Yana Ellis, 2022 Virtual Travel Fellow (German, Bulgarian)

Yana Ellis found her ideal career in her middle years. However, her love affair with languages, and in particular with German, started at age of thirteen, when she entered the local language grammar school near her home in rural Bulgaria. Growing up behind the Iron Curtain, the only way to travel, to sneak invisibly through border controls and learn about the “other,” was to learn a foreign language and read translated literature. This experience has shaped Yana’s outlook on life and has affirmed her belief that the more translated literature we read, the better chance we have of understanding other people—and, in so doing, overcoming prejudices and fostering mutual awareness.  

To date, Yana has worked primarily on nonfiction and academic texts; however, her passion is literary translation. As an immigrant herself, she is drawn to narratives that cross borders and bring to the conversation the voices of the marginalized and powerless, voices which are often ignored or unheard.  

One such project is A Space Bounded by Shadows by Turkish-born, German-language writer, playwright, and actor Emine Sevgi Özdamar (Suhrkamp Verlag, 2021), a narrative that weaves the rich tapestry of a life lived between art, relationships, and politics. Above all, it is a narrative that provides a ray of hope born from love of literature, film, and theater. The book captured Yana immediately because it explores the role language plays in identity, and how a mother tongue and a second language can merge, leading to a new, enriched language and overcoming speechlessness in exile. A Space Bounded by Shadows straddles the border between fiction and autobiography. Complemented by photos, notes, poems, and songs, it unpicks 20th-century history from the perspective of the “eternal stranger,” of migrants who have fled authoritarian regimes and who now live, work, and write in languages without childhoods. Özdamar lets motifs drip through the languages: French, Turkish, and German. This is a piece of German literature that encourages us to look beyond the façade of established viewpoints, and which will move and deeply resonate with readers of all faiths, backgrounds, and mother tongues.

For Yana, literary translation is an act aimed at sharing a reading experience wherein the translation becomes a written reflection of the translator’s own encounter with the text. In her work, she aims to bring to her readers versions of otherness that retain the cultural identity of the original text in a language that is accessible and natural to them.  

With online conferencing taking prevalence since the pandemic, it has been possible to participate in many translation events and workshops, and Yana appreciates the huge benefits of collaborating with colleagues from around the globe, along with the generous support of the translation community.  

Yana wishes to express her deep thanks to ALTA and the judges for giving her the opportunity to share her work and to engage with and learn from so many great writers and translators.