Outdated Browser

For the best experience using our website, we recommend upgrading your browser to a newer version or switching to a supported browser.

More Information

Contributor

Daniel Hahn

Portrait of translator Daniel Hahn

Contributor

Daniel Hahn

United Kingdom

Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor, and translator with sixty-something books to his name. His work includes translations from Europe, Africa, and the Americas (encompassing fiction, nonfiction, children’s books, and plays), and a number of nonfiction books, including The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature. He has won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the International Dublin Literary Award, and the Blue Peter Book Award and been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, among many others.

Articles by Daniel Hahn

A Seriously Shitty Quirk of Fate

I felt uncomfortable being who I was, raised on the idea of being from a Black family.

Translated from Portuguese by Daniel Hahn

Plague Diary, March 23, 2020

By Gonçalo M. Tavares

“They say that even the smallest particles, like the virus, atoms, etc., make a sound . . .

Translated from Portuguese by Daniel Hahn

Deceptive Simplicity: International Children’s Literature

I often feel that adults forget what children’s stories are capable of.

Lua

By Ronaldo Correia de Brito

“It’s impossible for a sister recluse to sing like that. We no longer feel those emotions.”

Translated from Portuguese by Daniel Hahn

MultimediaMultilingual

The Ritual

By Fernando Iwasaki

“Every time someone goes to the USA, they die.

Translated from Spanish by Daniel Hahn

Multilingual

Around the Globe: An Introduction to International YA Writing

By Briony Everroad & Daniel Hahn

If you can get past the thick fog of casual snobbery that always seems to envelop this subject, it seems perfectly obvious that a lot of the most interesting writing happening in the English-speaking…

Some Other Zoo

By Rodrigo Rey Rosa

It was as though she knew exactly where she had to go, as though it was an agreed appointment. She raised her arm to take my hand, pulled gently—she did almost everything gently—and I followed…

Translated from Spanish by Daniel Hahn

White Sand, Black Stone

By Eduardo Halfon

The young officer was reading the pages of my passport diligently, scrupulously, as though they were the pages of a gossip magazine or a cheap novel. He held them up. He looked at them against the light.…

Translated from Spanish by Daniel Hahn

Multilingual

Four Short Tales

By Antônio Prata

PlanFind out what is the best-paid line of work. Do a cram course. Sit the university entrance exam in that field. Be top of the class. Get a job. Plug away, single-mindedly, until I have amassed twenty…

Translated from Portuguese by Daniel Hahn

Multilingual

Natanael

By Cristhiano Aguiar

IIWhen Natanael arrived, the first thing he wondered was, “Am I in the right place?” The taxi driver could not understand why my friend wanted to get out at that spot on the riverside road.…

Translated from Portuguese by Daniel Hahn

Multilingual

The Devil Lives in Lisbon

By Berta Vias Mahou

On Mondays Mother always got up at five o’clock. She would leave half an hour after getting out of bed, once she had gathered up all the breakfast crockery, and then, looking at us again with a…

Translated from Spanish by Daniel Hahn

Multilingual

Good Women and Bad Women

By Eduardo Halfon

We never discovered how they found us out. My brother insisted that Márgara had stumbled across them accidentally while she was putting clean sheets on the bed, and that she had squealed on us.…

Translated from Spanish by Daniel Hahn

Multilingual

Death Count

In the small hours of March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese ended her shift at the bar as usual, took her car, and parked a few yards from the apartment complex where she lived, in Kew Gardens, Queens.…

Translated from Spanish by Daniel Hahn

Multilingual

The Politics of Mourning

By Rafael Lemus

“Acapulco, September 18 [2010]. Two unidentified men, decapitated in the town of Coyuca de Catalán. Heads thrown into a soft-drink bottling plant from two moving vehicles. One has its eyes…

Translated from Spanish by Daniel Hahn

Multilingual

Never Any End to Hemingway

By Eduardo Halfon

Well here we are, he wrote to Anderson, as he lay there, smoking. He liked typing letters from his bed with the black Corona on his lap. And we sit outside the Dome Café, opposite the Rotonde that’s…

Translated from Spanish by Daniel Hahn

On Reviewing Translations: Daniel Hahn

I’m a translator, whose translations get reviewed regularly in the mainstream press; I’m also a reviewer who reviews translations regularly in the mainstream press. In probably more or less…

A Practical Guide to Levitation

By José Eduardo Agualusa

I do not like parties. The idle chat, the smoke, the fatuous talk of drunks, I find them all tiresome. Plastic plates annoy me even more. And plastic cutlery. And plastic cups. I'm served roasted…

Translated from Portuguese by Daniel Hahn

The Best Seller

By Germano Almeida

He described himself down the phone as a young writer who was keen to meet with a representative of Ilhéu Publishing, and in the absence of anyone else at that moment I agreed to receive him. Shortly…

Translated from Portuguese by Daniel Hahn

A Dialogue on Translating Germano Almeida

By Daniel Hahn & Clifford E. Landers

Editors' Note: This month we present the first in a series of dialogues: two translators produce versions of the same text, then discuss their choices and approaches. Here Daniel Hahn and Clifford…

Translated from Portuguese

[class^="wpforms-"]

[class^="wpforms-"]