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translation

  • The Great Exploitation Proliferation Chapter 9

    October 10, 2009

    • The Great Exploitation Proliferation Chapter 9My story is not for exploitation.  I am who I am.  I existed and still exist with an authentic piece of perception.  No man can take away my personal perspective and no person can tell my story like I can.  It is my choice to place my life experiences on record and to give my assessment on the lifestyles I'm familiar with. I gave you my religious ...
  • Next stop, Romania!

    October 1, 2009

    • Just found out last week that the Polish translation rights to Going Nowhere Faster were sold, which sounds like a dumb joke but isn't. I'm ecstatic that the teens of Krakow may soon be reading a Polish version of GNF and can't wait to see what the new title is going to be idiomatically.
  • Howard Goldblatt -- translator (from Mandarin) par excellence

    August 25, 2009

  • Man and his Journeys

    July 26, 2009

    • This poem was translated from O homem; as viagens,  by Carlos Drummond de Andrade.     Man, little Earth animal, gets bored on Earth a place of misery and little fun , He builds a rocket, a capsule, a module takes off to the Moon cautiously lands on the Moon steps on the Moon sticks his flag on the Moon experiences the Moon colonizes the Moon civilizes the Moon humanizes the ...
  • Being Dispensable

    July 6, 2009

    •   It's been quite some time since I've read a novel that has kept me so captivated that I talk to anyone willing to listen to me about the book's premise. And what a premise! The Unit, a novel by Ninni Holmqvist and translated by Marlaine Delargy, takes place in the very near future and is written so believably that its very idea is disturbing. I would not be surprised that a government would ...
  • Pablo Neruda's "Ode to the woman in her garden"

    May 22, 2009

    • Among the many, many unusual kinds of poems that Pablo Neruda wrote, his Elemental Odes are justifiably celebrated. He produced an abundance of them, odes to just about everything including the most domestic of everyday articles. . . innumerable objects, pieces of homey flotsam, the stuff of every day life and his constantly wandering thoughts about how they could be shown in verse. One that I ...
  • O Henrik

    May 21, 2009

    • I have decided to translate the complete works of Henrik Ibsen. Fortunately he was a playwright, so there is very little actual work. Just a lot of dialogue. Those Norwegian character names are tricky though. What is the english word for Torvald?
  • Afterthought

    May 19, 2009

    • "...thinking, for women, cannot be shut off from carnal sensoriality:  the metaphysical body/soul dichotomy is, in these women, unbearable; they describe thought as physical happiness, eros for them is not dissociable from agape and vice versa." says Julia Kristeva. I come across this today as I correct the page proofs of This Incredible Need to Believe, which I translated last year ...
  • Translation

    May 19, 2009

    • It's a strange thing about the way I translate.  Right now I'm working on two things, texts, that is:  a new Cixous book and a poem by Yves Bonnefoy.  I'm sure some people do a rigorous mental analysis of the texts they translate before they ever set pen to paper; ie, fingers to keys.  For me it's a physical process:  it's as if I were making dough.  I can't read without kneading the words. ...
  • Writing in tongues

    May 5, 2009

    • This is not my first experience with seeing my work in translation, but I'm struck by how different the story seems in someone else's hands.  The title is different, the cover of course is different--I can't wait to read that first page, and see how I sound in another tongue!This is Airs Beneath the Moon in German:  literally translated, this title is The Cloud Rider--isn't that magnificent?  ...