Happy New Year! Happy birthday Asymptote! If you feel you didn’t get enough presents (and there’s still four days of Christmas left) or you didn’t make ambitious enough new year’s resolutions about reading more in as many languages as possible…
Happy New Year! Happy birthday Asymptote! If you feel you didn’t get enough presents (and there’s still four days of Christmas left) or you didn’t make ambitious enough new year’s resolutions about reading more in as many languages as possible…
Sometimes someone makes you see something you know well in a new way. Oliver O’Brien’s Tube Tongues does just that. The UCL scholar mapped all the languages spoken at each London tube stop. It’s fascinating, and great for language learners…
We always need more children’s books to delight the eye and the ear, in as many languages as possible. The Polish Dwie Siostry (two sisters) Publishing is awarding 2,500 euro to the best new one to add to their catalogue:…
No-one does Advent better than the Germans. The Leo German dictionary usually has an excellent online advent calendar (in German, with poems and pictures for every day). So who better, I thought, to start Advent, than the German poet Rainer…
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…
It is extremely hard to find Sámi literature in English. This could be a deliberate strategy: Sámi author Ellen Marie Vars refused to allow translations of her work into majority languages, because she wanted people to read in Sámi. The…
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…
Finland is this year’s guest of honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair. This opens up Finnish literature to a German-speaking and global audience, with lots of great authors and over 60 translators in attendance. Finnland: Cool. I have to say, I DON’T like the…