Tag: Literature in Translation
Brent Hayes Edwards and Jean-Baptiste Naudy on Claude McKay
“A Short, Sharp Punch to the Face”: Alia Trabucco Zerán and Sophie Hughes Talk Translation
Eager or Reluctant? A Translator’s Dilemma
The translator can’t go where the writer hasn’t gone. But it feels good to bound eagerly toward a text’s limits.
Strange Beasts of Translation: Yan Ge and Jeremy Tiang in Conversation
Light and Sound: Boubacar Boris Diop with Sarah Quesada
“I was more impressed by what I heard from my mother than by what I read in the library.”
B-Sides: Juan José Saer’s “The Investigation”
How to catch a killer who only exists in a parallel world?
On Our Nightstands: July 2022
A behind-the-scenes look at what Public Books editors and staff have been reading this month.
This Review Should Not Exist
Latin American authors must defer to “Latin America”—as imagined by centers of literary power—to be translated, to sell, to make money.
Miguel de Unamuno in Spain’s Memory Battle
As fascist armies conquered much of Spain, a writer publicly and famously denounced high-ranking officers right to their faces. Or did he?
Subaquatic Homesick Blues
A Taiwanese scifi novel—set under the sea, after the surface becomes unlivable—reveals the remarkable burst of cultural freedom in 1990s Taiwan.
When the Vibe Is Off
Which matters more, intent or interpretation? What if a juxtaposition of images in literature or art is just that—a chance encounter?
“Between the Experiment and the Essence”: Emma Ramadan Talks Translation
“For those of us who can feel unsettled in terms of identity, translation can feel like home.”
A Dad Cartoonist Travels into Factory Life
The artist comes as a class outsider to the factory, marveling at the complexity of its machinery and the dexterity and dangers of manual labor.
The Borderland between Language and Genre
Within western poetry, women writers of color—and their lived experiences—are not nearly as recognized nor represented as their white peers.
Turkish Literature at Sea
The global literary market is a body of books in translation that, despite being from very disparate contexts, sound a lot like each other. Why?
The “I” in Murakami
Discussing Murakami within the Japanese literary tradition is in itself rare. He is, by his own admission, less well-loved in Japan than abroad.
On Our Nightstands: September 2021
A behind-the-scenes look at what Public Books editors and staff have been reading this month.
How to Read like a Translator
To work as a translator is to encounter a text with an active desire in mind, a desire that both constitutes and modifies the way that text is experienced.
Four Ways to Ruin Dante—and One to Save Him
Why would Dante need help? Because if the poet’s only readers are Dante scholars, then we’ll all lose out. Dante deserves better, and so do we.