Items18The creator’s order
  1. 1Nineteen ways of looking at Wang Wei (1987)Nineteen ways of looking at Wang Wei (1987) 6.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 1987A four-line Chinese poem about a mountain, voices, and light on moss becomes a shelf of different poems in translation. Read two versions side by side and watch what happens when one translator puts an observer into the scene and another lets the scene stand on its own. It’s a short book you can…0
  2. 2This little art (2017)This little art (2017)Published Jan 1, 2017In The Magic Mountain, a woman asks in French to be addressed in German. In the version Briggs is reading, the man answers in English. That little collision sets up a generous essay, drawing on her own work translating Roland Barthes, about what English readers agree to imagine when characters…0
  3. 3Is That a Fish in Your Ear? (2011)Is That a Fish in Your Ear? (2011)Published Jan 1, 2011Bellos describes what happened when Douglas Hofstadter asked people to translate the same short French poem by Clément Marot. The versions differed even when they plainly belonged to the same poem. Start here for an accessible tour that goes from verse to jokes and the choices interpreters make…0
  4. 4The Philosophy of TranslationThe Philosophy of TranslationWhat should happen to the French in a Russian novel when the rest becomes English? Searls works through the effects of keeping it, adding a note, or translating the dialogue and marking the language in the narration. He gives you a concrete way to think about who notices a change of language and…0
  5. 5Why translation matters (2010)Why translation matters (2010)Published Jan 1, 2010Grossman listens for the author’s voice, then tries to speak the piece in a new language. In poetry she does part of that work aloud, moving from Spanish into English and listening for the rhythms that give the language its force. Pick this if you want a method you can try the next time a sentence…0
  6. 6Translating Myself and Others (2022)Translating Myself and Others (2022)Published Jan 1, 2022Lahiri writes in English and Italian, and takes on the peculiar task of translating her own work alongside the work of other writers. She draws on Echo and Narcissus to think about what belongs to the voice doing the repeating. Read her for the change in judgment that comes when a translator also…0
  7. 7Translation as transhumance (2017)Translation as transhumance (2017) 8.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 2017In one episode, the artist Diem Phung Thi chants Vietnamese poetry for Gansel, who hears meaning in the rise and fall of syllables. The episode makes it easier to see what a translator can learn from a voice in a room. Ros Schwartz’s English translation of Gansel’s French memoir gives you another…0
  8. 8Fifty Sounds (2021)Fifty Sounds (2021) 8.0/10 on Open LibraryPublished Jan 1, 2021Barton organizes this memoir around Japanese words whose sounds suggest sensations, movements, and states of mind. Her English descriptions make room for the circumstances in which she heard them. It’s a good choice when you want to see what an explanation can carry that a tidy dictionary…0
  9. 9In TranslationIn TranslationBegin with Haruki Murakami’s essay on translating The Great Gatsby into Japanese, then turn to Jason Grunebaum’s essay on choosing an English for Hindi. This collection lets you compare practitioners’ judgments about how a familiar book should sound in a new setting, with examples that also reach…0
  10. 10Translation (2016)Translation (2016)Published Jan 1, 2016Reynolds puts the act of turning technical language into everyday speech next to the act of crossing between languages. Both force a choice about what the reader needs explained and what a specialist term can still do. This compact introduction is a good place to begin if you want examples before a…0