was all fate, a coincidence engineered by someone, by something.
Following an edit on paper, I didn't change this passage. I had marked up on paper a change from 'the weather was fine' to 'the weather was gorgeous', but had then 'stetted' it (the 'stet' mark means 'leave unchanged').
It still remained unchanged when I read that version of the text aloud to my critical translator friend, Gwenlli. It does the job. It's a good, accurate translation.
Mentor input
Then I received input from both my mentor and from the officer from the Wales Literature Exchange, a partner organisation in the mentoring project. The Exchange officer first: they suggested replacing 'engineered' with 'orchestrated', which I rejected.
I rejected it because 'engineered by someone, by something' brings to my mind William Blake's painting The Ancient of Days.
In my head, if you're going to have a higher intelligence, it would have dividers, not a baton.
The only change my mentor suggested was to delete the 'on', to give 'headed there that day' rather than 'headed there on that day.' This I accepted.
The mentor had also attached a long comment about the importance of this passage in terms of underlining the theme of chance/accident in the novel, especially as it occurs in the first chapter. They also advised me, generally, to pour my expressive energy into tightening up the wording where the themes are uppermost in the text (which is how I developed the metaphor of 'arias').
Further prose tightening
Following the mentor's advice, I had another go and came up with:
Goodness knows exactly why she headed there that day. A postponed meeting had freed her for the whole afternoon, the weather was gorgeous, a song from her childhood had been on repeat in her head all morning. Maybe that was why. She liked to think it was fate, a coincidence engineered by someone or by something.
I then decided to treat the passage like a poem. I printed this wording out on a slip of paper and carried it about in my handbag, sneaking a look at it now and again to see if I could catch it off guard. I've found this process to be helpful when translating poetry; it seems to work like jump leads to connect the subconscious brain to the thinking brain.
The result was one change: 'circling' – 'a song from her childhood had been circling in her head.'
I think I've clinched it.
'Circling' links her interior with the exterior – she's sitting with a nostalgic song going round in her head, in a place where she might, by chance, see a buzzard circling on a thermal.
Images and words ©Susan Walton 2020, except for the image of Holding a Thought ©estate of K. Nathan, reproduced with the permission of A. Nathan and I. Nathan; the Welsh text from Yn y Tŷ Hwn ©Sian Northey 2011, reproduced with the permission of Gwasg Gomer; and the image of a pound coin by Brett Jordan on unsplash.com. The image of The Ancient of Days is in the public domain.
What's with the July blues?
July blues? July shouldn't be the month for blues – that's January, surely. But this last month has brought up sad thoughts and revealed sad news. Bear with me.
That man at the top of this post had his birthday in July. Every year until 2015, when he didn't. He and I parted company ten years before 2015, but we remained friends until the end.
K was a visual artist, and I realise now that a great deal of what I understand about creativity I learned from him. He had creativity coming out of his ears and he was prolific. In the time we were together he spent months in California and in London, trying to get his artistic career off the ground. But – as with many artists – he wasn't great at following through on promotion/marketing/being organised. His head was always fizzing too much with the next idea.
All through that time – and especially while he was away – I used to open the Guide and Review sections of The Guardian on a Saturday and wish there'd be an entry for one of his exhibitions. That he'd have a show worthy of inclusion. It never happened.
When I found out I'd been awarded a place on Literature Wales' Mentoring Scheme, I started a new notebook – a project notebook, to keep notes about this project separate from my jottings about ongoing proofreading jobs and to-do lists. Within the first few pages of this notebook I've written:
I used to look and wish for a K review in the Guardian. Now I want a review in the Guardian.
So, privately, that's what I've been working towards, the thing that would be my indicator of having arrived as a literary translator: a review in The Guardian.
Then the news broke in July that The Guardian is going to shed 180 staff. The rumours on Twitter were that the outcome would be no weekend supplements: no Guide, no Review, no Magazine. By the time I find a publisher for Yn y Tŷ Hwn, there may be no Review section in which it could be reviewed.
Hence the July blues.
Progress in the wake of the first meeting with my mentor
My first meeting with my mentor was at the end of June. Some of the 'homework' they suggested, I've been able to work on, and some I haven't. I've worked my way through all the comments and suggested changes on the first third of the Word document. It's quite a revelation being on the other end of such a process – and quite sobering. It's like a hotel owner staying in their own establishment!
I've also given attention to something that was new to me – that the language of the translation needs special treatment in the passages that convey the story's themes. I found this difficult to think about at first; I thought all the text had to be brilliant. However, once I'd hit on the metaphor of arias for these particular passages, I got it. In an opera, it's the arias that carry it, it's the arias that make it memorable. So, I've extracted the 'arias' and will work on them as if they were poetry translations.
Project work vs. paid work
Just after the first meeting with my mentor, I secured a huge proofreading job for my Sue Proof business. It's the revision of a 175K-word, non-fiction book with lots of facts and figures. I've also got two novels from two regular self-publishing clients lined up for proofreading in August and early September. (I think everyone's been busy over lockdown!)
Obviously, paid work has to come first, so the 'homework' task of reading all Sian Northey's novels and short stories to imbibe their essence isn't going to happen for a while. However, I have managed to read the Sahar Khalifeh's novella Passage to the Plaza, translated from Arabic by Sawad Hussain. This was useful for thinking about how to treat cultural terms in the source language; in other words, how much to 'domesticate' and how much to 'foreignise' them in the target language.
Learning through the ears
When I've been proofreading for hours – especially facts and figures – I don't much feel like reading more. Because of this, much of my learning in July has been via my ears rather than my eyes. This included listening to Sawad Hussain being interviewed about Passage to the Plaza, which helped me understand the novel better.
Other pearls of wisdom have come from The Verb's interview with Salman Rushdie; a Free Thinking episode with Ian Rankin; and a comment by American artist Laurie Anderson during an edition of A Good Read. She observed that, although the book in question (Sleep no More by L. T. C. Rolt) was written in English, she'd had to imagine canal towpaths and tunnels because she'd never seen any. Penny … dropped: even when not in translation, not everything has to be explained to be enjoyed.
Energy and guts
To counterbalance the July blues, I'd like to end on a positive note. This is a picture of 'my' author, Sian Northey, signing some of her books outside our local independent bookshop, Browsers Bookshop.
Sian Northey outside Browsers Bookshop in Porthmadog
Browsers is currently shut and isn't going to reopen for a while yet. However, within a few weeks of lockdown starting, Browsers' owner had a trading website up and running and started selling online. She also made up over a hundred book packs which were distributed through local food banks. In good weather, she has been leaving children's books on the shop's doorstep for passers-by to pick up for free.
Then, in July, came this message on Facebook:
We are installing a reading room here at Browsers and a community space for workshops/readings/exhibitions etc upstairs. … having been forced to close, the opportunity to turn a dream into reality has presented itself. Timing is not good financially, as I'm sure you can imagine, but the opportunity to undertake work that we would have had to close to complete otherwise is an opportunity we have to take.
Browsers was formerly the Morris Chemist shop and, in gutting the shop, these business cards have been revealed. 'Ilford' is a brand of photographic film – pharmacies used to sell films – and 'Cupal' is a make of antacid tablet.
Old business cards uncovered during building work at Browsers Bookshop
If you don't have your own handy independent local bookshop, please consider buying from Browsers.
And now I have a new thing to aim for: a launch event in Browsers' new community space. Maybe by next summer there'll be no July blues.
Static images and words ©Susan Walton 2020, except for the image of María Bayo by WikimediaImages from Pixabay, and the images of Sian Northey and the old business cards ©Browsers Bookshop 2020; video ©ArabLit Quarterly 2020.


text:
HDR Foundation
State Highway 130 is an 87-mile controlled access tollway just east of Austin. The first 49 miles — segments 1 through 4 — were constructed under an exclusive development agreement, an expanded concept of a design-build contract. This phase included four main-lane toll plazas, three major river and three railroad crossings, seven major and 31 minor interchanges, and 123 bridges.
We served as the owner's representative, providing procurement support, program management, design oversight and construction management. To facilitate communication and collaboration, we co-located with the contractor. Working as an extension of TxDOT staff, the team worked to promote innovations in project inspection, materials testing, financing and delivery. Our team also managed a complex right-of-way and utility relocation program, which included more than 700 acquisition parcels, 500 rights of entry and 450 relocations. Effective management of the acquisition, relocation, survey, appraisal and appraisal review process allowed construction to progress even as the large-scale land acquisitions continued.
Three project segments opened over a span of 11 months. The fourth, and final, section opened to traffic in 2008, less than six years after the notice to proceed. The remaining 38 miles, segments 5 and 6, are being delivered as a separate project and will be constructed as the first concession project in Texas. In this model, a developer will design, build, maintain and operate the tollway for 50 years.
Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT)
Seguin to Austin, TX
Meet our team members
Teri Morgan
South Central Region Real Estate Services Manager
Jeff Curren
Regional Transportation Director
P3 Lessons from South Mountain Freeway
Interstate 80 Automated Corridors Report
DFW Connector
Houston METRO General Planning Consultant
Union Station to Oak Cliff Dallas Streetcar