Category Tips for Reviewers
DOs and DON’Ts of Reviewing Translated Literature. Tips for Reviewers.
This short article offers tips for reviewers of translated literature, focusing on some of the dos and don’ts of reviewing practice. The authors of the article also outline their shared beliefs about why literary translations should be reviewed more widely. The reviewer, they suggest, helps create and promote a culture of informed writing about translated literature.
Workshop Notes on Reviewing Nataliya Deleva’s “Four Minutes”
This post features a cluster of reviews of Nataliya Deleva’s novel “Four Minutes,” translated from Bulgarian by Izidora Angel. This post also reflects on the principles and practices guiding a new college course on the art and craft of the translation review essay.
The Translation Review: Why it Matters and How to Do it Right. Part 2.
A book review can benefit significantly from discussing translation. Reviews that do engage with the translator’s approach provide the reader with a more profound analysis of cultural context and themes while maintaining some of the positive aspects of mainstream reviews, such as prioritizing readability and analyzing how certain audiences will react to certain texts.
The Translation Review: Why it Matters and How to Do it Right. Part 1.
This essay explores the work that reviewers of translations do in the American context, from reviews in mainstream publications to those written for independent specialized outlets. It discusses what the work of reviewing a translation entails; what the purpose of the translation review is and what it can achieve in different contexts; and how the practice of reviewing translations can be improved.
Tips for Reviewers: The Politics of Reviewing Translations
The theme of this year’s American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) conference was politics and translation, and Aviya Kushner and I were thrilled to kick off the very first session of panels on November 13 with “An Insider’s Look at the Politics of Reviewing Translations.” The standing-room-only attendance attested to the highly politicized nature of this […]
Tips for Reviewers: New Digital Tools to Assist Translators & Reviewers
As a blogger, looking over the program of offerings for the first day of the American Literary Translators’ Association (ALTA) Conference in October, “Translation and the Digital Age” was a must. Not knowing what to expect, I attended, anticipating some discussion of the benefits or detriments of digital publishing for literature in translation. What I found was […]
Tips for Reviewers: Comparative Analysis
[or how to review a translation from a language you don’t know] Eric M. Gurevitch’s review of Mani Rao‘s new translation of the Bhagavad Gita is exemplary. It does what translators wish more reviewers would do. Gurevitch illuminates Rao’s highly original approach to the oft translated epic poem that nevertheless remains unfamiliar to many Western readers, explaining […]
Tips for Reviewers: Translators’ Introductions Are Your Cheatsheet
Years ago, a friend shared with me Richard Pevear’s introduction to his and Larissa Voloknonsky’s translation of War and Peace. In it, Pevear writes, “Translation is not the transfer of a detachable ‘meaning’ from one language to another, for the simple reason that in literature there is no meaning detachable from the words that express […]