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Essays & Interviews on Translation

A selection of writing about the art of translation

Tower of Babel by Anton Joseph von Prenne

Public domain image of Anton Joseph von Prenner's Tower of Babel, courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Throughout Words Without Borders‘ twenty-plus-year history, the magazine has published many interviews and essays on the subject of translation itself. We’ve selected some of our favorite pieces from the archive on the task of the translator, racial equity and inclusion in translation, and careers in literary translation.

A silhouette of a man standing in front of a gray wall

Photo by Serkan Yildiz on Unsplash

The Errant Translator: Field Notes

By Sawako Nakayasu

Errant translation may take the form of performance, at any time or place. Such translations are difficult to see, publish, or police.

Closeup of a desk globe in a library

Photo by Sandro Gonzalez on Unsplash

In Praise of the Invisible

By Juan Gabriel Vásquez

More than once I have reworked a sentence with its translators in mind: to make it better or clearer, not lazy or self-indulgent: making sure it is worthy of their attention and their talent.

Translated from Spanish by Anne McLean

Multilingual

Translation and Identity

A Swiss Army knife

Photo by Denise Jans on Unsplash

Translating to and from a Native Language

By Alexei Bayer

In this essay, Alexei Bayer writes about his first and second languages, translating into English, and being translated into his native Russian.

The Milky Way is pictured above Earth's atmospheric glow blanketing Earth's horizon

Photo by NASA, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Czech Enough

By Jaroslav Kalfař

Home is an ever-changing aspiration, not a truth or guarantee.

Privilege, Race, and Translation

By Corine Tachtiris

Scholar and translator Corine Tachtiris reflects on the inherent privilege of translating while White in this essay.And if there are few Black translators, there are few representatives of the possibility…

How Can We Better Publish Black Writers in Translation?

By Words Without Borders

This month, WWB took a look back at some of the important writing on race and racism to be found in the magazine's archives.

Topics in Translation

Translating (in) Darkness

By Lara Vergnaud

How do we translate trauma? In this essay, Lara Vergnaud reflects on her experience translating scenes of graphic violence and abuse, and shares strategies that may be useful to other translators.I…

A river winds through the hilly green countryside in northern Sweden

Photo by Fredrik Posse on Unsplash

The Same River Twice: Notes on Reading, Time, and Translation

By Saskia Vogel

I have been opening this book since 2018 and over the years, I have become many different readers.

The opening text of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

L. Wittgenstein, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Translating Philosophy: The Case of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus

By Damion Searls

The substance of Wittgenstein’s theories in the Tractatus is intimately tied to a vision of language that, among other problems, tends to produce bad translations.

Queerying Translation

By B. J. Woodstein

There are feminist or postcolonial translation strategies so why not queer ones, too?

The Making of Originals: The Translator as Editor (Part 2)

By Karen Emmerich

Read the first part of this essay here. My answer to this question—an emphatic yes—is undoubtedly colored by my own experiences translating unstable originals. The first book-length translation…

The Making of Originals: The Translator as Editor (Part 1)

By Karen Emmerich

As a translator and scholar of modern Greek literature, and now as a professor of comparative literature, I am what André Lefevere would call (not without some degree of irony) a “professional…

Field Notes: Careers in Translation

The Emerging Literary Translator Valley of Death

Anton Hur, translator of Kyung-Sook Shin’s The Court Dancer and Kang Kyeong-ae’s The Underground Village, offers insights into the challenges facing literary translators and tips for…

Translating Performance

The Strangeness of the Theater Translator

By William Gregory

Theater translation seems to have struggled to establish itself as a discipline, not least because it has no single field in which to sit exclusively.

Edith Piaf (left) and David Bowie (right) at the microphone

Édith Piaf and David Bowie, Wikimedia Commons.

From the Translator: The Song Remains the Same?

By Esther Allen

Images: David Bowie, 1974; Silvia Pérez Cruz, 2008; Édith Piaf, 1962 (Wikimedia Commons). Esther Allen’s translation of Erick J. Mota’s “The Bleeding Hands of Castaways” appears…