Finland’s Gandalf is real. She forges fantastic fireworks, the like of which were never seen before. They dazzle the locals who’ve never been over the next hill – or heard of anyone under it. “You shall not pass!” she cries,…
Tolkien’s Translator
Tagged with: books, Finnish, Kersti Juva, Lord of the Rings, SKS, Speculative fiction, Tolkien, Tolkienin tulkkina, Translation
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
Aino A!
Living in a building designed by Alvar Aalto is both unparalleled and uncomfortable. I have just moved out of Viitatorni (the “skyscraper” he finally got built in Jyväskylä after years of trying) into Säynätsalo Town Hall, into Säynätsalo Town Hall,…
Tagged with: Aino A!, Aino Marsio-Aalto, architecture, biofiction, books, Finnish, Jari Järvelä, Translation, Wivi Lönn
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
Go, went, gone
A white, male, comfortably-off, widowed professor at a Berlin university has just retired. He meets Black African men seeking asylum in Europe. He tries to find out about them, and to help them. Not new, perhaps. Isn’t the whole perspective…
Tagged with: Asylum, Berlin, books, German, Jenny Erpenbeck, Susan Bernofsky, Translation
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
Lament for the Fallen
I am writing this as Afghanistan descends once more into horror. A tiny Welsh part of me still thinks “the bloody English colonials, look what they started and didn’t finish – again.” And you could read the Gododdin this way,…
Tagged with: Aneirin, books, Cynghanedd, Faber, Gillian Clarke, Gododdin, Hay Festival, Poetry, Translation, Welsh
Posted in books, history, literature, poetry
Posted in books, history, literature, poetry
Waiting for Translation: Why We Matter
It shouldn’t frustrate me so much that a German book has an English title, but it does. This frustration encapsulates some of the struggle for intersectional justice that Emilie Roig exposes. So often concepts and terms are honed in English,…
Tagged with: books, Emilia Roig, German, intersectional, justice, Waiting for translation, Why We Matter
Posted in books, gender
Posted in books, gender
Women in Translation Month: The Map
Is this an adventure novel, war memoir, seven short stories, or one of those new approaches to history through objects? It’s all that and more. The real protagonist is not a person, but a map. Do you know Rembrandt van…
Tagged with: books, Kate Webster, Mapa, Poland, Polish, Rembrandt, Terra Librorum, The Map, Translation, Women in Translation Month, Wydawnictwo Nisza
Posted in books, translation, Women in Translation Month
Posted in books, translation, Women in Translation Month
The Passenger
This book was written on the run. It captures that moment after 9 November 1938 where things got a lot worse for a lot of people, very rapidly. Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, then aged 23, had made it out of Germany…
Tagged with: 9 November 1938, books, Der Reisende, German, Klett-Cotta Verlag, Philip Boehm, Pushkin Press, The Passenger, Translation, Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz
Posted in books, history, translation
Posted in books, history, translation
Daughters
Is this a road trip or a journey back in time? The German and English covers of Töchter/Daughters tell the same story in different ways. Just getting into the car and driving south to get away from it all –…
Tagged with: books, Daughters, German, Lucy Fricke, Rohwolt, Sinéad Crowe, Töchter, Translation, V&Q Books
Posted in books, gender, translation
Posted in books, gender, translation
Waiting for translation: Margarita
A real old-school holiday resort. Sauna, muscle-reviving massage for the old biddies with health problems, berry and mushroom picking, rowboats to the island in the middle of the lake, home-cooked food with produce from the estate. A local community where…
Tagged with: Anni Kytomäki, books, Finlandia Prize, Finnish, Margarita, Translation, waitingfortranslation
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
Monsters and heroes: Beowulf
Dragons, magic, heaps of gold and jewels, superhuman strength, slaying monsters – both monsters who are slain and monsters who slay. In the ancient and modern senses of the word. It’s fun. It’s fantasy. It’s the perfect read for a…
Tagged with: Beowulf, books, Grendel's mother, Maria Dahvana Headley, Old English, Poetry, Translation
Posted in books, poetry, translation
Posted in books, poetry, translation
found in translation 