Translation | Page 17

Immigrant Ditty

June 11, 2019 Poetry, Translation

Translated from Russian by OLGA LIVSHIN and ANDREW JANCO

Poem appears in both Russian and English.

Translators’ Note:

Born in 1948, Vladimir Gandelsman is very much the literary child of the poets of the Russian Silver Age. He draws on their dramatic, spiritually intense version of modernism, the acme, or the highest point of expression, whether meditating on fleeting moments or on major historical events. His literary parents include Pasternak and Mandelstam. Proust and Wilde are his relatives: he draws on and develops their respective fascinations with the sensuous quality of everyday life. Gandelsman’s exquisite diction and surprising collages of words help us remember our own moments of heightened feeling.

Poetry by Iraqi Women in Translation

May 14, 2019 Poetry, Translation

“Definitions” by NADIA AL-KATIB

“A Shadow” by NERMEEN AL MUFTI

Co-translations by AMIR AL-AZRAKI and JENNIFER JEAN

Poems appear in both English and Arabic.

The Silence of Fire

May 2, 2019 Arabic Fiction, Fiction, Issue 17, Issue 17 Fiction, Translation

By HAIDAR HAIDAR
Translated by JONATHAN WRIGHT

Damascus 1969

The war had ended the way it ended. The defeats and victories felt much like a dream dreamt in the depths of time.

The fighter finally came home from captivity, after the war had ended, with gray hair and two scars across the center of his face.

In the middle of their small sitting room, his wife stood upright like an immovable object. Her face overcast with traces of a somber past, she chattered away.

A Lifetime

April 16, 2019 Fiction, Translation

Story by LARA MORENO

Translated from the Spanish by KATE WHITTEMORE

Translator’s Note:

This past fall, I asked Lara Moreno if she would be willing to send me some stories. I had read her novel Piel de lobo (Wolf Skin) (Lumen, 2016) over the summer and was struck by the honesty and intimacy in her portrayal of the interior life of her protagonist, Sofía, a woman in her thirties, mother to a young child, and wanted to try my hand at translating her particular voice. Lara was gracious enough to send me several Word documents, including the story “Toda una vida,” winner of the 2013 Cosecha Eñe prize organized by the prestigious Spanish literary magazine Eñe: Qué Leer, and I’ve been honored and delighted to work with her since.

Ends of the Earth & Edges of Dream

April 15, 2019 Essays, Issue 17, Issue 17 Essays, Translation

By PIBULSAK LAKONPOL

Translated by NOH ANOTHAI

from By the Bank of Brokenhearted River

I’m thinking of a classic geography text that explains how humans use rivers and mountains to mark their borders. The difference is that rivers help humans come and go from each other while mountains keep them apart.
But from the textbook of my own travels, I know this isn’t true. The only real borders are those humans make themselves, in their own minds.

—Suddan Wisudthilak, Thai scholar

Two years ago, I stood aghast at the sight of a little island in the Moei River, the border between Thailand’s northwestern Mae Sot district and Burma, on which refugees from the latter had made their home.

“This is it—this is what they call a no-man’s-land,” said my friend, a local provincial administrator, who’d taken me there. “It’s not only that they lack a military force. For me, it also means there’s no humanity. Just look.”

Silence

April 15, 2019 Arabic Fiction, Fiction, Issue 17, Issue 17 Fiction, Translation

By ODAI AL ZOUBI
Translated by ROBIN MOGER

A sticky patch

Tamara says that I am constantly on edge; she says that for people like me, meditation can help. “Meditate on what?” “On yourself,” she replies. “Look inside yourself.” There’s nothing there, Tamara, nothing to see; everything that crosses my mind lies outside me: Goya’s caprichos, the appalling translation of Bertrand Russell’s essays on epistemology I was reading yesterday, the over-vinegared salad I ate today. Perhaps this is my self, Tamara: nothing worth contemplating.

To Be Led from Behind

April 15, 2019 Arabic Fiction, Fiction, Issue 17, Issue 17 Fiction, Translation

By MOHAMMAD IBRAHIM NAWAYA
Translated by ROBIN MOGER

Seige

I sprinted towards them as they battered away. Tried, but could not open the bolted door. I shouted out, called at the top of my voice for those around me to help, but to no avail. And when at last I despaired, and turned my back to come away, my head knocked against the wall of a water tank, greater still, shut fast against me.

Two Plus Two: Four

April 15, 2019 Issue 17, Issue 17 Poetry, Poetry, Translation

By FERREIRA GULLAR
Translated by ILAN STAVANS and TAL GOLDFAJN

Just as two and two are four
I know life is worth the pain
Though the bread is precious
And the freedom, rare

Death-Flavored Life: Two Stories

April 15, 2019 Arabic Fiction, Fiction, Issue 17, Issue 17 Fiction, Translation

By RAW’A SUNBUL
Translated by ALICE GUTHRIE

Absent Butterflies

She takes off her clothes and covers her chilly, naked body with a heavyweight green gown. She steps into the white plastic slippers and gets up onto the birthing chair. She leans back, gulping hungrily at the air and mumbling a plea for help in the form of the Quranic ayahs she’s been told will ease the pain of her contractions: “When the earth is leveled out, casts out its contents, and becomes empty… casts out its contents and becomes empty… casts out….” Her words are silenced by a new contraction slamming into her from behind, then bursting out from the middle of her back and wrapping its monstrous arms around her, engulfing her, linking its hands under her belly and squeezing, clamping down, pushing down, down, down. She bites her bottom lip and clasps her hands over her chest. She digs the nails of her right hand hard into her left palm, streaming sweat, a tear escaping the corner of her eye.

The Memoirs of Cinderella’s Slipper

April 15, 2019 Arabic Fiction, Fiction, Issue 17, Issue 17 Fiction, Translation

By SHAHLA AL-UJAYLI

Translated by ALICE GUTHRIE

The uniformed conscript led the way, bearing aloft, on a small pink velvet cushion, a shabby-looking woman’s shoe. The leather was faded, stretched, and torn. Part of the sole had come off, and the heel had been roughly hammered back on with protruding nails. None of the repairs that had obviously been carried out in an attempt to restore the shoe’s former glory had succeeded. Behind the conscript came the cavalry, weaving their way through the houses of the city, searching for a woman’s foot to fit the shoe.

All posts tagged: Translation

Immigrant Ditty

Poetry by Iraqi Women in Translation

The Silence of Fire

A Lifetime

Ends of the Earth & Edges of Dream

Silence

To Be Led from Behind

Two Plus Two: Four

Death-Flavored Life: Two Stories

The Memoirs of Cinderella’s Slipper

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