Being a teenager is often awful, sometimes amazing, but rarely, if ever, dull. The emotions are too huge. At least that’s how I – and Saisio – remember it. Vastavalo/Backlight tells it as a girl at the end of her…
Blog Archives
Backlight
Tagged with: Backlight, books, Finnish, Mia Spangenberg, Penguin, Pirkko Saisio, Translation, Two Lines Press, Vastavalo
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
On the calculation of translated volumes
Solvej Balle’s Om udregning af rumfang, published by Pelagraf, won the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2022. Then, she’d written three of her seven volumes of speculative fiction in Danish. Barbara Haveland’s English translation, On the Calculation of Volume, is…
Han Kang: finding the translations
The journey from Korea to the northern fringes of Europe is a long one. To get there, you have to go on a TV show, or stir up a storm in a translators’ teacup. Or you could miss the bus,…
Tagged with: books, Deborah Smith, English, Finnish, Han Kang, Korean, Man Booker International Prize, Nobel Prize, Taru Salminen, Translation
Posted in literature, Nobel Prize in Literature, translation
Posted in literature, Nobel Prize in Literature, translation
Merkel’s Freedom
An hour and a half of my life listening for every year she was in office. Yes, Angela Merkel’s Freiheit/Freedom clocks up an impressive 24 hours as an audio book, or 720 pages. I stuck with it, because I wanted…
Tagged with: Angela Merkel, books, freedom, Freiheit, German, politics, Translation
Posted in books, history
Posted in books, history
Lem and le Guin’s letters
This one jumped out at me from the blue sky (dzięki Paweł!). I’ve read less Lem than le Guin, but the idea of them writing to each other was startling, pleasing. I ordered their 1972–1984 letters from Wydawnictwo Literackie straight…
Tagged with: Bill Johnston, books, German, Irmtraud Zimmermann-Göllheim, Polish, Stanisław Barańczak, Stanisław Lem, Tomasz Lem, Translation, Ursula le Guin
Posted in books, literature, translation
Posted in books, literature, translation
Identitti
I’m writing this in an Indian restaurant. The only Indian in my Finnish town is at the railway station – there are more Nepalese around here. This one is at the railway station, and, like today, I often come here…
Tagged with: Alta L Price, books, German, Identitti, Mithu Sanyal, Translation
Posted in books, gender, Queer, translation
Posted in books, gender, Queer, translation
Effingers
Once I’d got my teeth into Tergit, I wasn’t going to let go. Käsebier was splendid. Berlin in the twenties is a somewhere, somewhen I wish I had been to, and here was a woman broadcasting live from the thick…
Tagged with: books, Effingers, Gabriele Tergit, German, Sofie Duvernoy, Translation, Waiting for translation
Posted in books, history, translation
Posted in books, history, translation
Empusium
Empuzjon is Olga Tokarczuk’s made-up word in Polish from two Greek words. Symposium – drinkfuelled philosophical debate – and empusa – a female shape-shifter. Here, you can go down a delightful rabbithole to find empusas: Wikipedia took me to Kipling’s…
Tagged with: Antonia Lloyd-Jones, books, Empusium, Empuzjon, Fitzcarraldo Editions, Olga Tokarczuk, Polish, Translation
Posted in books, Nobel Prize in Literature, translation
Posted in books, Nobel Prize in Literature, translation
Pocket Punishment
A colleague raved about Ferdinand von Schirach, and a good friend said he can sure write a story. So when I found this lovely btb pocket edition that’s smaller than most phones these days, I thought, let’s try him. Strafe…
Tagged with: books, Ferdinand von Schirach, German, Katharina Hall, Punishment, Strafe, Translation
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
Ædnan
I was in two minds about this picture, but I think it fits. I took it on the ferry home from Stockholm. Behind the book, you can glimpse the old royal centre of the self-styled “capital of Scandinavia.” That phrase…
Tagged with: Ædnan, books, Linnea Axelsson, Northern Sámi, Poetry, Saskia Vogel, Translation
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
found in translation 