Category: Literary Translation

Fiction Writing, Films, Literary Translation, Writing

New Words #16: Literary AND Commercial?!

lnlanguage

A couple of years ago, at an online event about breaking into literary translation, the Q&A went off the rails for a reason I found wildly amusing. An attendee asked about “finding the right balance between literary and commercial translation.” The panelists then spoke about “finding the right balance between literary and commercial translation.” But the question and the answer did not match up.

Here’s what happened. . . . Read the rest of this post (for free! nothing is paywalled!) over on Substack.

Articles, Books, Language Acquisition, Literary Translation, Spanish, Translation

New Words #15: It’s a Dude Group!

lnlanguage

Years ago, while teaching Spanish to beginners, I overheard the following exchange between two seventh-grade boys.

A. I think I’m supposed to write “Somos altos,” but it doesn’t seem right. I have four sisters. Isn’t it better to write “Somos altas,” since there are more girls than boys in the family?

B. Dude, if there’s even one dude in the group, that’s it, it’s a dude group.

I have had the phrase dude group stuck in my head ever since. As a translator, I am regularly faced with a quandary: How can I communicate in English that a French or Spanish text is referring to a dude group?

Keep reading this post on Substack. (Don’t worry—nothing is behind a paywall!)

Literary Translation, Recommendations, Translation, TV series, Writing

New Words #14: Good Advice

lnlanguage

If you’re engaged in some kind of creative pursuit, it’s almost certain that you’re going to get frustrated at some point and conclude that you’ve been approaching it “the wrong way.” The good news is that there’s plenty of advice out there. The bad news is that there’s so much advice out there—just, like, way, way too much—and it’s contradictory and confusing, and a lot of that advice isn’t going to apply to you, even if it’s what somebody else swears by.

I started thinking about this topic after witnessing an online tiff about whether or not rough drafts produced in a generative writing workshop must always have a title. (Yes, the internet is a treasure trove of low-stakes controversy.)

Keep reading this post on Substack. (Don’t worry—nothing is behind a paywall!)

Articles, Books, Events, French, Language Acquisition, Literary Translation, Recommendations, Spanish, Translation

New Words #11: Greetings, Dear Lady!

lnlanguage

It’s happening again. I’m getting LinkedIn messages from total strangers that open with phrases like “Hey, dear Nagle!” and “Greetings, dear lady!”

These greetings are jarring, especially in the context of a cold business contact, but it’s easy enough to imagine how they developed. If you’ve been taught that it is polite to use dear when opening a letter in English but also that Dear Ms. Nagle is too formal for online messages, you might attempt to strike a happy medium by doing a mash-up of formal and informal terms. And if it’s acceptable to address a crowd as “ladies and gentlemen,” then it must be polite to address an individual woman as “lady,” right? Well, not exactly.

Continue reading this post on Substack. (Don’t worry—nothing is behind a paywall!)

Links, Literary Translation, Translation

New Words #10: Translating Formal Poetry

lnlanguage

I used to say I would never translate poetry—especially not formal poetry. Conveying meaning and overcoming gaps in cultural knowledge is tricky enough, so adding rhyme and meter into the mix just struck me as unreasonable.

That changed about two years ago when I read Íntimas, the 1913 novel by Adela Zamudio, a writer, educator, and activist who is remembered as the foremost figure in Bolivia’s feminist movement. I loved the novel’s morally complex protagonists and the author’s use of acerbic wit to offset the sentimentality of the plot, and since it has never been published in English, I decided to translate a sample to see if I could get a publisher interested.

Continue reading this post on Substack. (Don’t worry—nothing is behind a paywall!)