Alex Zucker about Czech Writer Jachym Topol and Translation contracts (Czech‪)‬ Harshaneeyam

In this episode, Senior translator Alex Zucker spoke about his work, Translation contracts and the Czech Author Jachym Topol.
Alex Zucker has translated novels by the Czech authors Magdaléna Platzová, Jáchym Topol, Bianca Bellová, Petra Hůlová, J. R. Pick, Tomáš Zmeškal, Josef Jedlička, Heda Margolius Kovály, Patrik Ouředník, and Miloslava Holubová. He has also Englished stories, plays, subtitles, young adult and children’s books, song lyrics, reportages, essays, poems, philosophy, art history, and an opera.
Apart from translating, he organises, on a volunteer basis, with the National Writers Union and the New York City chapter of SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice).
Conversation: 
Harshaneeyam: Welcome, Alex, to Harshaneeyam.
Alex Zucker: Hi, Anil. I am so glad to be here. Thank you for having me. 
Harshaneeyam: Before we move on to your literary journey, translations and all, I follow you on Twitter, and I see that you are very vocal about the current situation in Gaza. I also read that you worked for a human rights organisation earlier.
Alex Zucker: Yes, of course. For about five years, I was the communications officer for a genocide prevention organisation called the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation, AIPR. Now, as a communications officer, I was always a little bit disturbed at our name, because actually we had nothing to do with peace and reconciliation. We were working in genocide prevention. But they’ve since changed their name, by the way. But [that was] after I left. This was a small organisation, about five staff people based in New York City, doing education and training for mid-level government officers in genocide prevention. The idea of the organisation was that, all too often in history, there are government leaders whose countries are engaging in atrocities that are not quite maybe yet at genocide, or [actually] genocide, and of course there can be resistance from outside the government, [but] unless the government decides to stop it, it’s not going to stop. So the idea of [AIPR] was if they could get to these mid-level government officials, those people would rise up [through the ranks] and become the leaders of their country, and they would be people committed to preventing genocide. I want to say also that by prevention, what we meant was not military intervention. That’s stopping, maybe, a genocide in progress, but preventing meaning that it never happens in the first place. Also, keeping in mind that genocide, as people have been pointing out in relation to the situation in Gaza, but as in any genocide, it doesn’t necessarily involve killing, right? It can be preventing births within a group, any kind of creation of conditions that make it impossible for a group to survive. The key is that the intention is to destroy the group as such. So it has to be focused on a group of people, not just individuals. Having worked in that organisation for five years, I read a lot about genocide historically. I also was following very closely many genocides that were happening in the world at that time. For instance, in Myanmar, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is happening again now, in Sudan, that was happening the first time back then. I think the reason that I feel compelled to speak up about Gaza is because the genocide is being perpetrated by a state, Israel, that gets a huge amount of support from the government that I pay taxes to. To me, that’s a very straightforward moral and ethical equation. 95 per cent of the aid that the U.S. sends to Israel is military, right? Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, now the second time, two years ago, and probably committing genocide there as well, but none of my money goes to Russia, so I don’t feel responsible [for that]. I mean, it’s not that I don’t care about what’s happening to Ukrainians, but as a human...