Archives for Topic: Translation Languages

Languages featured in topical deep dives, curated ideas, and inspiring conversations in We Are All Translators (WAAT.)

WAAT #63: Fathima E. V. and Nandakumar K. Discuss Various Aspects of Translator Collaboration in WAAT Session 03

Apr 14, 2023 No Comments

In the latest WAAT session, I talked with two Malayalam-to-English translators about their collaboration approaches for the 2021 JCB Literature Prize-winning novel, Delhi: A Soliloquy, by M. Mukundan.

WAAT #59: Stepping Through the Twelve Levels of Literary Translation

Feb 21, 2023 7 Comments

Here’s a potential twelve-level framework for cultivating and maintaining a personal discipline of literary translation. With a hat tip to the scholar who shared the twelve levels of friendship in Arabic on Twitter.

WAAT #58: A Literary Translation Links Roundup

Feb 14, 2023 2 Comments

A links roundup of ten recent essays and interviews exploring literary translation works from around the world and across the publishing ecosystem.

WAAT #55: Translating Motifs in Literary Works

Jan 23, 2023 6 Comments

When a word recurs as an important theme-driven motif in a story and is intentionally left untranslated, it can draw the reader’s attention and make them even more alert and attuned to its various, complex meanings. And a few interesting links at the end.

WAAT #50: WAAT Session: Nick Glastonbury on elevating translations from underrepresented languages/cultures

Nov 21, 2022 No Comments

In WAAT Session 02, Nick Glastonbury, a translator of Turkish and Kurdish literature, discusses the whys and wherefores of elevating translations from underrepresented languages/cultures and his own translation work.

WAAT #48. Reading a Translated Work While Physically in Its Setting (community thread)

Oct 31, 2022 7 Comments

Translated works that you read while you were physically in the setting of the book? Mine is The Tin Flute by Gabrielle Roy, translated from French into English by Alan Brown, and set in the historically working-class neighborhood of St. Henri in Montreal, Quebec.

WAAT #40: WAAT Session: Mithu Sanyal & Alta L. Price on Author-Translator Collaboration

Oct 07, 2022 No Comments

In WAAT Session 01, the German author Mithu Sanyal and the literary translator, Alta L. Price discuss their author-translator collaboration process for Alta’s English translation of Mithu’s novel, Identitti.

WAAT #39: On Anachronisms in Literary Translation

Sep 30, 2022 3 Comments

Every day is International Translation Day at ‘We Are All Translators’ but Happy International Translation Day to you all. Let’s consider the cases for and against literary anachronisms (and archaisms) in translation, shall we?

WAAT #38: Your favorite translated book that deserves more attention?

Sep 23, 2022 2 Comments

Please share your favorite translated work that isn’t as well-known as it should be and deserves more attention.

WAAT #36: What a Literary Translator Brings to the Text

Sep 09, 2022 1 Comment

Can reading around a text—contextualizing it and developing a relationship with it—help us translate it better?

WAAT #32: Salman Rushdie on Literary Translation

Aug 12, 2022 No Comments

Salman Rushdie believes we’re living in one of the great ages of literary translation, yet we will always need more world literature read in America, and why the Gujarati language and literature are under-represented and endangered.

WAAT #31: For Whom (or Why) Do We Translate?

Aug 05, 2022 No Comments

Every translator’s origin story is unique and personal and involves a great deal of happenstance and serendipity (as Mark Polizzotti has written.)

Jenny Bhatt is an author, a literary translator, and a book critic. Currently, she is a Ph.D. student of literature at the University of Texas at Dallas. She has taught creative writing at Writing Workshops Dallas and the PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship Program. Sign up for her free newsletters, We Are All Translators and/or Historical Fiction Craft Notes. Jenny lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, Texas.

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