Category Archives: literature
More Clerkenwell history: the Russian connection and a musical coal man
Where would you find Russian revolutionaries in the early 1900s? The biographies of the future leaders of the Soviet Union show that they were men well travelled as it was not easy to organise left-wing parties in Tsarist Russia, and radicals were often forced into exile. I wrote last week about Clerkenwell’s radical history, and [...]
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Is this the new ‘age of translation’?
This year has seen literary translation hit new prominence on the news and feature pages. Earlier this week the BBC marked the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible, noting how its turns of phrase have permeated everyday English: The Sun says Aston Villa “refused to give up the ghost”. Wendy Richard calls her EastEnders [...]
Also posted in localisation, Stieg Larsson, translation 1 Comment
Translation and the meaning of everything?
I like this video promoting a witty new book about translation: It’s a brilliant introduction to the sort of conundrums that can crop up in translating even the most “common sense” concepts. • Jim Dickson is a director of WorldAccent Translation, London
Also posted in foreign language, translation 1 Comment
Does foreign language have a place in translating literature?
It sounds a mad question, but “Does foreign language have a place in translating literature?” Put differently, when translating literature, how many words should be left in the original language? Should “foreign” words in English-language texts convey a sense of a culture, or be used as a last resort for the “untranslatable”? These questions are [...]
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Burns night: supper, poetry and an ode to a haggis
As a Scot – and an Ayrshire Scot at that – Robert Burns and his poetry have always been important to me and I’ll be raising a glass to his ‘immortal memory’ tonight as Scots the world over celebrate Burns night. The unofficial national bard of Scotland (and voted the greatest ever Scot in a [...]
Also posted in dialects, Scottish Leave a comment
Translator behind Swedish ‘Dragon Tattoo’ revealed
Along with much of the rest of the English speaking world, the WorldAccent office has not been immune to the lure of the Millennium trilogy by Stieg Larsson. For the uninitiated, crime novel “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” was a massive hit last year. The second in the series “The Girl Who Played With [...]
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Translated literature for the new year