Something is happening in French-language literature right now that makes me dearly regret stopping at GCSE. In the last few months I’ve devoured three short and piercingly acute new translations from French that have made me think hard about animal…
What makes humans different from other creatures? We draw a clear distinction, but maybe our actions show there’s less of a difference than we think in the way we try to raise children and animals. There is a lot of…
Once upon a time, there was a little girl who lived in a little village on the edge of the forest. She was born long ago, when times were hard; as she knew they would be. She enjoyed life well…
If you, like me, translate for a living, you might, like me, have been waiting to get your hands on this for quite some time. I ordered it ages ago, and when it finally arrived, I was about to take…
If you don’t fit neatly into a particular category, if you’re difficult for people to place, they won’t place you, their eyes might slide right over you and move on to someone else. And if you try to break down those…
“It’s as though you had to know the password for our relationship.” Looks like Emmanuelle Pagano has got everyone’s password! Translators Sophie Lewis and Jennifer Higgins have done sterling work on the files. And Other Stories has done it again with…
It’s women’s day, and time to look for the women in translation once again, at the Free Word Centre and elsewhere. The statistics are shocking as ever. But there is plenty to read if you look. Rather than lamenting, just go out…
The Women’s World Cup of Literature kicks off today, with a Francophone first fixture. I wasn’t the only one to be both delighted by a world cup I really wanted to follow last year, but complain about the lack of female…
Billy Bragg had a 24-hour job at a moment’s notice. He was not going to get paid for his overtime. But he was on a mission. And he made the deadline. Hear him tell the story and sing his translation.…
This Christmas carol, Entre le boeuf et l ‘âne gris, is well loved in France, where was written in the 13th century, but not known well at all in the English-speaking world, so I couldn’t find it sung in English anywhere online. I…
