Category: translation

• Tyranny of the Text

  Dec 29

  WritingThe irony is that in the year that I’ve written the most, I’ve blogged the least. You would think that writing is writing, and that one kind of writing would… more ›

• In the Trees

  Sep 16

  Here’s a photo of me with my head literally in the trees. The clouds would’ve been too easy, too cliched. I don’t know how writers do it. No, not writing.… more ›

• Oblivion Oblivion Oblivion

  Jul 23

  This spring I read the collection of short stories entitled The Cannibal Night by Mexican author Luis Jorge Boone, expertly translated by George Henson. These stories reminded me about what… more ›

• #Cities

  Jul 16

  When I was an undergraduate in the late 1980s, I wrote a series of extremely short narratives that I called “shorter stories.” Now it seems everyone, including Lydia Davis, is… more ›

• Early-Bird Gothic

  Mar 28

  wczesno-ptasi gotykuWho dare writes such a magical phrase?!?! And it confounds me why those other translators have rendered this line into barely suitable English: “early ornithogothic.” What a disservice to… more ›

• Translation’s Haunt (The Rolle Excursus), Part II

  Jun 28

  When we examine Rolle’s practice in the Name of Jesus cult through the lens of medieval Christograms, we arrive at a truly demanding juncture of translation, (non-subjectivist) ethics, and the… more ›

• Translation’s Haunt (The Rolle Excursus), Part I

  Jun 27

  If we resort to merely philological evidence, we can readily see that translationhas always meant more than the narrowly defined project of transferring meaning from one language into another.  The… more ›

• Four in the Morning

  Feb 1

  Wisława Szymborska (July 2, 1923 – February 1, 2012). Rest in peace. more ›

• The Ruination and Salvation of Life/Writing, Part I

  Jul 9

  The myth of the origin of written language as told by Socrates in the Phaedrus: Theuth declares that written language, the materiality of the word, will make the Egyptians wiser… more ›

• The Writer

  Jul 1

  ♦ The writer, his biography: he died; lived and died. The writer writes to live on. Writing to live on, her life is a kind of survival. Sur-vival: a living… more ›