Ton Naaijkens, professor of German Literature and Translation Studies, opens the recent anniversary issue of the literary magazine Filter with the article “The 2017 Translation Year – the clouded language heaven,” in which he discusses the translation harvest of 2017. About gestammelte werke (Berlin: kookbooks, 2017) he says:
“I clearly am sitting in a ray of sunshine and enthusiastically point to a publication by Rozalie Hirs. The German publisher kookbooks published her Gestammelte Werke. This is an original collection of the poet’s work in Dutch and eleven other languages, all in one volume at once. “We are language beings, mimic language, always in the process of becoming,” I translate her German commentary, thus quoting myself and Rozalie Hirs at once. “We change it, the language, and ourselves by speaking (and writing), in feeling-thinking, in perceiving, in exchanging. We experience ourselves in the world, in speaking, in word-tasting, and -trying.” More than eleven translators venture into the texts, among them Rozalie Hirs, who, along with kookbook queen Daniela Seel, translates herself. Talk about celebration – away with all the thunderclouds.” (Ton Naaijkens, The translation year 2017 – the clouded language heaven (pp. 9-26), Filter Annual 25 issue 1, Vantilt, 2018)
