Category Archives: Literary translation
Dilemmas translators face with Romance languages, where every adjective betrays more information than in English
by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor and translator, as well as founder, in 2017, of the TA First Translation Prize, awarded annually for a debut literary translation and shared equally between writer and translator. In a recent entry for his Translation Diary series, Hahn raises …
Read MoreChildren’s classics in translation can contribute to nurturing threatened languages and bringing dormant ones back to life
by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village A growing movement of language activists, cultural stakeholders, and scholars across the world is seeking new ways to preserve endangered languages and bring dormant ones back to life, through everything from digital dictionaries and apps, to cultural events such as language arts festivals and films …
Read MoreTokarczuk’s translated works have opened up life changing opportunities for her and helped boost Polish literature
by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Jennifer Croft is best known for being one of the English translators of Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk. It is thanks to Croft’s English translation of the novel Flights that Tokarczuk made her international breakthrough, first with the International Man Booker Prize, in 2018 (which Croft …
Read MoreExophonic writing offers authors the chance “to cloak themselves in a different language, and thereby culture”
by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Exophony is the practice of writing in a language that is not one’s own. Some exophonic authors are bilingual or multilingual from their childhood years while others write in an acquired language. Although the phenomenon is not new the term was coined in 2007. It …
Read MoreAfter centuries of “colonized” English translations of the Bhagavad Gita a Canadian scholar restores it to its original meaning
by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Hindu scholar and linguist Jeffrey Armstrong has spent the past 10 years translating and “decolonizing” the Bhagavad Gita, one of India’s most famous epic poems, written 5.000 (some say 7.000) years ago. His work was published this month with the title The Bhagavad Gita Comes …
Read MoreHow far should we modernise language in literary translation? The case of the epic poem Beowulf
by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Emily Wilson’s 2017 English translation of The Odyssey raised quite a stir for its its audacious use of contemporary language and her gender neutral approach (see our blog article on this topic) but the new English version of the epic poem Beowulf takes modernisation of …
“How far should we modernise language in literary translation? The case of the epic poem Beowulf”
Read MoreBritish scholar Emily Wilson’s fresh and contemporary translations of the Greek classics discussed at a recent Yale University event
by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village In Emily Wilson’s translations of the classics the Greek goddess Demeter has “cornrows in her hair”, Achilles is described as a “superhero”, and Odysseus, when disguised as an old, homeless man, carries a “tote bag”…(1) Wilson’s innovative approach to the translation of Homer’s Odyssey won …
Read MoreRussian literary classics set in 2020: updates to Russia’s greatest books
by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Fiona Bell is a literary translator and scholar of Russian literature, based in Oxford. She won a highly competitive fellowship from the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) in 2018, and her translation of Natalia Meshchaninova’s Stories received a 2020 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant. If you …
“Russian literary classics set in 2020: updates to Russia’s greatest books”
Read More“Planet Word”, an interactive museum dedicated to language, opening up soon in Washington DC
by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village “Planet Word”, opening up in Washington DC on October 22, 2020, will be an interactive center dedicated to language arts. Its mission is to inspire a love of words and language and the project is grounded in the belief that language and literacy are the …
““Planet Word”, an interactive museum dedicated to language, opening up soon in Washington DC”
Read MoreNew English version of Camus’ “The Plague” during Covid-19: how historical context can affect translation
by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Publishers around the world are reporting booming sales of “The Plague” (La Peste), an allegorical tale set in a town at the mercy of an epidemic, written by French Nobel prize writer Albert Camus in 1947. Penguin is rushing through a reprint of its English translation …
Read MoreTranslating “The name of the Rose”, an example of a linguistic quality assurance process applied to literature
by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village In 1983 Italian academic, historian, semiologist, journalist and author Umberto Eco published his first novel, Il nome della rosa (The name of the rose). The book became a literary event almost overnight and was on the best-seller list practically everywhere for months. It was translated …
Read More“Literary lockdown”: how the translation of a novel by a best selling author made for a thriller film plot
by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village The French film Les traducteurs (The Translators) premiered last year in November at the French Film Festival in Prague. The plot follows a group of nine talented polyglots charged with translating the third installment of a fictitious Daedalus trilogy, a series of novels that, with …
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