Paraphrasis Podcast

How can a translator convey a text that contains troubling, archaic language while still engaging with contemporary readers? Listen in on how Fiona dealt with the historical nuances and present-day challenges posed by a character’s predilection for antisemitic language in her recent translation of Avdotya Panaeva’s 1848 novel, The Talnikov Family.

In this episode, Fiona Bell discusses her translation of The Talnikov Family by Avdotya Panaeva, now out with Columbia University Press. Originally published in 1848, The Talnikov Family fictionalizes Panaeva’s precarious childhood in a family of actors in St. Petersburg. Fiona and Anna discuss bringing 19th century literature to life (if not the 19th century author) and the place of women in the Russian literary canon then and now.

“Truco,” a card game popular in Argentina, is a game of tricks, deception, and power plays. It is also a structuring feature of Martín Kohan’s Confession. Can a translator teach English-language readers the rules?

Daniel Hahn reflects on his translation of Martín Kohan’s Confession (Charco Press), a slim volume that wrestles with personal passions and political complicity. Focused on the legacies of Argentina’s last military dictatorship, the novel opens with the intimate desires of a young girl only to spiral into assassination plots, suppressed memories, and card games played with sky-high emotional stakes.

The action of Did This Hand Kill? (Open Letter Books) largely takes places in Lviv, Ukraine, over several different time frames. In this bonus episode, Sean Gasper Bye adresses the city’s fascinating multicultural, multilingual history and how it impacted his Polish to English translation.

In this episode, Sean Gasper Bye discusses his 2024 translation of Cezary Łazarewicz's true crime thriller, Did This Hand Kill? (Open Letter Books). This historic who dun’ it explores Rita Gorgonowa’s sensational murder trial, a media event that scandalized interwar Poland. Just as the reader visits the lost world of Lwów, they are left wondering who really killed Gorgonowa's de facto stepdaughter on a cold December's night in 1931…

As he translated The Tale of the Wall by Nasser Abu Srour, Luke was faced with a problem: how to convey the realities of a Palestinian refugee camp without blanching the figurative richness of Nasser’s writing. In this bonus episode, Luke tells us about two Arabic words for wall and the English equivalents he chose.

Anna sits down with Luke Leafgren for a conversation about his translation of the Palestinian literary memoir The Tale of a Wall by Nasser Abu Srour, published in April 2024 by Penguin Random House. Anna and Luke dive into urgent topics, discussing the politics of translating Palestinian literature, the challenges of collaborating with an author serving a life sentence in prison, and the groundbreaking qualities of Nasser Abu Srour’s prose, in which literary and philosophical forms inflect a testimony of occupation.

Because ‘mama’ is often the first word we ever learn to say, it can be surprisingly challenging to translate. Jess discusses ‘mama’ and its many synonyms, and fills us in on a humorous run-in with a living author…

Anna meets Jess Jensen Mitchell in Katowice, Poland  —  once a hub of Central Europe’s coal mining industry —  to talk about her translation of Dominika Słowik’s eco-critical short story collection, Self-Sowing. Jess recalls an adventure that led her to publish a story from the collection, “Blizzard”(Two Lines Journal), and how she learned to find humanity in nonhuman characters. She also hints at an upcoming project.