Paraphrasis Podcast

In this episode, Adam Mahler discusses his translation of Shem Tov Ardutiel’s Moral Proverbs and Other Old Castilian Poems of Jewish Authorship (forthcoming from the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library at Harvard University Press). This collection captures the flourishing of Jewish poetry written in Old Spanish during the medieval period. Adam delves into the linguistic texture of this Old Castilian verse, inflected by folk wisdom, Hebrew poetics, and Maimonidean philosophy. He discusses his choice to prioritize line length and communicability over rhyme scheme, and he recounts his decisions regarding a 900-line devotional poem to Joseph, each line ending hypnotically with the same name. At the end of the episode, Adam makes a case for endnotes as windows into these texts’ layered, associative meanings.  

During the 2024-25 academic year, the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard celebrated its departmental anniversary—and Paraphrasis is launching a series of summer special episodes to commemorate the occasion. In the second edition of the series, guest host Jess Jensen Mitchell sits down with two alumnae of the college, Professors Moira Weigel of Harvard University, and Pelin Kivrak of Emerson College. Together, they reflect on their career trajectories after Harvard, their memories of undergraduate life, and their ongoing roles as educators and mentors.

What’s it like to tame an unruly stanza? And what happens when you’re tasked with translating an erratically rhymed Soviet-era poem, complete with dirt-caked children and a state-dispatched bath squad? In this bonus episode, Miriam Udel shares her translation of Boots in the Bath Squad by Leib Kvitko, a wacky tale of hygiene propaganda and childhood grime. She reflects on the joy of chasing rogue rhymes and the “almost-audible click” when a tricky stanza finally snaps into place.

In this episode, Anna speaks with Miriam Udel about Honey on the Page (NYU Press), her 2021 anthology of Yiddish children’s literature from the 20th century. A project born of her roles as Yiddish scholar, teacher, and mother, the collection brings together folktales, fool stories, and bedtime parables for readers both steeped in Jewish culture and entirely new to it. Miriam walks us through the sticky-sweet meaning behind the book’s title—a nod to a ritual invitation to Jewish literacy. We also hear about her process of commissioning visual illustrations with the late artist Paula Cohen to recast vintage scenes in a contemporary key, both cartoonish and candlelit in equal measure. Along the way, we meet weary winds, bickering couples, and a whole lot of Jerusalem alley cats.

During the 2024-25 academic year, the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard celebrated its departmental anniversary—and Paraphrasis is launching a series of summer special episodes to commemorate the occasion. In our first edition of the series, guest host Lara Norgaard sits down with Spencer Lee-Lenfield and Sandra Naddaff, two members of the Comp Lit faculty who are also alumni of Harvard College. Together, they discuss the past, present, and future of Translation Studies at Harvard. Along the way, Spencer and Sandra speak to their own journeys into the discipline and how translation developed from something seen as a technical skill into a critical practice and dynamic area of study in North American academia.

What is a title? For Anton Hur, it’s “the most liberated thing” in a translator’s toolkit. Listen in on how Your Utopia got its name, as a blunt-sounding gerund in the English was traded in for something with sharper edges. Anton explains why the Korean title To Meet Her (Geunyeoreul Mannada), though thematically crucial, didn’t sit right on the tongue, and how his suggestion, “Your Utopia,” skewers the tech-bro fantasy of sleek, bloodless progress.

In this episode, translator and debut novelist Anton Hur discusses his English translation of Your Utopia (Algonquin Books, 2024), a fantastical and moving collection by South Korean author Bora Chung. From reordering stories to recharging sad robots, Anton shares his journey with Chung’s genre-bending work—and how a casual pitch at a book fair eventually led to Chung’s name on literary longlists. We discuss topics ranging from zombies in space and sentient elevators to the question of whether balancing the beautiful and the faithful in translation is a trade-off or a tandem act. We also hear how Anton navigates the push-pull between the solitary act of translating-writing and the collaborative dynamic of publishing. Along the way, Anton reflects on authorial paratexts, deadpan satire, and the ever-tricky desire to “make English pop.”

Why do German nouns seem to bristle with energy while English ones feel flat? And how did he land on Overstaying—a title that’s as pushy and off-kilter as the novel itself? Damion takes us behind the decision to swap a dense German noun for a lopsided English gerund.

Damion Searls reflects on his translation of Overstaying, Swiss author Ariane Koch’s surreal debut novel (Dorothy Project, 2024). He talks through the book’s oddball humor and syntactic sleights—from “brushy fingers” to the German impersonal pronoun “man”—while unpacking the slipperiness of the German word for “visitor” and the politics of hospitality. This episode ends with Damion discussing an encounter with the most inaccurate—and most insightful—review of his work he’s ever read.

In the last full episode of our first season, we hear scholar, translator, and performer Gitta Honegger discuss her German to English translation of The Children of the Dead, written in 1995 by the Nobel Prize winning author and playwright, Elfriede Jelinek. Considered to be Jelinek’s magnum opus, the 666 page novel takes place at dingy Alpine resort swarming with lacivious, reanimated corpses. Anna dives into the sinuous linguistic body of the translation, reaching the difficult question of collective guilt at its heart. The episode ends with a special reading by Jelinek and Honegger.