Translation
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December 3, 2019 |
I stepped out of Keflavík airport at 4:30 a.m. Far off in the dimly lit parking lot was the bus to Reykjavík—parked, empty, still off-duty. Winds buffeted me from above, the cold air curling its way u... -
April 3, 2019 |
Esther Gerritsen Craving (fiction) Trans. Michele Hutchinson World Editions In Dutch writer Esther Gerritsen’s Craving, readers follow Coco, who moves in with her dying mother as a m... -
March 19, 2019 |
PHOTO: Edward Hill A prolific translator, playwright, novelist, and essayist from Singapore, Jeremy Tiang is the recipient of a PEN/Heim Grant, an NEA Literary Translatio... -
December 4, 2018 |
Ksenia Buksha / Courtesy of the author With apologies to Raymond Carver, what do we translate when we translate literature? What are we doing? And how do we do it? There ar... -
December 19, 2017 |
Translating poetry is impossible in the sense that prose works can be translated (not to speak of the translation of nonliterary texts). But re-creating poetry in a different language is always possi... -
December 12, 2017 |
Looking back on 2017, it’s easy to declare the year a success for literary translation, which continued to thrive and move in exciting new directions. Of note, Emily Wilson translated The Odyssey... -
November 21, 2017 |
Seth Michelson / Courtesy of Washington & Lee University In October 2017 nonprofit press Settlement House released Dreaming America: Voices of Undocumented Youth in Maximum-Security Detention... -
November 14, 2017 |
Top right: Ben Faccini / Courtesy of English PEN. Bottom right: Kelsey Madsen Ben Faccini is a novelist, writer, and translator based in London. He was born in England and brought up in France and It... -
September 6, 2017 |
Liu Xiaobo, 1991 / Courtesy of Wang Ya Translator’s note: This photo of Liu Xiaobo swimming surfaced on the Internet after the sea burial in Dalian, China. Those of us who were hear... -
August 29, 2017 |
Ekin Oklap discusses her personal journey to becoming a translator and provides some insight into her experiences with translating her current project, Orhan Pamuk’s The Red-Haired... -
August 23, 2017 |
John, “Fallen Angel,” August 29, 2010 Here and Now Here he is sitting across from the balcony door;the wind will blow – a wound. The rustling lightblushes and fades in the rectangular mirror – th... -
August 22, 2017 |
Photo by Jonathan Armstrong Translator Allison Markin Powell discusses her most recent project, The Nakano Thrift Shop, and provides some insight into her approach to t... -
August 15, 2017 |
Lorenzo Gaudenzi, “Agria,” September 15, 2016 For more, read Brian Sneeden’s translator’s note on Giannisi’s work. (Nostos I) f... -
August 15, 2017 |
moomin goat, “Goat Bells,” April 9, 2007 Click here to read Sneeden’s translations of four of Giannisi’s poems. Phoebe Giannisi is one of Greece’s foremost contemporary poets and i... -
July 25, 2017 |
The only task FitzGerald finished and published in his lifetime was his marvelous rendering of the Rubaiyat of the Persian poet Omar Khayyam, with whom he felt a curiously close affinity across a... -
July 24, 2017 |
Mike Prince, “Black Drongo at Sunrise,” October 7, 2015 Where Would I Go Where would I goI shall only stay here, like a handprinton a doorjust to be there, I’ll be hidden inthe smell of a suitcases... -
July 18, 2017 |
Mathias Énard’s Compass (New Directions, 2017) is not only a love letter to the field of orientalism but, more broadly, to the power of the written word itself, especially in translation. I... -
July 11, 2017 |
The dog days of summer are upon us, and there’s no better way to pass through the longer days than curling up with a book in the shade. If you’re looking for some words to keep you company, there are... -
June 27, 2017 |
Robert Creeley (1972) / Photo by Elsa Dorfman In April, following the death of Yevgeny Yevtushenko, I was digging through a wicker chest with old papers, looking at a colleague’s request for a few le... -
June 20, 2017 |
Six years after its initial French publication, Luis de Miranda’s novella Who Killed the Poet? (Qui a tué le poète?) is being translated into English and multiple other language... -
June 6, 2017 |
Starling murmuration. Photo by Airwolfhound/Flickr Five years after meeting at the Literary Translation Summer School run by the British Centre for Literary Translation, translators Morgan Giles,... -
May 30, 2017 |
Drawing by Lea Goldberg / Courtesy of Tuvia Ruebner Lea Goldberg (1911–1970), preeminent, versatile, and prolific writer of modern Hebrew letters, produced in her lifetime poetry that was characteriz... -
May 22, 2017 |
Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase (1912), oil on canvas, 147 × 89.2 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art / The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950 Desnudo bajando una escalera... -
May 16, 2017 |
Click here to read three poems by Joanna Pollakówna, never before translated into English. Joanna Pollakówna / Courtesy of Alice-Catherine Carls Joanna Pollakówna (1939–2002) authored poems... -
May 15, 2017 |
Giovanni Bellini, Pietà (1505), oil on wood, 65 x 90 cm, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice For more on the poetry of Pollakówna, read “A Terrible Ecstasy,” a companion essay by Alice-Cathe...
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