When should you say no to translation? Sometimes saying yes can be just too dangerous – the translator is drawn into an ethical dilemma or puts their life at risk. For a fascinating discussion of this issue with experts in…
Don’t translate this!
Tagged with: Alice Guthrie, Anna Politkovskaya, Arabic, Arch Tait, Literary Translation, London Book Fair, NoPeanuts, Rebranding the Levant, Russian, Tenzin Dickie, Tibetan, Translation, TreasuryOfLives
Posted in literature
Posted in literature
Rejoice! or Exult?
Catholics should be used to the new English translation of the Latin liturgy after four years. But at times like Easter, which particularly cut through and beyond time, it’s familiar words we want. The premise for the new translation was…
Tagged with: Easter, Exsultet, ICEL, Latin, Rita Ferrone, St Jerome, Translation, Virgil
Posted in faith, translation
Posted in faith, translation
Transatlantic – unpacking Gombrowicz’s baggage
“My work is very chic, like a luggage set: the large suitcase, my novels; two medium-sized cases, my Diary and my plays; the small case, my short stories.” (Witold Gombrowicz) Danuta Borchardt’s translation of Gombrowicz’s Transatlantyk is on the PEN Translation Prize Longlist. Yet again she…
Tagged with: Argentina, Czesław Miłosz, Danuta Borchardt, Gombrowicz, PEN Translation Prize, Polish, Transatlantic, Translation
Posted in literature, translation
Posted in literature, translation
Narrative Witness: stories from Caracas to Sarajevo
The University of Iowa’s International Writers Program brought writers and photographers from Caracas and Sarajevo to tell stories together online last summer. The results of their collaboration, with translations into English, are now online. The photographers open up a window…
Tagged with: Caracas, Efrén Hernández-Arias, Fedosy Santaella, international, IWP, Sarajevo, Selma Kulović, transation, Vanja Cerimagić
Posted in international, translation
Posted in international, translation
Little Black Books
Penguin turns 80 this year, and, to celebrate, has published 80 extracts of its classics for 80p. Since I myself only recently became reunited with my Penguin 60s (yes, 60 mini books for 60p, 20 years ago, now on their…
Tagged with: Dick Davis, Farsi, Gertrude Bell, Hafiz, Herodotus, Little Black Classics, Penguin, Persian
Posted in literature, poetry, translation
Posted in literature, poetry, translation
A language is a dialect with an army
Yesterday was St David’s Day, in self-imposed Finnish exile I’ll have to buy, not pick daffodils and sing the national anthem alone. It includes the immortal line: “O bydded i’r hen iaith barhau” (may the language endure for ever). Welsh…
Tagged with: Basque, dialect continuum, Herodotus, language continuum, language learning, Leonard Bloomfield, Max Weinreich, Translation, Welsh, Welsh Language Society, Yiddish
Posted in language, translation
Posted in language, translation
Visualising the translation: subtitling Pawlikowski’s Ida
Poland’s first Oscar for a ‘foreign language film’ went to Pawlikowski’s Ida this morning. Turning it from ‘foreign’ into English was not an easy process even for a film that the director, Paweł Pawlikowski, himself said in his acceptance speech…
Tagged with: English, Film, German, Ida, Oscars, Paweł Pawlikowski, Polish, subtitling, Translation
Posted in film, international, language, translation
Posted in film, international, language, translation
Happy Chinese New Year! Separating the Sheep from the Goats
The Chinese year of the yang starts today. You can see its horns in the character (taken from the Epoch Times, a committedly independent source of Chinese news) – but is it a sheep or a goat? The distinction is not…
Tagged with: Chinese New Year, Goat, Language, Sheep, Translation, Yang
Posted in international, language
Posted in international, language
The road to love: Valentine’s idioms
St Valentine was martyred in Rome about 1740 years ago today. What better way to honour him than with loving words in many languages? It’s been shown yet again, very entertainingly and by many translators, that idioms don’t translate easily,…
Tagged with: Crewe, Finnish, German, Glasgow, Haloo Helsinki, Idioms, John Clinch, Kouvola, Polish, Rome, trains, Translation, Valentine's Day, Wincher's Stance
Posted in international, language
Posted in international, language
sounds British? Save our Sounds!
If, like me, you still regret getting rid of your lovingly created mix cassette tapes, complete with breath of radio 1 DJ at the end of each song, even though you haven’t had anything to play them on for years,…
Tagged with: British, British Library, English, Language, Save our Sounds, sound, Translation, Welsh
Posted in language, translation
Posted in language, translation
found in translation 