Book launch Mireille Gansel

With our project, we want to make the essays of the writer and translator Mireille Gansel available to a German audience. The book was translated from French into German by Maria Weber and Fabian Gregori, student assistants at the MiteleuropaZentrum.

Mireille Gansel, born in Paris, is best known to French readers for her translations of the works of Nelly Sachs, Bertolt Brecht and Reiner Kunze, as well as for her translations of Vietnamese poetry into French, which she produced while working for UNESCO in the early 1970s.

In her book, she describes four life situations from a Central Europe that no longer exists. Her life's journey led her from the multicultural and multilingual origins of her childhood across constantly changing borders, from one culture to the next, from one language to another. In her search for a humanity that transcends national and linguistic borders in poetry and literature, the author travels as a mediator through the realities and life stories of a wide variety of authors.

The presentation of the book "Übersetzen als weiterziehen", which was published in 2014 by Thelem-Verlag in Dresden, took place on November 6, 2014, 7:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., at the Stadtmuseum Dresden. Prof. Dr. Walter Schmitz gave an introductory speech. Afterwards, Mireille Gansel and the translators read from the French original and the translation and discussed the problems of translation and the challenges facing translators. The event was moderated by Dr. Torsten König (Institute of Romance Studies, TU Dresden).