Early summer 2000

Dear ALTA members,

We're looking forward to having a great time and a fantastic conference in San Francisco. Put these dates down now, and make your reservations!

Registration begins on Wednesday, October 18, 2000. Come to the reception for ALTA members at City Lights Bookstore from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Afterwards we'll walk half a block down the street for the hottest Chinese, no-MSG dinner available east of the Yalu river.

Thursday, October 19th, 2000 at 7:30 a.m. join Will Kirkland and Barbara Paschke for a power walk to the Embarcadero and back. Bring something to read out loud at full gallop. At 9:30 the conference proper begins with some great panels and the first bilingual readings. There will be panels all morning, a good lunch break, and a few more panels. The afternoon has two plenary sessions (count em, two!). First we will hear from Jane Hirshfield, well-known poet and translator here in the Bay Area (author of The Lives of the Heart and Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry, and translator of The Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono No Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan). After a short break we will gather for a session titled "Long Dwelling with the Author," featuring John Felstiner discussing Paul Celan, and Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld discussing Yehuda Amichai. We don't know exactly what to expect, except that it will be great. Following a nap and freshen-up break, the ALTA Fellows will read, followed by The Big Reception—finger food and a no-host bar. We will honor publishers of translation (emphasizing the West Coast) and present the annual ALTA awards—plus some surprises! [Relative to this, please let us know whether you have been published by City Lights, Sun and Moon/Green Integer, Curbstone, Cinco Puntos, Children’s Book Press, Northwestern, Copper Canyon, Boa Editions. Please include title(s) of book(s).]

Friday, October 20 will begin with the business meeting and then be packed with panels, readings, and workshops. The evening is set aside for language dinners. Gather with your favorite ALTA personalities and go to one of the two million, one hundred thousand, three hundred forty-two ethnic restaurants in San Francisco. We are compiling a list of some within walking or other reasonable distance of the hotel, which we will send out later this summer. Later that evening we will gather at various coffeehouses, bars, and street corners for continued edification and merriment. Bring stuff to read to each other.

Saturday, October 21 will see no let-up, and will include an exclusive ALTA first. We are in the process of arranging for a live radio broadcast of "West Coast Live," hosted by Sedge Thomsen, to be presented at the hotel. The entire two-hour show will focus on translation and translators, and will feature various ALTA members. More to come on this. In the meantime, if you are curious about the show, check out the Web site at www.wcl.org. The afternoon will feature still more workshops, bilingual readings, and panels, including a small plenary to hear some West Coast publishers discuss their trade. The evening is set aside for an all ALTA get-together in the hotel, where you will be treated to an Indonesian gamelan concert, including our own Olivia Sears! Don't miss it. That evening you are on your own to explore San Francisco: Opera (www.sfopera.com), American Conservatory Theater (ACT) (www.act-sfbay.org), South of Market debaucheries, and much, much more. Check out some of these Web sites for ideas: www.sfgate.com, www.bayarea.citysearch.com, www.sfstation.com, www.transaction.net/sanfran/events/ www.bayinsider.com, www.sfarts.org. Sunday morning nothing official is planned; however, those who don't have early flights may want to gather for a brunch along the Embarcadero at San Francisco's own Delancey Street restaurant.

American Airlines has offered a 5% discount on published fares, valid for travel to SF between 10/13-27. If you reserve 60 days in advance, you can get up to a 10% discount. Tell the operator that you are calling from ALTA.

Other options include United Airlines, which is home-based in San Francisco, Southwest, US Air, and many more. Special fares to SF should not be difficult to come by. From the airport, you can take a shuttle from any number of door-to-door shuttle companies—located on the departure floor, not the arrival floor—for about $12. Taxis—located on the arrival floor—are about $35. Oakland Airport is also just as close to the hotel as is SFO. You can take BART, the high speed rail system, from Oakland to San Francisco for about $3.00, then take a short cab ride to the hotel. A cab from Oakland to the hotel is about $40.

Parking in SF is very difficult and very expensive, but if you want to rent a car, you can get an ALTA discount at Avis. A better idea is to take public transportation in town, and if you wish to explore the surrounding areas by car, rent one for that day only.

The conference hotel is the Holiday Inn San Francisco Financial District, 750 Kearny Street. We've heard some grumbling about the price of the rooms. We want you to know that we grumble everyday about the price of everything here. The median price of a house is $1,000,000. There are less expensive hotels but a) they don't have any rooms—other than the rooms you sleep in—to have meetings in, much less rooms big enough for all 300 of us at the reception and plenary sessions; b) you wouldn't like where they are, if you're worried about toxicity at all. So, sorry, but come and have a good time anyway! Please make your own reservations as soon as possible. Mention the ALTA conference and the dates. If you want a roommate and don't have one, contact ALTA Dallas and they will try to help you out.

City Lights Books is hosting the book display this year, but we will be collecting the list of books to order. Please send by e-mail (preferable) or regular mail (form enclosed) a list of your books that you would like to see at the conference. Please include title, author, publisher, ISBN, price, and publication date. Include the number you would suggest ordering, although this cannot be guaranteed. The list will also help City Lights know which books to display in their window to honor ALTA. Please send your requests by

August 7 to

If for some reason you must send requests after this date, please send to

If you are interested in doing a bilingual reading, send a letter to:

The letter proposal should state the following:

Please include a short biosketch of both the original writer and the translator. The deadline is September 1.

If you want to get the material for a language workshop to work on ahead of time, indicate which workshop you wish to attend on the conference registration form (to be mailed later in the summer), and the Dallas office will send the reading materials to you that the leaders send to them. If you do not see your language listed here and would like to propose a workshop, please write to Barbara Paschke at paschke@itsa.ucsf.edu (or 161 12^th Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94118). A few more workshops may materialize, but these are the ones scheduled at the moment.

Arabic                               Nidal A. Daraiseh, ndarais@comp.uark.edu (contact for workshop to be
                                           conducted by Adnan Haydar)
German                    Gerry Chapple, chappleg@mcmaster.ca
Italian                            David Goldstein, dgoldste@leland.stanford.edu
Spanish, New World     John Oliver Simon, josimon@lanminds.com
Spanish, Old World   Glyfrya Ennis, tel/fax 413-584-7225 (no email)
French 20^th century     David Ball, dball@julia.smith.edu
French 19^th century   Zoe Urbanek, zurbanek@post.cis.smu.edu
French pre-19th            Samuel Rosenberg, srosenbe@indiana.edu
Poetry                            Carolyn Tipton and Roger Greenwald, roger@chass.utoronto.ca

Yoo-hoo! Oh, yoo-hoo! We need contributions to the ALTA cookbook. We've got some very nice recipes and recollections, but we need more, more, more to have this ready. Please send us your favorite recipe, meal description, food recollection from your translations, travels, and travails. Send to ALTA2000@twolines.com.

Saturday night has been left open for you to do what you want. Check out the Web sites listed above for ideas, or just "go with the flow." Your faithful steering committee can answer most questions on venues and restaurants.

Hope to see you here! Come out early with a special someone and have a great week!

Yours from the edge of the world,

Will Kirkland
Barbara Paschke
Olivia Sears