Author Archive
Past the City Limit Sign: The Role of Rural in 2016 Books
What kinds of stories will emerge that focus on rural or city settings during a Trump presidency? Will the typical themes continue to be cemented or will variations become the norm?
Lessons from a Year in Translation
That number is low, but looks good next to the fact that only about 3% of all the books published in the US are translations, a number that grows even smaller if you focus on literary fiction (roughly 0.7%).
Resisting Temptations While Translating: An Interview with Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson
Chronicle of the Murdered House is certainly Cardoso’s best-known work, and also a bold one, in that it is not the most accessible of books. So it is both an obvious starting point, and a difficult one. Perhaps that is why it has taken to so long to bring
The Care that Goes into Translation: An Interview with Lisa Hayden
A central theme of the novel Laurus is that time is a spiral. Events and themes recur throughout history, but each time with a slight variation. The structure of the work, by Russian author Eugene Vodolazkin, mirrors that premise. Scenes and pages reference and reshape each other constantly. Though
Holding Back Poetic Tendencies: An Interview with Jordan Stump
For that reason, the translator has to hold back his or her poetic tendencies, which can be difficult in the horrific passages toward the end. Harder than that, though, is making sure that the plainness of the voice doesn’t turn into blandness.
Translating China’s Modern History: An Interview with Carlos Rojas
Where Explosion Chronicles is distinctive, however, lies in its melding of a variety of different literary modes—ranging from mythic and Biblical language, to historical and political discourses, to Yan’s distinctive blend of parody and pathos.
Cultural Lifelines and Individual Artistry: An Interview with Robert Bringhurst
In 1999, Robert Bringhurst—polyglot translator, poet, and typographic authority—published A Story as Sharp as a Knife, a book about Haida myths and mythtellers. Bringhurst retranslates the work of several Haida poets using century-old transcriptions from anthropologist John Swanton.
Language as a “Banner of Identity”: An Interview with Mara Faye Lethem
We discuss the short novel Brandes’s Decision with translator Mara Faye Lethem. The novel was originally written by Eduard Márquez in Catalan and published in 2006 and was recently brought to an English-reading audience by Hispabooks, a Madrid-based publisher.
Taking Something Unconventional and Making It Beautiful: An Interview with Elisabeth Jaquette
Elisabeth Jaquette is a prolific writer and translator of Arabic. Her translations have appeared in the Guardian, Asymptote, multiple anthologies, and other places. She holds an MA from Columbia University and was a CASA Fellow at the American University of Cairo.
Han Kang’s THE VEGETARIAN Wins Man Booker International Prize
Last week, the winner of the newly refocused Man Booker International Prize was announced to be The Vegetarian, a novel by the Korean writer Han Kang, translated into English by Deborah Smith. Originally published as three novellas, the book is the surreal story of Yeong-hye, a young Korean woman