What was it your mother always said? Be careful what you wish for because you might just get it? For a gaggle of translators stuck at an ill-fated convention in Pablo De Santis’ La traducción, these cautionary words ring ominously true. The novel, which was a finalist for the Planeta prize in 1997, is what … More Babel: Before and After
… or, at least, how the writers we already know and love do what they do. Last week, La Nación published a series of interviews with prominent Argentinian writers about their creative process. What’s interesting about the piece is that it does not just address the intangible (and largely indescribable) epiphanies we associate with creativity, … More In the News: How to Write
A meandering review of Ilan Stavan’s Lengua Fresca. The Grand Canyon State recently stepped into the spotlight of public opinion, passing a controversial immigration law that authorizes law enforcement agents to stop any ‘suspicious person’ at any time and demand to see documentation of their legal status in the US. Reactions to the legislation have … More Between Arizona and a Hard Place
After glancing at it from time to time as it gathered dust on my desk, I finally got around to reading Fernando Báez’s El traductor de Cambridge (Lengua de Trapo, 2005). The book hasn’t been translated into English and – as much as the idea of a sadistically misanthropic translator in the employ of one … More some things are better left unsaid
The stars must have been aligned last week when I wrote about the literary conference in Ushuaia; that evening I happened across Carlos Sorín’s “Historias mínimas” (2002, translated as “Intimate Stories”), a beautiful, meditative work that also takes place in the southern reaches of Argentina. In the work, Patagonia serves as more than an emblem … More Lives in Miniature
Open Letter Books just released The Private Lives of Trees, a new novel by Alejandro Zambra, author of the promising work Bonsai – nominated for the Best Translated Book Award of 2008, and reviewed here a few months ago. The Private Lives of Trees was translated by Megan McDowell. According to the publisher, The Private … More …and the only prescription is more Zambra.
The PEN American Center just announced the recipients of its 2010 Translation Fund grants. The projects selected include plays, short fiction and poetry, and represent languages ranging from Urdu, Turkish and Greek to German and Yorùbá. Sadly, there isn’t a single translation from Spanish on the list – but PEN has a solid history of … More PEN Translation Fund
Heather Cleary 