In October 2025, the Republic of the Philippines will be Guest of Honor at the Frankfurt International Book Fair. While efforts for the fair’s programme and translations of Philippine literature will intensify over the next months, in May 2024 the first book ever translated from the Tagalog/Filipino into the German language has been published already. All other translations of Philippine literature into German so far either were translations from the Philippine Spanish (José Rizal’s novels) or from the English (e.g. F. Sionil José, Miguel Syjuco, Ninotchka Rosca or Jose Dalisay).
Luna Sicat Cleto’s poetry collection Bago mo ako ipalaot has been produced by the small Swiss publishing house Edition Tincatinca in Winterthur as a bilingual German-Tagalog edition under the German title Offenes Meer. Luna Sicat Cleto was born in 1967 in Pasig City, Manila, as the daughter of Rogelio R. Sincat and Ellen Sicat, both prolific Philippine authors themselves. She has been active as author, playwright, poet, and academic since the 1980s. She has written the two novels Makinilyang Altar (‘Typewriter-Altar’, 2002) and Mga Prodigal (‘Lost Sons’, 2010) and received the prestigious national Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature for children’s stories, poetry and essays in 1996, 1998, 2004 and 2018, besides several other literary and cultural awards. Since 1991, Luna Sicat Cleto has been teaching creative writing and literature at the University of the Philippines Diliman.[1]
The poems in this collection cover a variety of topics, ranging from guerrilla fights during the Marcos dictatorship, female self-determination on body and sexuality, economic realities or the societal division into a Christian majority and several religious minorities such as the Muslims in the Philippine South or the still existing traditional belief systems in many provinces.
The publishing house Edition Tincatinca was founded in 2019 and must be congratulated for the courage of releasing this book – they did a great work of editing! And, from a librarian’s point of view, the stitched binding is perfect to make the book stand out. Annette Hug’s lovely translations give Cleto’s poems their full lyrical credit and are a fine example how beautiful poetry translations sometimes can be. Annette Hug studied in Zürich and Manila and is a prolific author herself. She is among the very few persons who can translate Tagalog/Filipino literary works into German and is currently working on the novel Aswanglaut by Allan N. Derain, a translation from Tagalog which will be published in 2025 by Unionsverlag in Zürich. Two more translations are under way: Lualhati Bautista’s novel Dekada ’70 and the historical novela Ang Diablo Sa Pilipinas by Isabelo de los Reyes from the author’s Tagalog version.
It is hoped that Luna Sicat Cleto as well as her translator Annette Hug will have the opportunity to come to Germany to launch the book and to give readings in many places before the 2025 Book Fair in Frankfurt.
Bibliographical data:
Luna Sicat Cleto Offenes Meer: Gedichte. Übersetzung: Annette Hug. 95 pp., Winterthur: Edition Tincatinca, ISBN 978-3-9525344-2-7
Review by Holger Warnk (J.W.Goethe-Universität, Bibliothek Sprach- und Kulturwissenschaften (BSKW), Teilbereich Südostasienwissenschaften, Rostocker Str. 2, 60323 Frankfurt)
[1] For more biographical information on Luna Sicat Cleto see https://panitikanph.com/AuthorDisplayFull/24.
Southeast Asia Library Group (SEALG) 
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