Last week, it seemed that a new subspecies of lumbersexuals was emerging in the most unlikely of places: among Budapest intellectuals and activists. It turned out that all these checked shirts were popping up in my feed for a reason.…
Blog Archives
One book is never enough
Tagged with: Checked Shirts, Clouded Sky, Corvina Books, Dick Slackman, education, Foamy Sky, Frederick Turner, Hungarian, Hungary, Kazinczy Ferenc, Orvath Zsuzsanna, Princeton University Press, Radnoti Miklos, S. J. Marks, Sheep Meadow Press, Stephen Berg, Steven Polgar, Translation
Posted in books, education, history, language, poetry, translation
Posted in books, education, history, language, poetry, translation
‘Jack Finn’s Carols
Finnish Christmas carols are often seen as extraordinarily depressing. That isn’t quite fair. In fact, we have a Finn (Jaakko Suomalainen, Jacobus Finno) to thank for some of the best loved carols worldwide. He was a priest and head of the…
Tagged with: Christmas Carols, Finnish, Jacobus Finno, Latin, Piae Cantiones, Swedish, Translation
Posted in Christmas, history, translation
Posted in Christmas, history, translation
O bydded i’r hen iaith barhau: Patagonia 150
One of my earliest language-learning memories is of hot summer afternoons in the early years of high school, when even our unquenchably enthusiastic Welsh teacher would give up and just tell us stories. Of a land far far away, where children…
Tagged with: Language, Patagonia, Translation, Welsh, Y Wladfa
Posted in history, international, language, translation
Posted in history, international, language, translation
70 Years of Victory in Europe: Māori stories
Millions of non-Europeans are only starting to get the recognition they deserve for their contribution to the end of “the world’s war in Europe”. You might know that 1.5 million Indians fought alongside 5m Brits at the end of empire,…
Tagged with: 28th Battalion, Italian, Language, Maori, Translation, VE Day
Posted in history, international, translation
Posted in history, international, translation
Dead poets translation society: “I was not there I don’t know”
How do you translate a dead poet? The November issue of Poetry magazine is dedicated to translation, with translator’s notes on each poem. I made a beeline for languages I know – and found they shared a problem. The poet…
Tagged with: Dafydd ap Gwilym, Dafydd Johnston, Gwyneth Lewis, Jennifer Grotz, Jerzy Ficowski, Piotr Sommer, Poetry, Polish, Translation, Welsh
Posted in history, poetry, translation
Posted in history, poetry, translation
The space between: After the Berlin Wall fell
25 years ago, the Berlin Wall came down. 9 November might seem like a good date to celebrate German reunification, but because the same day in 1938 saw the burning of synagogues and destruction of Jewish property across Germany, they…
Tagged with: 9 November 1989, Berlin Wall, books, German, history, Jewish, Literature, Michael Hulse, Russian, Russian Disco, Translation, Wladimir Kaminer
Posted in books, history, international, literature
Posted in books, history, international, literature
Suspended Sentences: New translation of Modiano
A new translation of 2014 Nobel Laureate Patrick Modiano’s stories, Suspended Sentences, comes out next month. The translator, Mark Polizotti, also happens to be publisher in chief of MoMa. These novellas are needed: Modiano in English and in print is very hard to…
Tagged with: books, cinema, Flemish, French, history, Literature, Louise Colpijn, Mark Polizotti, Nobel Prize for Literature, Patrick Modiano, Second World War, Suspended Sentences, Translation
Posted in books, cinema, history, literature, translation
Posted in books, cinema, history, literature, translation
25 years – that’s a quarter of a century…
In just a few weeks time, it will be 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. That’s a quarter of a century… makes a girl think. If you, too, wear glasses from reading too much small print, you will…
Tagged with: 1989, Art Spiegelman, Arundhati Roy, Atonement, Central Europe, Christina Viragh, Czesław Miłosz, German, God of Small Things, Hungarian, IanMcEwan, Kertész Imre, Literature, Maus, Nobel Prize, Poetry, Polish, quarter of a century, Tim Wilkinson, Wisława Szymborska, World Literature Today
Posted in history, international, literature, poetry, translation
Posted in history, international, literature, poetry, translation
100 years of pacifism 1914-2014
100 years ago today, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was shot in Sarajevo, triggering what H.G. Wells called the “war that will end war”; it wasn’t long before the irony of that phrase was felt. The Oxford English Dictionary has…
Tagged with: Émile Arnaud, English, First World War, French, Language, Oxford English Dictionary, Pacifism, Translation, words
Posted in history, international, language, words
Posted in history, international, language, words
found in translation 