Rough Translation

By NPR

Society & Culture Social Sciences

What's Rough Translation about?

How are the things we're talking about being talked about somewhere else in the world? Gregory Warner tells stories that follow familiar conversations into unfamiliar territory. At a time when the world seems small but it's as hard as ever to escape our echo chambers, Rough Translation takes you places.

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Hold the Sitar: The Making ...

08.30.2023

In this bonus episode of Love Commandos, Gregory Warner interviews musician John Ellis, who composed Rough Translation's original theme music in 2017, and songwriters Amira Gill and VASU, who jointly created the new theme song for Love Commandos. They discuss ...

Rough Translation episodes:

08.30.2023 Hold the Sitar: The Making of the Love Commandos Theme Song In this bonus episode of Love Commandos, Gregory Warner interviews musician John Ellis, who composed Rough Translation's original theme music in 2017, and songwriters Amira Gill and VASU, who jointly created the new theme song for Love Commandos. They discuss ...
08.23.2023 Calling It Quits In Episode 5 of Love Commandos, couples seeking to shut down the Love Commandos' shelter band together for a risky plan. Want to hear bonus episodes of Love Commandos? Sign up for Embedded+ at plus.npr.org/embedded. Subscribe to host Gregory Warner's ...
08.16.2023 Forever Yours On Episode 4 of Love Commandos, couples in the shelter feel pressured to stay indefinitely. We try to figure out why. Want to hear episodes of Love Commandos a week before everyone else? Sign up for Embedded+ at plus.npr.org/embedded. Subscribe ...
08.09.2023 The Honeymoon On Episode 3 of Love Commandos, stories of life inside the Love Commandos shelter begin to diverge as co-founder Sanjoy Sachdev shows a different side.Want to hear episodes of Love Commandos a week before everyone else? Sign up for Embedded+ ...
08.02.2023 After The Wedding On episode 2 of Love Commandos, an inter-caste couple in India hits a breaking point. They make one last-ditch phone call to try to stay together. Want to hear episodes of Love Commandos a week before everyone else? Sign up ...
07.26.2023 The Vow When falling in love can mean risking your life, the Love Commandos in India will protect you. But at what cost? This is episode 1 of our series Love Commandos. Want to hear episodes of Love Commandos a week before ...
07.21.2023 New Season: Love Commandos. Starting Wednesday, July 26th. They seemed like superheroes. In a country where arranged marriage is the norm, the Love Commandos promise to protect love couples and help them marry. But is this a group of protectors in the way they promise to be?
07.12.2023 When We Talk About Love Stories We leap into the gap between love stories and real life. And hear a sneak peek of Rough Translation's newest season! Subscribe here to Gregory's substack.
05.10.2023 Fan Favorites: How to Speak Bad English Gregory talks "inside baseball" of American English. And we revisit an episode that sparked a lot of conversation among listeners in 2021–about the global pursuit of "good English" and what it takes to change the multi-billion dollar industry built around ...
04.26.2023 Fan Favorites: Dream Boy and the Poison Fans The unlikely places that fandom can take us, and how to know when we've gone too far. This week, we revisit an episode from 2020. And don't forget to subscribe to Gregory's Substack.
04.12.2023 Fan Favorites: Anna in Somalia Gregory tells a story about his first job out of college. And we revisit an episode from 2017. Also, what's your favorite Rough Translation episode? Let us know.
03.31.2023 This Is Not A Goodbye Our host Gregory Warner reads your tweets and drops some big news about Rough Translation. Subscribe to Gregory's Substack and follow him on Twitter to stay on the journey. And coming soon: episodes revisiting our archives, plus an exciting summer ...
02.03.2023 Ukraine: The Handoff We travel to Ukraine to follow a shipment of abortion pills, and discover a complicated conversation about pregnancy and choice in wartime. Part 2 of our collaboration with Radiolab.
01.27.2023 White Lies: The Men on the Roof In this bonus drop, we feature the latest episode from the newest season of NPR's White Lies
01.20.2023 Ukraine: Under The Counter One weekend. An amateur smuggling operation. A wartime mission. The story, in collaboration with Radiolab.
11.09.2022 The Stoop: Reclaiming Black In Australia Who is Black in Australia? (Or "Blak?") Our friends at The Stoop listen to the calls of the kookaburra and reexamine the global reach of the American Black Panther Party to understand the relationship between Blackness and Indigeneity down under.
08.03.2022 The Cat Must Still Be Fed A hyperlocal news site in Red Hook, N.Y. posts a job opening. A journalist in Ukraine applies. And what readers think of as "local news" is going to change dramatically.
07.13.2022 Alone@Work: Miles To Go Before I'm Me 726 miles in one day. Gas station sushi. Mysterious loading docks. We hit the road with two American women who found long-haul trucking as a means of escape and self-transformation.
07.06.2022 Ourselves@Work: Home Is Where The Hustle Is Nigerian novelist Chibundu Onuzo dreams of returning to Lagos, but she worries she'll struggle to adapt in the city of her birth, where the word "oppressor" is often used as a compliment. In this episode, she seeks advice from her ...
06.29.2022 You're@Work: The Right Persona for the Job Who are you at work? In this episode, two stories of people who really commit to embodying their work selves. The result? New realms and new personalities.
06.22.2022 Failing@Work: Epic Fails & Failure Epics Many of us think we can't share our stories of failure until we've reached success. Some Mexico City entrepreneurs started a club to change that, and the world took notice.
06.15.2022 Stuck@Work: Your Country's Brand Is Escape, But You Can't When Portugal forbade bosses from contacting employees after hours, international media jumped at the chance to cover the new law. Portuguese workers were oddly quiet. Why?
06.08.2022 Lunching@Work: When Eating at Your Desk Is Forbidden In 2021, France suspended a law that forbids eating lunch at work. We talk to an American teacher relieved to see it go and a French historian determined to bring it back.
06.01.2022 Slackers@Work: A Song for the Exhausted A video ricochets across Chinese offices, and a scooter thief becomes an icon for brewing discontent. Why is a thief who says he's tired of working viewed by the Chinese state as such a threat?
05.25.2022 New Season: @Work. Starting June 1. We're back @Work. The new season of Rough Translation will tell surprising stories from workplaces and work cultures around the world.
04.27.2022 The Good Russians Hundreds of thousands of Russians are leaving Russia. They're facing an uncertain welcome abroad. Poet and writer Linor Goralik joins us to read from "Exodus 22," her uncomfortably frank conversations with Russians who – before the war – lived in ...
04.15.2022 The Scarf and the Snuffbox What can a blank piece of paper, four ballerinas, a scarf and snuff box mean in Russia? A conversation with Russian Anthropologist Alexandra Arkhipova about how anti-war protestors resist the war in Ukraine through code and hidden messages.
03.30.2022 Letter of Unhappiness When Naira calls her parents back home in Russia to talk about the war in Ukraine, they treat her as an outsider and a threat. She finds a way to break through the propaganda wall, with inspiration from a chain ...
03.15.2022 The Culture Front When protecting a language is used as justification for war, how can its speakers fight back? A conversation with Russian speakers of the diaspora who are rethinking their relationship to language, identity, and the Russian community.
03.02.2022 Fighting Words In Ukraine Vladimir Putin joined the KGB at age 23. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy got his early training in a no less Soviet institution–the world of competitive comedy. We update our 2019 episode about a high-stakes comedy competition in Ukraine.
02.16.2022 Presenting 'TED Radio Hour': Work, Play, Rest The past few years have shaken the fundamental ways we live. It's... disorienting. But it's also an opportunity to reexamine how we spend our time. In this episode from TED Radio Hour, speakers investigate evolving notions of what it means ...
12.22.2021 May We Have This Dance? A jazz dance born in Harlem in the 1920s ends up in a tiny Swedish town. What happens when Black dancers try to bring the Lindy Hop home?
12.15.2021 Moms In Translation An Irish journalist discovers she belongs in a place she's never been. A 6-year-old boy decides he's from another country. Stories about finding home far from home.
12.08.2021 Tasting At A Distance You can zoom around the world through sight and sound, but you can't taste at a distance, right? Stories about what happens when we try.
07.10.2021 Home/Front: Marla's List Marla kept a detailed account of Iraqi civilians harmed by war. How did she recruit people in the U.S. military to help them? And what toll did it take on her? Part 2 of the story of Marla Ruzicka. You ...
06.30.2021 Home/Front: Marla's War Marla Ruzicka didn't belong in a war zone. Nobody in Afghanistan knew what to make of her. Until Marla started to solve a problem that no one thought could be solved.
06.23.2021 Home/Front: Rebels In The Valley Two worlds: dress uniforms and foosball tables. The military and Silicon Valley used to work hand in hand. Now, why won't big tech build them a new gonculator?
06.16.2021 Home/Front: Battle Borne Alicia's situation raises questions about the VA's caregiver program. And a new diagnosis changes everything for Matt. How will Alicia and Matt start healing their respective wounds, borne out of different battles? Find part 2, Battle Lines, here. And part ...
06.09.2021 Home/Front: Battle Lines Alicia Lammers takes on the twin roles of wife and caregiver to her veteran husband. What happens when your husband becomes your official duty? Part 2 of the story of Matt and Alicia Lammers. You can find Part 1, Battle ...
06.02.2021 Home/Front: Battle Rattle He's a veteran looking for love. She's a civilian who learns more about war than she ever imagined. Part 1 of the story of Matt and Alicia Lammers.
05.26.2021 Home/Front Is it true that "you can't understand" if you've never been to war? In the first episode of our new season, we hear from people on opposing sides of a widening divide.
05.05.2021 War Poems Revisited As the U.S. pulls out of Afghanistan, we look back at a time when Taliban poetry and a local cooking show became part of the war. And the U.S. had the perfect person to fight on that front.
04.21.2021 How To Speak Bad English Heather Hansen used to teach people to speak "perfect" English. Until she realized that so-called "bad English" might be a better way to communicate.
04.07.2021 Liberté, Égalité, French Fries... And Couscous Our favorite McDonald's in Marseille, France has reached its afterlife. It took court cases, spray paint, and the slogan you know turned upside down (literally) to get there.
03.26.2021 "We Already Belong": A Conversation With R.O. Kwon In the wake of the shootings in Atlanta, a Korean-American writer reconnects with her own family.
03.10.2021 Welcome To The Vaccination Club Two very different approaches to wooing vaccine skeptics. And how a little FOMO can go a long way.
02.25.2021 Rewriting The Travel Guidebook With Nanjala Nyabola What happens when your guidebook isn't written with you in mind? Nanjala Nyabola on her new book: Travelling While Black.
02.10.2021 Boxing Back Your stories and creative solutions to not quite fitting in.
01.27.2021 Our Boxes, Ourselves From Montréal to Edinburgh, and from São Paulo to Taipei: your stories about belonging, or longing to just be.
12.16.2020 We (Still) Don't Say That France is the place where for decades you weren't supposed to talk about someone's blackness, unless you said it in English. Today, we're going to meet the people who took a very French approach to change that.

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