translations

With so many good books being published every month, some literary titles worth exploring can get lost in the stacks. Page One offers the first lines of a dozen recently released books, including Maylis de Kerangal’s latest novel, The Heart, translated from the French by Sam Taylor, and A. Igoni Barrett’s debut novel, Blackass, as the starting point for a closer look at these new and noteworthy titles.

With so many good books being published every month, some literary titles worth exploring can get lost in the stacks. Page One offers the first lines of a dozen recently released books, including Tig Notaro’s memoir, I’m Just a Person, and Mangalesh Dabral’s sixth poetry collection, This Number Does Not Exist, translated from the Hindi by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra.

Five years ago, as poets and readers attended the annual StAnza poetry festival, the war began in Iraq. This year’s festival, held from March 12 to March 16, acknowledged that anniversary explicitly with its two themes, “Poetry & Conflict” and “Sea of Tongues.”

In the last decade programs in Translation Studies, designed to train students in the theory and practice of literary translation, have flourished in American and European universities. Still, translators remain concerned about the future of their profession, fearing it will be undermined by a number of serious threats: English as a global language, computer translation, and the reluctance of publishers, at least in the English-speaking world, to take on the costs of publishing translations.

A young translator recalls attending the 2014 American Literary Translators Association conference, and her discovery of how deeply personal the craft of translation can be.