Everyone Needs an Editor
Before I get into the meat of this post—which is basically just a bunch of quotes and a handful of observations—I wanted to check back in on something from an earlier essay. Back in January, I wrote about Leïla Slimani’s The Perfect Nanny and basically assumed that it would be a best-seller. (There was also a lot of ...
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Less Than Deadly Serious
Every spring, I teach a class on “World Literature & Translation” in which we read ~10 new translations, talk to as many of the translators as possible, and then the students have to choose one of the books to win their imaginary “Best Translated Book Award.” It’s a great exercise—trying to explain why they ...
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Noble Expectations
When I first decided to undertake this project of writing about one 2018 translation a week, I knew that there would come a week in which I didn’t finish the book that I had planned to write about. This might be due to time constraints, or simply because I didn’t feel like finishing the book in question. Well, it took ...
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Vote Now for the 2018 Albertine Prize!
Consider this your friendly, neighborhood reminder to head on over to the Albertine Prize page to vote for your favorite French book in translation from their shortlist! Last year’s inaugural Albertine Prize was won by Antoine Volodine and J. T. Mahany for Volodine’s Bardo or Not Bardo, published by Open ...
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Interview with Allison M. Charette about "Beyond the Rice Fields" by Naivo
This semester, in my World Literature & Translation class, we’re reading twelve translations from 2017-18 and talking with almost all the translators, including Allison M. Charette, who is responsible for the publication in English of Naivo’s Beyond the Rice Fields. Over the past few weeks, we conducted this ...
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An Imaginary Sabermetrics for Publishing
Empty Set by Verónica Gerber Bicecci, translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney (Coffee House) Although five books is most definitely a small sample size of throwaway proportions, out of the books that I’ve written about for this weekly “column,” Empty Set by Verónica Gerber Bicecci and ...
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Interview with Madame Nielsen
The following is an excerpt from an interview that was conducted by David Damrosch and Delia Ungureanu—both of Harvard University—with Madame Nielsen in Copenhagen this past July. If you would like to see the entire piece, email me at chad.post [at] rochester.edu David Damrosch: Across your career, your several ...
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