Encounters: Mascha Dabić and Leigh Bailey in Conversation

This Encounter between author Mascha Dabić and translator Leigh Bailey focuses on the novel Reibungsverluste (2017), which deals the experiences of a translator and interpreter for refugees and asylum seekers. Mascha Dabić reads from her debut novel, and discusses the text with Leigh Bailey, who has translated selected passages from the work. The theme of translation is thus central to the discussion of the novel and to the work of the translator who has transposed the text from German to English. Born in Sarajevo, Mascha Dabić studied Translation (English/Russian) and works as an interpreter and journalist in the field of asylum and migration, as well as lecturing at the Universities of Innsbruck and Vienna, and translating literature by Balkan authors such as Barbi Marković’s Ausgehen (Suhrkamp). Her novel Reibungsverluste was nominated for the Franz-Tumler-Literaturpreis and shortlisted for the Österreichische Buchpreis Debut Novel award in 2017. She lives in Vienna. Leigh Bailey has had a career as university lecturer in English, Translation Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Vienna, producer and presenter for Radio Austria International, and exhibition curator (co-curating exhibitions on Beethoven, Mozart and Johann Strauss II among others). As a translator, he has provided the English texts for organisations such as the Vienna Johann Strauss Orchestra and the Literaturhaus Vienna. In 2017 he published the first full-length biography of the youngest of the three brothers of the famous waltz dynasty: Eduard Strauss: The Third Man of the Strauss Family (Hollitzer). Godela Weiss-Sussex, Reader in German at the IMLR, chairs the discussion, to which Angela Sanmann-Graf (Lausanne) also contributes.
The event was sponsored by the Ingeborg Bachmann Centre for Austrian Literature & Culture at the IMLR.

Author: Institute of Languages, Cultures & Societies

Speaker(s): Mascha Dabić (Vienna); Leigh Bailey (Vienna); Godela Weiss-Sussex (IMLR)

Organisations: Institute of Languages, Cultures & Societies

Event date: Friday, 2 July 2021 - 4:00pm