Thistle stars, quince suns, and a buzzing alphabet of midges: Jan Wagner sees nature upside down and inside out. He will make you see the world in a whole new way. I found the young Hamburg poet on a trip…
Thistle stars, quince suns, and a buzzing alphabet of midges: Jan Wagner sees nature upside down and inside out. He will make you see the world in a whole new way. I found the young Hamburg poet on a trip…
Last weekend I went to a big birthday party. It was a chance to catch up with over a hundred family and friends, and family of family and friends of friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen for some years,…
I finished this book of Persian poetry just in time for Nowruz, which is the Persian New Year. Starting the year at the spring equinox makes a lot of sense. And starting it with 700-year-old-poems like this was a pleasure.…
A book that can be turned upside down and read from back to front in another language can be a wonderful thing. Formats like that came through our door in my childhood home, but they were mostly bilingual Welsh-English leaflets…
In his Tibetan new year greeting, the fourteenth Dalai Lama explains: “If you create the causes of happiness, if you lead your life in benefiting others and not harming them, that’s a meaningful life, a life that has ‘tashi’. On that basis…
It’s that time of year when people vow to get fit, lose their bad habits and slough off all the holiday indulgence. And I’ve finally found the kind of personal trainer I’m looking for. How about a personal reading…
It’s advent. It’s still getting darker. The earth is drained of colour, finally covered in snow, waiting for spring. People are on the move, looking for a place to rest safely. It’s a waiting time. Waiting for the wilderness to…
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 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…