Translator, Poet, Writer, Editor
Since English serves as a lingua franca in many fields, you may find yourself writing in English even if it’s not your first language. Whether it’s an academic paper or an oral presentation, you’ll want to make sure your English sounds natural, polished, and professional. Even if your English skills are advanced, word choice and…
View post to subscribe to site newsletter.
I’m going to say it up front: despite what you may have heard, poetry can be translated. In another language, a poem will sound different. Trade-offs will be made, and the music and associations will be transformed. But, in a good translation, they won’t be lost. For a highly interesting behind-the-scenes look at translating poetry,…
View post to subscribe to site newsletter.
I had never thought about the concept of “flow” in connection with translation until I attended a talk by Evgeny Terekhin at the 2020 conference of the American Translators Association. Evgeny described translating in the flow state and said he could tell when reading a translation if a translator was working in this state or…
I’ve been thinking lately about a thought-provoking conversation from a while back between translators Tim Gutteridge and Tim Parks about how to approach the translation process. I am especially drawn to this formulation by Parks: “Once we have read and really got close to the text, then writing well in the target language is a…
March 8 is International Women’s Day, and a perfect occasion to discover some great women writers in translation. While Elena Ferrante‘s name has been on everyone’s lips for a while now, and Olga Tokarczuk won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2018, there are loads of other talented women writers from abroad who haven’t achieved…
View post to subscribe to site newsletter.
How do we know if a translation is good? Most people probably think of accuracy first, but we shouldn’t forget about style. Of course, a translation must accurately reflect the meaning of the source. But the way it expresses this meaning is also important. The style should always be tailored to the context and the…
Happy International Translation Day! This celebration takes place on September 30 in honor of Saint Jerome, who translated the Bible into Latin, and who is the patron saint of translators. Little could Jerome have known, as he sat down to his arduous task, that 1,600 or so years later, machine translation would become a reality.…
View post to subscribe to site newsletter.
During this time of isolation due to the coronavirus, my family and I are especially grateful for movies, books, and our pets. Our favorite movie theater, Film Forum, has partnered with its distributors to present virtual cinema for a rental fee of $12 (half of this is shared with the non-profit cinema). A movie theater…
“In a foreign language — without interpreters — you express what you are able to say, not what you want to say.” ‒ Hans-Dietrich Genscher I saw this quotation in a tweet (thank you, Ale Checcarelli) and it got me thinking. When learning a foreign language, you need to stretch what you are able to…
