Ann Goldstein: The art of the translator
What are the challenges of translating foreign language books for English language publishers?
Daniel Hahn and Ann Goldstein are translators, inhabiting a strange world between creation and publication, but with their own literary and linguistic creativity shaping the final form. Goldstein has been translating for decades, turning the words of Elena Ferrante, Primo Levi and Jhumpa Lahiri, amongst others, into English. She works prolifically, and in this episode Daniel, himself a prize-winning author and literary judge, will spend time with her over the course of three days as she translates a new, award-winning Italian book.
Daniel Hahn discuss with her how to know where to translate exactly and where to get the sense, how to translate phrases which have no translation, and share experiences about the politics of translation. He finds out how this literary great came to translating, how she chooses the books she wishes to translate and to what extent she acts – as so many translators do – as an advocate for foreign-language books to English-language publishers. And implicit in all this is what is core to the translator’s art – intercession between cultures, sharing ideas and stories which would otherwise go unshared.
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- Tue 3 Jul 2018 02:32GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service Online, Americas and the Caribbean, UK DAB/Freeview, Europe and the Middle East & West and Central Africa only
- Tue 3 Jul 2018 03:32GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service South Asia & East Asia only
- Tue 3 Jul 2018 04:32GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service Australasia
- Tue 3 Jul 2018 10:32GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service except News Internet & West and Central Africa
- Tue 3 Jul 2018 21:32GMTΒι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ World Service except News Internet