LIVE from NYPL: LOST (AND FOUND) IN TRANSLATION STORIES: The MOTH with Eric Bogosian, Edith Grossman, Alan Rabinowitz, Michael Rips and Flash Rosenberg with host Paul Holdengräber

"Translation is the art of failure." -- Umberto Eco

"The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said." -- Peter Drucker

"The original is unfaithful to the translation." -- Jorge Luis Borges

TRADUTTORE! TRADITORE! Is the translator a traitor Is it the translator who betrays his topic, the listener who will not hear, or is it as Flaubert wrote that language itself "is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars"? Join us as five storytellers explore the territory of high and low treason, good and bad translation, small- and large-scale infelicities and infidelities.

6:30 pm Doors Open

7:30 pm Stories Start on Stage

Storytellers:

Eric Bogosian
Edith Grossman
Alan Rabinowitz
Michael Rips
Flash Rosenberg

Host and Curator: Paul Holdengräber

Violin: Katy Cox

Artistic Director: Catherine Burns

Producer: Sarah Austin Jenness

Executive and Creative Director: Lea Than

About the Storytellers:

ERIC BOGOSIAN is the author of five full-length plays including Griller, Humpty Dumpty, Talk Radio (which was adapted to a film directed by Oliver Stone), and six full-length solos including Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, Pounding Nails in the Floor with My Forehead and Drinking in America. His second novel, Wasted Beauty, was recently published and his prose works include Mall and Notes from Underground. He's worked with directors including Robert Altman, Paul Schrader, Woody Allen, Taylor Hackford and Atom Egoyan, starred in films including Dolores Claiborne and Under Siege II.

EDITH GROSSMAN is widely recognized as the preeminent Spanish-to-English translator of our time. She has translated with equal elegance and apparent ease all of the work of Gabriel Garca Marquez (Love in the Time of Cholera to Memories of My Melancholy Whores) and her critically acclaimed recent translation of Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote.

Dr. ALAN RABINOWITZ is currently the Director of the Science and Exploration Division for the Wildlife Conservation Society based at the Bronx Zoo. Dubbed the "Indiana Jones" of wildlife science by The New York Times, Dr. Rabinowitz's work has resulted in the world's first jaguar sanctuary at Cockscomb Basin, Belize; the establishing of the Tawu Mountain Nature Reserve in Taiwan; the first field research on IndoChinese tigers, Asiatic leopards, and leopard cats in Thailand; and, in Myanmar, the creation of five new protected areas: the country's first marine national park, the country's first and largest Himalayan national park, the country's largest wildlife sanctuary, and the world's largest tiger reserve. He has published over 75 articles and 6 books including Jaguar, Chasing the Dragon's Tail, and Beyond the Last Village.

MICHAEL RIPS is a fifth-generation Nebraska native. A graduate of Oxford University, he has served as a law clerk to a Supreme Court justice, is now an adviser to several museums and foundations, and, when not writing in coffee shops around New York City, continues to practice criminal litigation. He is the author of The Face of a Naked Lady: An Omaha Family Mystery and Pasquale's Nose: Idle Days in an Italian Town. He lives at the Chelsea Hotel with his wife and daughter.

FLASH ROSENBERG cartoonist, writer, performer, romantic and turtle wrangler, whose most recent one-woman show, Know Flash Aloud, premiered at American Comic Vision Festival at Symphony Space. Her cartoons, essays and illustrations have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Daily News, the Forward, The Funny Times and Lilith, where she earned American Jewish Press Association Awards for both writing and illustration. She was the illustrator and a cartoon contributor to the Random House compendium, Life's a Stitch: The Best of Contemporary Women's Humor and her award-winning motion picture Pulse of Desire composed of 7000 stills, screened internationally. She most recently taught photo-perception courses for Cooper Union including Underground Creativity conducted entirely in the subways, and Future Nostalgia: Documenting the Anticipated Past exploring how we encode raw experience into the gauze of memory.

Host and Curator:

PAUL HOLDENGR?BER is the Director of Public Programs - newly minted and now known as "LIVE from the NYPL" - for The New York Public Library. Paul is perfectly suited to host Lost in Translation. He was brought up simultaneously in four languages, speaks mostly with an accent, was brought up in many countries in old Europe, has Austrian parents and a Mexican sister. Paul was born in Houston Texas, and is often lost, both in translation and in the original. His jokes sometimes translate well and are often funnier when translated. At the NYPL his stated goal is to make the lions roar. This is the third event LIVE co-presents with The Moth. The Moth is contributing to the roar.

Violinist:
KATY COX is accomplished in classical, Eastern European Roma and bluegrass styles, and has performed in venues all over the US, from CBGB's to Carnegie Hall. She performs with several New York based groups including The Maybelles, Romashka, and The Dolomites. It has also been said that she was born with the extraordinary ability to "remove" long-winded storytellers from the stage with a mere stroke from her violin bow.

Co-sponsored with The Moth, the urban storytelling organization which has been called NYC's hottest and hippest literary ticket by The Wall Street Journal.

Sponsored by audible.com

Cocktails courtesy of Hendrick's