Translation - Columbia University Press Blog

April 26, 2016

The Complexity and Individuality of Contemporary Chinese Experiences and Perspectives

Read “The Apprentice,” excerpted from Zhu Wen’s THE MATCHMAKER, THE APPRENTICE, AND THE FOOTBALL FAN, as well as an interview with Julia Lovell, the book’s translator.

March 24, 2016

Thursday Fiction Corner: The Blue Wolf by Inoue Yasushi, translated by Joshua Fogel

For this week’s Thursday Fiction Corner, Russian Library editor Christine Dunbar muses on the (unfair) expectations readers put on translations after having read THE BLUE WOLF, by Inoue Yasushi, translated by Joshua Fogel.

March 3, 2016

Thursday Fiction Corner: Trees Without Wind by Li Rui, translated by John Balcom

For this week’s Thursday Fiction Corner, Russian Library editor Christine Dunbar muses on sound, names, and the ethical stakes of translation after having read TREES WITHOUT WIND, by Li Rui, translated by John Balcom.

February 18, 2016

Thursday Fiction Corner: Ch’oe Yun’s There a Petal Silently Falls

Russian Library editor Christine Dunbar asks how much, if any, contextualizing information should be provided to the reader of a translation.

February 11, 2016

Thursday Fiction Corner: Li Ang and her “Lost Garden”

Watch an panel featuring Li Ang, author of THE LOST GARDEN, as well as her translators, Sylvia Li-chun Lin and Howard Goldblatt, and editor, Jennifer Crewe.

August 27, 2015

WITMonth 2015: Author/Translator/Author

In honor of August as Women in Translation Month (#WITMonth), we are featuring two very different posts by translators Howard Goldblatt and Esther Allen on women in translation. Goldblatt’s piece explains the meticulous translation and writing process he undertook to complete Chinese novelist Xiao Hong’s novel Ma Bo-le.

August 26, 2015

WITMonth 2015: Lost In Translation

In honor of August as Women in Translation Month (#WITMonth), we are featuring two very different posts by translators Howard Goldblatt and Esther Allen on women in translation. In Allen’s post, she profiles Eleanor Marx, daughter of Karl Marx and first translator of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary into English.

July 31, 2015

Translation's Futures and the Work of Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries — Rebecca Walkowitz

Rebecca Walkowitz discusses the work of web artist Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries.

July 30, 2015

Rebecca Walkowitz on Writing in Translation

In this video, Rebecca Walkowitz, author of “Born Translated,” discusses writing in translation.

July 28, 2015

Interview with Rebecca Walkowitz, author of Born Translated

“For a long time, we’ve assumed that all books begin in one language, often called a ‘native language,’ and then travel out to other languages. This is how we’ve expected ‘world literature’ to work. But today, many books begin in...

May 14, 2015

On the making of trout amandine and cauliflower gratin, an excerpt from "The Author and Me"

Read an excerpt from 2015 Best Translated Book Award in Fiction finalist THE AUTHOR AND ME, written by Éric Chevillard and translated by Jordan Stump.

May 8, 2015

Friday Fiction Corner: Éric Chevillard, the Best Translated Book Awards, and Cauliflower

Congratulations to Éric Chevillard, Jordan Stump, and the team at Dalkey Archive Press! Chevillard’s THE AUTHOR AND ME has been named as a finalist for the 2015 Best Translated Book Award in Fiction!