“Every now and then a book makes my fingers itch to translate it from the very first pages,” says Sophie Hughes. This is one of those books; her translation of Alia Trabucco Zerán’s The Remainder. Zerán’s generation are the children of Pinochet’s…
Blog Archives
The Remainder
Tagged with: Alia Trabucco Zerán, And Other Stories, books, Chile, history, Sophie Hughes, Spanish, Translation
Posted in books, history, literature, translation
Posted in books, history, literature, translation
Drive your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
It can be both easier and harder to translate an author who is so aware of the translation process herself. The heroine of this novel and her friend are translating Blake into Polish; they come up with multiple versions of…
Tagged with: Antonia Lloyd-Jones, books, Drive your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead, Fitzcarraldo Editions, Olga Tokarczuk, Polish, Translation
Posted in books, film, translation
Posted in books, film, translation
Beginning to Speak
Diana is from Pontus, now in Georgia, once in Greece. So it’s no surprise she starts with Helen – she isn’t the first poet to do so and she surely won’t be the last: These poems are gloriously sensory and…
Tagged with: books, Diana Anphimiadi, Georgian, Jean Sprackland, Natalia Bukia-Peters, Poetry Translation Centre, Translation, Women in Translation Month
Posted in books, poetry, translation, Women in Translation Month
Posted in books, poetry, translation, Women in Translation Month
The House in Norway
The artist has her own house, and feels invaded when other people move in – how is she going to work, now? Nordic people need their space, and women need room of their own to create. The forest grows right…
Tagged with: books, Charlotte Barslund, Norwegian, The House in Norway, Translation, Vigdis Hjorth, Women in Translation Month
Posted in books, translation, Women in Translation Month
Posted in books, translation, Women in Translation Month
The True Deceiver
To start Women in Translation Month this year, I return to one of my favourite authors, whose birthday is next week. Tove Jansson never fails to make you think. This is about a woman artist who cannot escape her own…
Tagged with: Finland, Finnish Swedish, The True Deceiver, Thomas Teal, Tove Jansson, Women in Translation Month
Posted in books, Tove Jansson Centenary, translation
Posted in books, Tove Jansson Centenary, translation
The Ten Thousand Things
The bookseller grinned broadly and actually looked me in the eye. Apparently it’s not often that people looking for books in English go straight for the Dutch literature. But how Dutch is this book anyway? It’s caught between two worlds:…
Tagged with: American Book Center Amsterdam, books, Dutch, Hans Koning, Indonesia, Maria Dermoût, Spice Islands, Translation
Posted in books, history, international, translation
Posted in books, history, international, translation
The Emperor of Portugallia
Once upon a time, a hundred years and more ago, there was an ordinary man in an ordinary village, who led a really rather ordinary life. He worked hard, but nothing really excited him; he wasn’t very happy, but he…
Tagged with: books, Norvik Press, Peter Graves, Selma Lagerlöf, Swedish, The Emperor of Portugallia, Translation
Posted in books, literature, translation
Posted in books, literature, translation
They know not what they do
When Jussi Valtonen’s book won the Finlandia Prize for the best novel of 2014, my friend recommended it to me. Her husband had loved it, I would find it really interesting. But it looked so weighty, and back then, my…
Tagged with: books, Finland, Finlandia Prize, Finnish, Jussi Valtonen, Kristian London, Oneworld, They Know Not What They Do, Translation
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
Thomas Bernhard’s poems
Once he’d written them, he didn’t look back. He moved on to plays and novels, for which he’s much better known. He didn’t write any more poems for decades. Once he’d written them, he kept looking back. He returned and…
Tagged with: books, Collected Poems, German, James Reidel, Poetry, Seagull Books, Thomas Bernhard, Translation
Posted in books, poetry, translation
Posted in books, poetry, translation
Ghachar Ghochar
One of the best things about reading books in translation is that they take you to places you might never go, through languages that you might never learn, and make you feel right at home, as if you’ve grown up…
Tagged with: Best Translated Book Award, books, Ghachar Ghochar, India, Kannada, Srinath Perur, transation, Vivek Shanbhag
Posted in Best Translated Book Award, books, translation
Posted in Best Translated Book Award, books, translation
found in translation 