Award-winning translator Ellen Elias-Bursac recently had the chance to talk with Serbian writer and translator David Albahari about Globetrotter, her latest translation of one of Albahari’s novels. Ellen Elias-Bursac: How did you come up with the idea for the trilogy of Snow Man, Bait, and Globetrotter? Did you design the three
We had the chance to sit down with prolific translator Marian Schwartz to talk about her latest translation of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. She touches on the joys and challenges of Tolstoy as well as his lesser-known witty side. Yale University Press: Anna Karenina is a seminal work in literature. How
We had the privilege of sitting down to talk with Mark Polizzotti, who, among other things, has recently translated a trio of novellas from Nobel Prize–winner Patrick Modiano, Suspended Sentences, which publishes today. In our conversation, we talk about Modiano, the Nobel Prize, the art of translation, and the joy of
Mark Polizzotti has translated more than forty books from French, including the newly released Suspended Sentences by this year’s Nobel laureate in literature, Patrick Modiano. Mark wrote a lovely commentary on translating Modiano for the Yale Books Unbound blog. Mark is also the publisher and editor in chief at The Metropolitan Museum of
Mark Polizzotti— At first blush, the qualities suggested by Patrick Modiano’s fictions do not shout “Nobel.” Unlike Sartre (the laureate malgre lui), with his grand philosophical pronouncements, or France’s previous honoree, the famously peripatetic J. M. G. Le Clezio, Modiano tends to keep to himself, in narratives that are often
In the previous installments (part one, part two) of Danuta Borchardt‘s reflections on translating Trans-Atlantyk, she articulated why the variant of Polish Witold Gombrowicz used in the novel was so difficult to render in English. After considerable research and experimentation, she hit upon an approach that enabled her to translate the archaisms and idiosyncrasies
Shortly before his death in 1837, Giacomo Leopardi, a prolific Italian writer, translator, and thinker, began to organize a small, thematic collection of his writings in an attempt to give structure to his philosophical musings. This collection, culled from his 4,500-page diary, Zibaldone, provides a fascinating introduction to the arguments
In last week’s post, available here, Danuta Borchardt explained some of the immediate challenges she faced in translating Trans-Atlantyk, a novel by the celebrated Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz. The farcical adventures of a penniless young writer stranded in Argentina are narrated in the style of the gawęda, a tale told by the fireside. The
Many consider Polish novelist Witold Gombrowicz one of the greatest writers of the past hundred years and Danuta Borchardt is undoubtedly one of his finest translators. Her rendering of Ferdydurke won the 2001 National Translation Award given by the American Literary Translators Association, and her recent edition of Trans-Atlantyk has garnered praise as
We are pleased to release a new interview with Rodrigo Rey Rosa, author of Severina and The African Shore, both available to the English speaking world through Yale University Press’s Margellos World Republic of Letters series. In the interview, Rey Rosa talks about his writing and about the intricacies of