Photo by Chris Wood / Flickr
Houston’s Second Poet Laureate (2015–2017) and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters since 2019, Robin Davidson is the author of three books of poetry: K…
Translation
February 22, 2022
November 30, 20212021 was a robust year for literary translations. This list kept growing, and we didn’t resist. As always, though, we recognize there are, thankfully, many more and hope you’ll add them in the comment…
December 3, 2019I 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…
April 3, 2019Esther 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…
March 19, 2019PHOTO: Edward Hill A prolific translator, playwright, novelist, and essayist from Singapore, Jeremy Tiang is the recipient of a PEN/Heim Grant, an NEA Literary Translati…
December 4, 2018Ksenia 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…
December 19, 2017Translating 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 possib…
December 12, 2017Looking 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 Odysse…
November 21, 2017Seth Michelson / Courtesy of Washington & Lee UniversityIn October 2017 nonprofit press Settlement House released Dreaming America: Voices of Undocumented Youth in Maximum-Security Detention…
November 14, 2017Top right: Ben Faccini / Courtesy of English PEN. Bottom right: Kelsey MadsenBen Faccini is a novelist, writer, and translator based in London. He was born in England and brought up in France and Ital…
September 6, 2017Liu Xiaobo, 1991 / Courtesy of Wang YaTranslator’s note: This photo of Liu Xiaobo swimming surfaced on the Internet after the sea burial in Dalian, China. Those of us who were heartb…
August 29, 2017Ekin 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 W…
August 23, 2017John, “Fallen Angel,” August 29, 2010 Here and NowHere he is sitting across from the balcony door;the wind will blow – a wound. The rustling lightblushes and fades in the rectangular mirror – the…
August 22, 2017Photo by Jonathan ArmstrongTranslator Allison Markin Powell discusses her most recent project, The Nakano Thrift Shop, and provides some insight into her approach to the…
August 15, 2017moomin goat, “Goat Bells,” April 9, 2007Click here to read Sneeden’s translations of four of Giannisi’s poems. Phoebe Giannisi is one of Greece’s foremost contemporary poets and…
August 15, 2017Lorenzo Gaudenzi, “Agria,” September 15, 2016For more, read Brian Sneeden’s translator’s note on Giannisi’s work. (Nostos I) …
July 25, 2017The 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, 2017Mike Prince, “Black Drongo at Sunrise,” October 7, 2015Where Would I GoWhere would I goI shall only stay here,like a handprinton a doorjust to be there,I’ll be hidden inthe smell of a suitcasesitting…
July 18, 2017Mathias 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 b…
July 11, 2017The 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, 2017Robert Creeley (1972) / Photo by Elsa DorfmanIn 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 lett…
June 20, 2017Six 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 languages…
June 6, 2017Starling murmuration. Photo by Airwolfhound/FlickrFive years after meeting at the Literary Translation Summer School run by the British Centre for Literary Translation, translators Morgan Giles, R…
May 30, 2017Drawing by Lea Goldberg / Courtesy of Tuvia RuebnerLea Goldberg (1911–1970), preeminent, versatile, and prolific writer of modern Hebrew letters, produced in her lifetime poetry that was characterized…
May 22, 2017Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase (1912), oil on canvas, 147 × 89.2 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art / The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950Desnudo bajando una escaleraEste…
Recent Posts
Image by Abu / Adobe Stock
Author’s note: It begins with a chance encounter at an airport and ends with a crash that no one walks away from.…
Melissa Weininger’s Beyond the Land: Diaspora Israeli Culture in the Twenty-First Century (Wayne State University Press, 2023) is a…
Artist Self-Portrait
While war, injustice, and spiritual fatigue continue to poison the air, Yahia Lababidi finds a beauty-infused…
Julie Masis is the editor and publisher of the Russian Boston Gazette, a newspaper for Russian-speaking immigrants in Boston. She is…
Albert Cossery / Courtesy of New Directions
The end of June marked the anniversary of the death of Albert Cossery (1913–2008), a French-speaking…
