An extract from ‘A Fig Adrift’ (1997) By Ju Translated from the Burmese by Thett Su San This is how I have been starting my days lately: close the door of my studio flat and stare at it all day. Outside the door are human feet going up and down the staircase. Feet in high-heeled […]
Literary Translation
He Who Hears the Dreams (extract)
An extract from ‘He Who Hears the Dreams’ (2019) by Selim Özdogan translated from the German by Lina Briks Keeping distance from people. I thought it would help. It did help, it had helped for years. And now…I thought she was lying. What kind of story was that? You wouldn’t have believed it either. […]
Foreword & Introduction to the MA in Literary Translation Anthology
Foreword by Cecilia Rossi Displacements What is the relationship between translation and place? Perhaps the most widely quoted definition of translation, especially when considering its etymology, is the one that implies a change of place, a movement across from one place to another, a carrying across of something from one point to another. But we […]
BCLT Translators in Residence: What Do We Translate?
What Do We Translate? William Gregory Last week, I was invited by AAT, the Spanish playwrights’ association, to join their translator-writer ‘speed-dating’ event. Many of the playwrights asked me what I was looking for. In other words, ‘what do I translate?’ Where to begin? First: what appeals to me, what speaks to me. But why […]
BCLT Translators-in-residence: What is a literary translator?
Inaugural BCLT translators-in-residence William Gregory and Olivia Hellewell will be writing regular blog posts over the coming months covering topics discussed with BCLT’s Cecilia Rossi. William Gregory What is a literary Translator? Am I one? When I wrote this article for Words without Borders in 2016, I wasn’t so sure. Although I had been translating […]
Ticking All the Boxes
(An Extract from My BCLT 30th Anniversary Edition) Early in 2012 I was trying to figure out what I actually wanted to do with my life. I’d ended up having a so-called ‘portfolio career’ as an actor and radio journalist, with some journalistic translation and copy editing on the side. Following a period of debilitating illness, this […]
