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Visualising the translation: subtitling Pawlikowski’s Ida

Poland’s first Oscar for a ‘foreign language film’ went to Pawlikowski’s Ida this morning. Turning it from ‘foreign’ into English was not an easy process even for a film that the director, Paweł Pawlikowski, himself said in his acceptance speech

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Posted in film, international, language, translation

The road to love: Valentine’s idioms

St Valentine was martyred in Rome about 1740 years ago today. What better way to honour him than with loving words in many languages? It’s been shown yet again, very entertainingly and by many translators, that idioms don’t translate easily,

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Posted in international, language

Alarmingly elegant translations: The White Review

If Paris calls London “alarmingly elegant”, it’s worth taking another look. Especially if it’s in translation from all around the globe. This month’s online issue of The White Review is a box of delights. I like to claim my favourites first,

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Posted in literature, poetry, translation

Polish children’s books take on the world: find today’s lokomotywa

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:

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Posted in books, translation

Dead poets translation society: “I was not there I don’t know”

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

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Posted in history, poetry, translation

stories on the go

One of the best things about being a translator is having the world at your fingertips – but a commute to work of less than twenty steps (I did get up and test the distance from breakfast table to desk

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Posted in books, international, literature, short stories, translation

25 years – that’s a quarter of a century…

In just a few weeks time, it will be 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. That’s a quarter of a century… makes a girl think. If you, too, wear glasses from reading too much small print, you will

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Posted in history, international, literature, poetry, translation

waiting for translation: Tokarczuk’s Bieguni

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,

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Posted in books, international, language, literature, translation

nonsense in translation: Nina Cassian and the Jabberwocky

Romanian poet Nina Cassian died one month ago today. (Here she is reading her work, and here’s a great poem she wrote in New York exile). She also translated Brecht, Molière and Shakespeare, but was especially proud of her translation of

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Posted in literature, poetry, translation

European literature night 2014: words, pictures, and wheels

With a mission to bring new books from around the continent to the people, tonight is the sixth European literature night. In co-operation with 28 European National Institutes for Culture, the Czech organisers have brought the event to 24 cities this

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Posted in European Literature Night, Illustration, international, literature, translation
advent Alice in Wonderland American And Other Stories Antonia Lloyd-Jones Arabic Argentina Beowulf Berlin Best Translated Book Award Bible books Brazil Brazilian Portuguese British British Library Buddhism Catalan Children's Books China Chinese Christmas Christmas Carols Contemporary Czesław Miłosz Danish Dari David Hackston Deep Vellum Dublin Literary Award English Estonian Fantasy Farsi Fiction Finland Finland 100 Finlandia Prize Finnish Fitzcarraldo Editions Flemish Free Word Centre French George Szirtes German Greek Hebrew Herbert Lomas Herta Müller history Hungarian Iceland Idioms Illustration India international International Translation Day Irish Gaelic Italian J. R. R. Tolkien Japanese Jenny Erpenbeck Johanna Sinisalo Korean Language language learning Languages Latin Literature Lola Rogers Lord of the Rings Mabinogion Man Booker International Prize Maori Maria Turtschaninoff Moomins New Year Nobel Prize Nobel Prize for Literature Norwegian Old English Olga Tokarczuk Owen Witesman Oxford English Dictionary Penguin PEN Translation Prize Persian Philip Boehm Phoneme Media Poetry Poetry Translation Centre Polish Portuguese Pushkin Press Queer Romanian Rosa Liksom Russian Salla Simukka Second World War Short Stories Sofi Oksanen Spanish Stanisław Barańczak Suomi100 Susan Bernofsky Svetlana Alexievich Swedish Switzerland Thomas Teal Tibetan Tove Jansson Translation translator Translators Without Borders Wales Warsaw Welsh Wisława Szymborska Witold Szabłowski Women in Translation Month words Words without Borders writing YA

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