Happy 60th Birthday to us! The Finnish Association of Translators and Interpreters (SKTL) is 60 this year. The party has started: a lively exhibition opens tomorrow. The opening tonight was a celebration of linguistic skills and challenges in a multicultural…
It’s autumn holiday week here – the sun is retreating, schools are on mid-term break, and summer is starting to seem like a distant memory. It’s time to escape the daily grind if at all possible. But what will you…
Being read to isn’t only for children. If you, like me, work closely with complicated texts all day, however much you love reading, it can feel like an effort on workday evenings. But great world literature is just within earshot.…
Belarusian journalist Svetlana Alexievich has been awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize for Literature for her “Polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time.” Born in Ukraine to a Ukrainian mother and a Belarusian father, she worked as…
The German Book Prize short list is out today! Three women, three Swiss writers and four with other books published in English in the last three years have made the cut. In my very subjective order of preference, they are:…
Tove Jansson turns 101 this Sunday. She was 61 exactly when I was born, so I will be celebrating at a secret location on the day, hence the advance nature of this post. What is there to celebrate this year? For…
August is Women in Translation Month, as declared by Biblibio: A whole month to read women in translation, a perfect summer holiday project. The dust is settling around Kamila Shamsie’s challenge to only publish women, with And Other Stories taking up the challenge –…
Knausgård’s Min Kamp/My Struggle series are a publishing sensation and I had to see what all the fuss was about. Not being able to read them in Norwegian, I had a choice of four translations to choose from: English, Polish, German…
English PEN has just announced more support for independent publishers to publish works in translation, which is great news since the independents are the ones producing the really interesting stuff. Their world bookshelf of contemporary writers in supported by the PEN…
Tiny Owl is a new children’s book publisher with a noble aim: to “introduce the cream of the crop of global children’s literature, contemporary and old, to the English speaking audience.” Their 2015 catalogue focuses on Persian treasures, and it’s moving,…
found in translation 