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,…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
If you want someone’s mind to grow, you have to start a conversation with them as soon as they’re born. It’s not enough for them to hear language around them, adults talking to each other, people talking on TV or…
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…
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…
The first time I noticed translation was probably while singing Christmas carols. We learnt to sing Silent Night in something resembling German and Welsh at primary school, and in learning Polish I realised that the fuzzy warm sound of carols I’d heard…