Cultural Route of Bećarac & Ganga

Kulturna ruta bećarca i gange – Cultural Route of Bećarac & Ganga is the dual-language monograph that celebrates the establishment of this cultural route between the town of Pleternica in Croatia and the municipality of Tomislavgrad in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

It features extensive details about the life, traditions, religion, history and of course the singing styles and verses of bećarac (Pleternica) and ganga (Tomislavgrad). There is also beautiful photography of both towns and regions.

I was the English translator for this superb edition from 2019.
ISBN 9789534873113 , 235 pages.

This project is part of Interreg – IP CBC

The Museum of Bećarac finally opened in Pleternica in February 2023 – infoFacebook

The documentary film below was made alongside the project featuring British youtuber Julian McDonnell:

Putopisni dokumentarni film “Kulturna ruta bećarca i gange” / Travel documentary film “Cultural route of Becharac & Ganga” from Alen Kocic – Koc on Vimeo.

Croatian Photographers – catalogue

This bilingual catalogue presents the City Museum of Rijeka’s extensive photography collection. It features examples of over 100 Croatian photographers’ works from the 1930s to the present day. It is superbly illustrated with some stunning photographs and has the biographies of each photographer. The texts are in Croatian and English – I was the English translator and also editor of additional English texts.

Viktor Hreljanović – one of the most respected photographers featured in the catalogue.

The catalogue was produced for the accompanying exhibition at the Museum which is on show from 17th February – 17th March 2022. The author is Ervin Dubrović and design is by Vesna Rožman. 192 pages. ISBN: 978-953-8303-15-9

City Museum of Rijeka catalogues

The new City Museum of Rijeka at the Sugar Palace was opened in November 2020 – you can see some of the opening event here. I was the official translator for the English texts included in the exhibition. Late last year the Museum’s English versions of its extensive catalogue and handy guidebook were printed.

English versions are now available.

It was an honour to be involved in the editing and summarising of existing texts to produce these two fabulous editions. They are richly illustrated and superbly designed. The author of the original Croatian texts is the Museum’s director Ervin Dubrović and the designer is Vesna Rožman. The catalogues has more than 340 pages, whilst the guidebook has 144.

The English edition of the Museum’s new catalogue features the contents of the permanent exhibition now in the renovated Sugar Palace building in Rijeka.
The Museum’s new handy guidebook is a compact version of the main catalogue.

Catalogue ISBN: 978-953-8303-09-8
Guidebook ISBN: 978-953-8303-10-4

More information here: https://www.muzej-rijeka.hr/en/museum-publications/

Karlovac City Museum catalogue

The Karlovac City Museum’s catalogue for the exhibition ‘Gledam dodirom’ (‘Seeing through Touch’) won 3rd prize in the category of Design of Social Innovations at the 2021 Zagreb Design Week. My English translation is featured in this bilingual edition. The designers are Rašić+Vrabec and the authors are Lana Bede and Tanja Parlov.

As a consequence of the award the Croatian Ministry of Culture and Media has purchased copies of the catalogue to be distributed and made available to borrow in libraries throughout the country 🙂
“The catalogue accompanies the inclusive internationally awarded exhibition ‘Gledam dodirom’ (‘Seeing by Touch’). The author’s texts offer a new perspective on fine arts, considering the high cognitive value of the sense of touch in the context of art education and the creation and perception of works of fine art. The emphasis is on the irreplaceable role of the sense of touch in the perception of visually impaired people. The catalogue analyses and valorizes the artistic creativity of visually impaired children. The value of the catalogue is also the text about the creation of the inclusive exhibition by Rašić + Vrabec who are a world-renowned design studio from Zagreb. They specialise in spatial exhibition design and branding, and approach each project holistically, environmentally and socially responsibly.”

Članstvo u dhkp-u

Featured

08.09.2021 – Postao sam član dhkp-a.

Recenzija prijevoda kandidata Martina Mayhewa za članstvo u DHKP:

„Prijevod je sačinjen uspoređivanjem nekolicine izvornih verzija pripovjedaka. Postoji raniji prijevod izbora Kamovljevih priča…, a još je nekolicina priča objavljenih po književnim časopisima, ali je do sada Kamovljev opus bio relativno slabo dostupan čitateljima iz engleskog govornog područja, pa je ovaj novi prijevod dobrodošao. Kamovljeve se priče odlikuju duhovitošću, senzualnošću i jetkošću i Mayhewov prijevod vrlo uspješno dočarava i humor i ironiju i emotivna stanja autora. Iz njegovih popratnih tekstova vidi se da se prevoditelj sustavno bavio istraživanjem izvornih tekstova i autorova rječnika. Mayhew pokazuje istančan osjećaj za odabir prikladnih riječi i izraza i zorno prenosi čitatelju svoj entuzijazam za Kamova… Recenzent preporučuje prijam kandidata Martina Mayhewa u članstvo Društva hrvatskih književnih prevodilaca.

Moj profil: http://www.dhkp.hr/Drustvo/Clan/2891

On 8th September 2021 I became an official member of the Croatian Literary Translators Association after my collection of Kamov’s Farces & Novellas was positively reviewed for membership.

Farces & Novellas je dostupna na Modernist.hr, Amazonu i u mnogim knjižnicama.

http://www.dhkp.hr/Drustvo/Clan/2891

Croatian-Turkish Society, Rijeka, 25 years exhibition

The Croatian-Turkish Society of Rijeka was founded on 30th November 1995 with the aim of promoting friendship between the Republic of Croatia and the Republic of Turkey via a programme of cultural, scientific, sports, economic, religious and social activities – and in March 2021, there was an exhibition on Rijeka’s Korzo that detailed and celebrated this close 25-year friendship.
I was honoured to be involved as the English translator for the Hrvatsko-Tursko društvo, Rijeka.

City Museum of Rijeka

On 13th November 2020 the new City Museum of Rijeka opened in the newly renovated palace of the former sugar refinery. I have been involved in the translation of all the texts featured inside as well as the accompanying promotional material for the new museum since March 2020. This has been a massive task and I am extremely proud to be involved.

Here is a small selection of photographs of the interior, the new displays and exhibits that you can experience. The photographs do not do justice to the atmosphere inside. If you want to know more about the history of the city of Rijeka then I thoroughly recommend a visit to the museum.

Janko Polić Kamov – Edgar Allan Poe

Janko Polić Kamov – Poe
An extract – translated by Martin Mayhew

edgar-allan-poe

Turgenjev brings tears to our eyes; Maupassant tickles our lips; Poe makes our hair stand on end: the first grabs us by the heartstrings, the second by the spirit, the third by the nerves.

Tears, a smile and a chill – those are their comments, and not erudition. Because erudition is just the comment of comments and one hair of a sensitive intellectual is more competent in the understanding of Poe, than all the dissertations of bald professors.

To me Poe appears like an ominous bird, which has flown over the mute field of our inner self; and when it plunged somewhere into space, it left a shadow of its great, black wings behind itself. Or even like the memory of a cat’s eyes in the dark; of a dog’s tucked under tail on a deserted road; of a snake’s tongue on a scorched cliff; of the ridge of a dolphin on an oily surface and of the shadows of the deceased that pull us by the legs in a dream.

And this is why Poe is mysterious – because of the fear irrational like all beauty and mysticism, living buried in the hands of our psyche, where in the glory of the Absurd they were also born.

Poe’s life was quite miserable so even a Croatian literate could envy him………

Punat, 7.IV.1910

This is an extract from the full essay that Kamov wrote in Punat on the island of Krk, 7th April 1910. The full text is available in the book ‘The Curse’ – the collection of Kamov’s poems which he published in 1907 as ‘Psovka’, translated into English. ‘The Curse’ is available as a paperback from Modernist nakladništvo here.
It is also available on Amazon and all other ebook channels.

The original 1907 edition of ‘Psvoka’ and my English translation ‘The Curse’.

Translation – all rights reserved © Martin Mayhew