The Polish poet and playwright Tadeusz Różewicz died this week, aged 92, having survived the underground in the Second World War, the rise and fall of communist rule in Poland, and the transition into the 21st century. He was one of…
Blog Archives
compartment no. 6
If you read one Finnish book in translation this year, this should be it. I’ve started reading it in Finnish and it is great. Appropriately, Rosa Liksom’s Compartment No. 6 comes out in English on International Workers’ Day. In it,…
Tagged with: Compartment No. 6, Estonian, Finlandia Prize, Finnish, Finnish English Translation Co-operative, Literature, Lola Rogers, Purge, Rosa Liksom, Sofi Oksanen, Translation, translator
Posted in books, gender, international, literature, translation
Posted in books, gender, international, literature, translation
holy languages for holy week
The holy books of Christians and Jews are a complex mixture of languages and manuscripts that gloriously overlap and contradict. There are more and more chances to see this huge diversity coming together. Two exhibitions, similar content, different title: verbum…
Tagged with: Agnes Lewis, Aramaic, Bible, codex sinaiticus, English, German, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Old English, Russian, Syriac, syriac sinaiticus, Translation, Verbum Domini exhibition
Posted in faith, international, language, translation
Posted in faith, international, language, translation
on your bike
It’s spring: time to get out on your bike, if you’re a fair weather cyclist, or, take the winter tyres off and carry on riding, if you’re a Finnish cyclist like me. But what has that got to do with…
Tagged with: Baltic, Kiswahili, Polish, Training, Translation, Translators Without Borders, Volunteers
Posted in international, language, translation
Posted in international, language, translation
three per cent: best translated book from German 2014
Just three percent of books published in the US are in translation, and less than one percent are literary fiction and poetry. The University of Rochester is trying to change that, with its three per cent website and Best Translated…
Tagged with: Austria, books, Christa Wolf, Damion Searls, drama, Elfriede Jelinek, English, feminist, German, Language, Literature, Nobel Prize, three per cent, Translation, translator, writing
Posted in Best Translated Book Award, books, gender, international, literature, translation
Posted in Best Translated Book Award, books, gender, international, literature, translation
flying stones: the European poet of freedom 2014
The European Poet of Freedom Festival starts in Gdańsk today. The poet’s award is 100,000 złoty (about 24,000 euros), and their translator into Polish wins a tenth of that. Seven nominees, from Kazakhstan to Estonia, face some very sharp judges…
Tagged with: Contemporary, Croatian, Dorta Jagić, English, Europe, freedom, Gdańsk, German, Iren Baumann, Literature, Małgorzata Wierzbicka, Miloš Đurđević, Poetry, Polish, Ryszard Wojnakowski, Switzerland, Translation, translator
Posted in European Poet of Freedom, gender, international, literature, poetry, translation
Posted in European Poet of Freedom, gender, international, literature, poetry, translation
more gender pronouns: they
Facebook has finally broadened its pronoun options from 2 to 50. This should theoretically stop those odd posts with the “wrong” gender assignment, and make a lot of transgendered and queer people very happy. The only problem is that you have to…
divided by a common language
I started teaching English while living in Poznań in 1999. I only knew two other native speakers there at the time, Peter and Peter, who were both from the East Coast of the US. And sometimes, we simply didn’t understand…
Tagged with: American, British, English, false friends, Language, Translation, words
Posted in international, language, President's Day, translation
Posted in international, language, President's Day, translation
chocolate for everyone
Valentine’s Day both loses and gains something in translation. For the Japanese, today is the day when the women give chocolate (and only chocolate) to the men. This is because one chocolate company made a translation mistake, switching the genders, when…
Tagged with: cake, chocolate, Estonian, Finland, Finnish, friends, Japanese, Language, Translation
Posted in translation, Valentine's Day
Posted in translation, Valentine's Day
translators are like
If you google “translators are like”, you get: translators are like ninjas translators are like google bad translators are like big hairy spiders. While this has a lot going for it (we’re saboteurs, expert data crunchers – or terribly self-referential? –…
Tagged with: Central Europe, George Szirtes, Ginger Rogers, Hungarian, Kristina Zdravič Reardon, left-handed, shoes, Slovene, Spanish, Translation, translator
Posted in international, language, literature, translation
Posted in international, language, literature, translation
found in translation 