At a translation workshop just made me realize that I seem to have a knack for one area when it comes to translation: translating humor (or humour – actually, the latter even more than the former as I do have a thing for British humour in particular). Whether it’s puns…
Lately I have been translating more and more for museums that attach particular importance to sensitive language – for instance, the Jewish Museum and the Schwules Museum (Gay Museum) in Berlin, the postcolonially oriented RJM… I translate into English as well as into German, although sensitive translation into German is…
Nawalny’s speeches in court have appeared in my German translation! Immediately before and after that, I translated mostly poetry and songs, so I had to switch gears to be as precise as possible – without losing expressiveness. These are political speeches, not legal treatises, but every word could be legally…
Here is a request I received today: “We have an article that needs to be translated from German into English for an American scientific journal. But it is 7899 words long, and the journal has a limit of 7000 words. Is there anything you can do?” This is to say:…
The kind of work that I am perverse enough to enjoy: paring down a scholarly article to the desired length while translating it into English. Translating academic texts is an exciting balancing act between style and technical vocabulary anyway (German academic articles in particular tend to be full of technical…
Experience has shown that online interpreting works best as video interpreting, especially if simultaneous interpreting is involved. Without video, on interpreting is much more difficult, especially if a negotiation with many participants is involved, or in a technical meeting (just consider German technical terms – seeing the speaker helps decipher…
Oh, now I’ve missed the round number of reviews! A little over a year ago, I was celebrating that my translations has been rated as very good 20 times; now we already have 46 ratings – all of them 5 stars. Maybe I should wait for 50 reviews, but there…
My translation of a beloved poem by Brodsky has finally been published, in Modern Poetry in Translation, no less! https://modernpoetryintranslation.com/dont-leave-your-room-by-joseph-brodsky Since not so many people read this translator blog, let me reveal a secret here: My German translation of Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita will be published soon. Well, Brodsky,…
I’m having a nostalgic moment here. Three years ago, I received an award for the best academic translation of a literary study into English. The committee’s citation made me blush, and today I’m blushing still when rereading it: “Victor Shklovsky: A Reader provides a brilliant and ambitious portrait of one…
Obviously, any text on translating poetry has to begin with that (in)famous thing that Robert Frost once said: “Poetry is that which is lost in translation”. Or did he? Well, he did say something of this sort in Conversations on the Craft of Poetry, namely: “Poetry is what both prose…
