
The Romanovs, Lenin, Gagarin – they all had their cooks. Holodomor, Leningrad, Chernobyl, Afghanistan – sometimes there is nothing (safe) to cook at all. For some people, like the Tatars, cooking is all you have left of home. Others, like…
The Romanovs, Lenin, Gagarin – they all had their cooks. Holodomor, Leningrad, Chernobyl, Afghanistan – sometimes there is nothing (safe) to cook at all. For some people, like the Tatars, cooking is all you have left of home. Others, like…
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…
It isn’t easy to explain a translator’s work to your nephews when they are just learning to read, but when I heard Saara Pääkkönen, who translates the Donald Duck comics into Finnish, explaining that she drops objects to hear what sound they…
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.…
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…
You know that feeling when you’re waiting at an airport, trying to guess where other are from and where they are going? You start writing in your notebook, observing the man across from you, who is writing in his notebook,…
What does the rest of the world look like in the eyes of the rest of the world? That’s something we can never know. But good journalism in good translation can help. It’s not a good idea to have a…