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Contributor

Edward Gauvin

Portrait of translator Edward Gauvin
Copyright © Quitterie de Fomervault-Bernard 2016.
Contributor

Edward Gauvin

A 2021 Guggenheim fellow, Edward Gauvin has translated in various fields from film to fiction, with a personal focus on contemporary comics (BD) and post-Surrealist literatures of the fantastic. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s, and World Literature Today, and twice placed in the British Comparative Literature Association’s John Dryden Translation Competition. It has also been shortlisted for several major awards—the Oxford Weidenfeld Translation Prize, the Albertine Prize, the Best Translated Book Award, the National Translation Award—and twice nominated for French-American Foundation Translation Prize. He has received fellowships from the NEA, PEN America, the Fulbright program, and the Centre National du Livre, as well as residencies from Ledig House, the Lannan Foundation, the Banff Centre, and the Belgian government. A multiple grantee of the French Voices program from the French Embassy, he is a frequent contributor to their cultural initiatives. As a translation advocate, he has written widely, spoken at universities and festivals, and taught at the Bread Loaf Translation Conference, where he will be returning (virtually) this summer. The translator of over 400 graphic novels, he is a contributing editor for comics at Words Without Borders.

Articles by Edward Gauvin

Treasures
By Mohamed Magani
She tapped the photo and said, “When I am dead, this is the photo of me I want you to keep.”
Translated from French by Edward Gauvin
The Forsaken
By Aichetou
Listen, all of you, to what will later be said of the Forsaken by one of their descendants.
Translated from French by Edward Gauvin
A Subjective History of Lebanon
By Mazen Kerbaj
Translated by Edward Gauvin
Tiananmen 1989: Our Shattered Hopes
By Lun Zhang, Adrien Gombeaud & Améziane
Not a day goes by that I don't go back to Tiananmen Square.
Translated by Edward Gauvin
Crocodiles Are Everywhere
By Juliette Boutant & Thomas Mathieu
He's touching me.
Translated by Edward Gauvin
Factproof
By Jake Raynal
Like most gruesome crimes, the case also reveals something of society's ills.
Translated from French by Edward Gauvin
Multimedia
The Checkers Player
By Ada Rémy and Yves Rémy
A general who has dreams, that much they’d put up with, but a general who sees ghosts?
Translated from French by Edward Gauvin
On Translating Place in Hélène Aldeguer’s “After the Spring: A Tunisian Youth”
By Edward Gauvin
Edward Gauvin’s translation of an excerpt from Hélène Aldeguer’s After the Spring: A Tunisian Youth appears in the February 2019 issue of WWB. At the…
February 2019 International Graphic Novel After The Spring A Tunisian Youth Helene Aldeguer Feature
From After the Spring
By Hélène Aldeguer
He was 27! Just 27! Barely older than us!
Translated from French by Edward Gauvin
Multimedia
Fairuz in My Grandfather’s Shop
By Lamia Ziadé
Fairuz was only to sing on stage.
Translated from French by Edward Gauvin
The Hundred-Hour War
By David B. & Jean-Pierre Filiu
In April 1991, Saddam Hussein took back control of his country in its entirety.
Translated by Edward Gauvin
Motherhoods
By Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse
My son now despises me.
Translated from French by Edward Gauvin
Men and Beasts
By Daniel Sixte & Sinzo Aanza
Listen up—it's not just General anymore. I'm Marshal General now.
Translated by Edward Gauvin
The Strange
By Jérôme Ruillier
Lots of stranges aren't here legally.
Translated by Edward Gauvin
from Le Piano Oriental
By Zeina Abirached
Fifteen years later, I was the one who left.
Translated by Edward Gauvin
Black Spring
By Maxence Emery & Thomas Humeau
After Batista's dictatorship, Castro had the support of an entire people.
Translated by Edward Gauvin
A Whim of the Gods
By Hippolyte & Patrick de Saint-Exupéry
Dump trucks from the Department of Public Safety came for the bodies.
Translated by Edward Gauvin
Cinépanorama
By Xavier Mauméjean
You look away. The yolk’s yellow circle reminds you of an eye.
Translated from French by Edward Gauvin
Flowers in Concrete
By Wilfried N’Sonde
The throng was slowly making for the two officers, a clash close at hand.
Translated from French by Edward Gauvin
From the Translator: Tintin in the Land of Foreign Affairs
By Edward Gauvin
In 2006, Tom McCarthy claimed that the pages of Tintin contained the secret of literature; in 2010, Abel Lanzac and Christophe Blain declared that Tintin held the secret of making a good political speech.Invoking…
Weapons of Mass Diplomacy
By Abel Lanzac & Christophe Blain
Look, seriously, he's gonna make you rewrite it ten times.
Translated by Edward Gauvin
The General
By Nicolas Wild
It's the good stuff. Afghani.
Translated by Edward Gauvin
Jeanine
By Matthias Picard
That night, it was a Ford that stopped.
Translated by Edward Gauvin
The Translator
By Jacques Gélat
Translators are often congratulated, but never admired.
Translated from French by Edward Gauvin
Edward Gauvin on Being Translated
By Edward Gauvin
Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud recently did me the honor not only of translating one of my short stories, but of finding that translation a French home. My first published translation, and Châteaureynaud’s…
Tongue-tied
By Li-Chin Lin
© Editons çà et là, 2011. Rights arranged through Nicolas Grivel Agency. Translation © 2013 by Edward Gauvin. All rights reserved.
Translated by Edward Gauvin
False Faces: An Imagined Life of the Wig Gang
By David B. & Hervé Tanquerelle
“Remember that safe I carried off with Adjaj and Bernard and opened at my dad’s?”
Translated by Edward Gauvin
A Great Step Forward: Memoir of the Famine
By Li Kunwu & Philippe Ôtié
Translated by Edward Gauvin
from “Les Mohameds”
By Jérôme Ruillier
Translated by Edward Gauvin
from “The International”
By Roannie & Oko
Translated by Edward Gauvin
The Ark
By André-Marcel Adamek
Crates of poultry are piling up in my yard, my attic’s an aviary, my cellar writhes with reptiles
Translated from French by Edward Gauvin
The Red Loaf
By André Pieyre de Mandiargues
I began the laborious ascent of the loaf.
Translated from French by Edward Gauvin
An Open Letter to Mohamed Bouazizi
By Boualem Sansal
You delivered the spark, your task is done, the task is ours now to finish.
Translated from French by Edward Gauvin
Multilingual
Chihoi in Action
By Edward Gauvin
Kaleidoscope, a marvelous, eye-widening exhibition on the history of Hong Kong comics, is a ten-minute walk down to the river from the center of town. The exhibit is composed of individual units that…
Africans in Paris: On “Malamine”
By Edward Gauvin
“I’ve never seen an African in a bookstore in France,” said Christophe Ngalle Edimo. “I say African, because whatever country in Africa you’re actually from, the minute you…
from “Malamine”
By Christophe Ngalle Edimo & Simon-Pierre Mbumbo
From Malamine, un africain à Paris, by Christophe-Ngalle Edimo and Simon-Pierre Mbumbo. Published 2009 by Éditions Les Enfants Rouges. Copyright 2009 by Éditions Les Enfants Rouges. By arrangement with…
Translated by Edward Gauvin
From Angoulême: European Comics in Anglophone Markets
By Edward Gauvin
Thursday, I attended a session in the “rights balloon” (let’s hope it’s not a “rights bubble”) entitled “Franco-Belgian BD business in the USA Today.” The…
Angoulême Bubbles Over
By Edward Gauvin
Angoulême! It’s an eyegasm. As promised. The sky, overcast since Paris, finally brightened as the TGV pulled past Poitiers without stopping. From my seat, I was playing the game I always do…
Debeurme, Berberian, and Denis, Signing in Brussels
By Edward Gauvin
Frit Flagey is regularly considered one of the best fry joints (friterie, or fritkot) in Brussels. It’s also one of the slowest, and so can always be spotted by its line, in which smatterings of…
La Grève, C’est Grave (Striking is a Serious Business)
By Edward Gauvin
Shortly after celebrating its twentieth anniversary in May, French indie comics powerhouse L’Association now finds itself at a stalemate with its employees, who’ve gone on strike to protest…
The Front
By Gébé
“The Front” is taken from Not-Quite-Botched Dispatches (But a Hard Sell for the Nightly News), a series of fictional reportages; as satire, they take for their target the trumpery and fabrication…
Translated from French by Edward Gauvin
From “The Burning of the Chiado”
By François Vallejo
It goes quickly. Lisbon burns. The Frenchman has followed the fire’s progress since morning. He was sleeping in his pension, Rua do Ouro. A roar outside, he pulled the curtains back. It should’ve…
Translated from French by Edward Gauvin
Ports of Madness
By Fatou Diome
“We have art in order not to die of the truth.”—Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to PowerA gray hood, a red shawl, woolen gloves, tight knit socks, leather boots, a big fleece sweater, Dacron…
Translated from French by Edward Gauvin
The Pharaohs of Egypt
By Florent Ruppert & Jérôme Mulot
This way over there, you stupid savage.
Translated by Edward Gauvin
LearnMultimedia
Delaunay the Broker
By Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud
All things there are the same, but the same as what, I could not say. He walked into my antique shop one September afternoon. I knew right away he hadn’t come to buy. I have an eye for these…
Translated from French by Edward Gauvin