In translation

‘My translations will never be perfect. I will always make mistakes, pick the wrong word, arrange a sentence poorly. I am not saying this to be modest.’

Renowned in her lifetime for her emotionally intense and formally controlled modernist poetry, the sudden death of Iranian poet Forugh…

‘It’s amazing how far your poems may reach even in a country with censorship.’ An interview with celebrated translator of Chinese literature, Bonnie S. McDougall.

‘The plastics factory is hot with primordial breaths, its softness shaping an enormous abyss.’

My understanding of iron began in a country hospital. Country is tender, pliable, like earth. Iron often cuts through country with its hardness and coldness, and country suffers pain.’

‘I had only been on Manus Island for a few hours when I rushed over to the central bus stop in Lorengau town. We met in person there for the first time.’

‘Although the year in which the novel is set is not specified, it is tempting to view the work’s thematization of dreams in the context of the popular political slogan, the Chinese Dream.’

‘In this world of literary agents and commercial prizes that many times just replicate names and books that sell all right, being translated is pretty much a matter of luck: the luck of being successful or the luck of finding almost by chance the right reader in another language.’ J.M. Coetzee in conversation with Argentine writers and translators Mariana Dimópulos and Ariel Magnus.

For writers who choose to write (or continue to write) in their first language after migration language takes on new meanings and new functions.

Unvarnished ‘truth’ in literature is of course only relative to the position of the speaker and often used as a bludgeoning tool.