Translation | Page 8

Translation: The Wangs’ Other Child

January 5, 2023 Fiction, Translation

Translated from the Spanish by NINA PERROTTA

Story appears in both English and Spanish

Translator’s Note

One of the first things that struck me about this short story by Mario Martz—and one that I kept in mind as I translated—was the question implicit in the title. Who is the Wangs’ other child?

It seems fairly obvious that the main child, the one who stands in opposition to the titular “other child,” is Mei, the Wangs’ twenty-something daughter, who disappeared while visiting Central America. Mei’s likely murder is what sets the story in motion, prompting the Wangs to move halfway across the world to a country that’s entirely foreign to them.

Translation: “Soy Nobody” by Emily Dickinson

December 10, 2022 Poetry, Translation

Poem by EMILY DICKINSON
Translated into Spanglish by ILAN STAVANS

Soy Nobody
Translation by Ilan Stavans

Soy Nobody! Quién eres tú?
Eres – Nobody – too?
Then somos pareja!
Silencio! lo anunciarán – you know!

Translation: Poems by Mireille Gansel

December 6, 2022 Poetry, Translation

Poems by MIREILLE GANSEL

Translated from the French by JOAN SELIGER SIDNEY

The poems appear below in both English and French

Translator’s note

I met Mireille Gansel virtually, through a mutual friend. All three of us have lost family because of the Holocaust. Besides her poetry books, Gansel translated all of Nelly Sach’s poems, as well as Sach’s correspondence with Paul Celan. She has won major awards for both her poetry and translations. Her Translation as Transhumance (The Feminist Press) has contributed significantly to the field of translation studies.

Writing from the 2022 Outpost Fellows

November 21, 2022 Essays, Poetry

A note from Outpost founder Ricardo Wilson

Launched in 2022, Outpost is a residency for creative writers of color from the United States and Latin America. Each September, we welcome two writers and award them with a stipend as well as complimentary travel, lodging, and meals to spend a month cultivating a generative writing community in the mountains of Southern Vermont. STEFFAN TRIPLETT and MARICEU ERTHAL, whose work you will encounter below, are exceptionally talented, and we feel quite privileged to have had them represent Outpost’s inaugural cohort. Thanks to the ongoing support of our funding community, we have been able to increase the stipend to $2,000 for our 2023 cohort. Applications are open and will close January 15^th.

Room of Darkness

November 9, 2022 Dispatches

By MONA KAREEM
Translated by SARA ELKAMEL

Farwaniya, Kuwait

“Darkness alone is in my voice.” — Jean Sénac

I am of darkness.
My nation is an aging butterfly,
the desert my prayer.

I wash in rain’s saliva.
In my supplications, the sun dances
on the tips of her toes.

Operation Avalanche

October 31, 2022 Fiction, Issue 24, Issue 24 Fiction, Issues, Translation

By ROSSELLA MILONE

Translated from the Italian by LAURA MASINI and LINDA WORRELL

“I am living permanently in my dream,
from which I make brief forays into reality.”

—Ingmar Bergman, The Magic Lantern: An Autobiography

Erminia danced the Charleston. My friend Gianluca told me how, almost every evening, his grandmother would pause on the threshold of the French doors that opened onto the terrace and trace out the steps. Her arms swinging, legs twisting, a toe to the front, then to the back, a heel swiveling to the side, a toe to the front again. She confined her movements to the doorway as though she wanted to go unnoticed, and yet somehow she demanded the attention of anyone nearby. Whenever I was at Gianluca’s, I always saw her singing softly to herself.

Lions of the Church

October 31, 2022 Fiction, Issue 24, Issue 24 Fiction, Issues, Translation

By AHMED NAJI

Translated from the Arabic by BEN KOERBER

Antar Harami’s kingdom stretches from the iron bridge to the gristmills in the east, and from the El Gaz drainage canal southward all the way to the police checkpoint at the International Hospital.

Translation: Albanian Women Poets

October 4, 2022 Poetry, Translation

Poems by BLERINA ROGOVA GAXHA, DONIKA DABISHEVCI, and VLORA KONUSHEVCI.

Translated from the Albanian by VLORA KONUSHEVCI.

Poems appear below in both Albanian and English.

Translator’s note

The Albanian language is one of the oldest languages in Europe, although its written form appears rather late in the historical record, sometime in the mid-fifteenth century. It occupies an independent branch of the Indo-European language tree; hence it is considered an isolate within that language family, with no kin conclusively linked to its branch. It is believed to be the descendant of Illyrian, but this hypothesis has been challenged by some linguists, who maintain that it derives from Dacian or Thracian. However, to this day there is no scholarly consensus over its ascendant, and it is still a subject of scientific debate.

The Longkau’s Name (Excerpt from DAKOTA)

September 28, 2022 Dispatches, Translation

By WONG KOI TET

Translated from Chinese by SHANNA TAN

Dakota Crescent, Singapore

The body of water that runs by the neighborhood is in fact a river, but everyone used to call it longkau—a storm drain. The Hokkien word has a crispier edge than the Mandarin longgou. Calling it a river would require a proper name, a division into upstream and down. Nobody knew about that stuff, so we went with what was the easiest. Anyway, a name is just a name, and it was kind of endearing after you got the hang of it. The neighborhood does have a proper name: Dakota. There’s a place called Dakota somewhere up north in the States, but that’s not what we’re named after. No, our origin story is local and commemorates the crash of a Dakota DC-3 aircraft nearby. Maybe by giving the neighborhood a name tinged with disaster and exoticism, we were also foretelling its premature demise.

The Influence of Bloodline

September 21, 2022 Fiction, Translation

By NAIVO

Translated from the French by ALLISON M. CHARETTE

The first time I tried to see Judge Florence, I employed the same strategy as most petitioners: I camped out at the entrance to the courthouse in the administrative district next to the lake in the capital to try and grab her as she walked in. But that just showed my ignorance of the winding, inner workings of the judicial system—as soon as the magistrate appeared, I was thoughtlessly shoved aside by at least thirty others racing toward her with similar ideas. The only glimpse I managed to catch of Florence was a wisp of jet-black hair and a flash of golden glasses slicing a path through the scrambling masses.

All posts tagged: Translation

Translation: The Wangs’ Other Child

Translation: “Soy Nobody” by Emily Dickinson

Translation: Poems by Mireille Gansel

Writing from the 2022 Outpost Fellows

Room of Darkness

Operation Avalanche

Lions of the Church

Translation: Albanian Women Poets

The Longkau’s Name (Excerpt from DAKOTA)

The Influence of Bloodline

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