The translator was now bedeviled by even the simplest particles. Does “and” or “but” go better here? Periods and commas likewise became insurmountable hindrances, veritable lions in the road, guardians of the original meaning.
(fiction)
Category: Translations
“In Stepanova’s voyage there is life and death, silence and narrative, memory and oblivion” writes reviewer Marek Makowski.
(fiction review)
Excerpt from “Complemento” by Rafael Guizado, translated from the Spanish (Colombia) by Gigi Guizado
My job is this: be what the others are not.
(drama)
I get that’s what happens to her. But can a Korean man love a woman twenty years older?
(drama)
To know how to exploit the weaknesses in human nature in order to best serve Christ is one of the paradoxes of the inquisitor’s calling.
(fiction)
Her suffering fits right into the camera.
(fiction)
From up where we were, we hadn’t noticed the defeathered bird corpses littered down below…This friendly bird graveyard was never swept away, probably to teach us all a moral lesson. (TCTC translations/nonfiction)
in the center of my heart they buried a limewood carving of a bird.
(poetry)
What are the whereabouts of this babble of tongues, / this suicide flight of words, / this hermit-crab that is my story? (poetry)
She spends her days tending the grapes, and she runs a little gift shop in the village . . . Now that she’s simplified her relationships with people, she seems even healthier, even more herself.
(fiction)
With boys comes a lot of stress. You worry about how you can buy him his own place, or you worry about who he’ll bring into your house.
(fiction)
The last traces / of what I have lived, / of what I have loved, / are vanishing at the mercy of the wind.
(poetry)
it’s still spring in Rome, a perennial incitement to live. We meet in Piazza Cavour, me with my selfish FFP3 mask, Luisa with her altruistic blue cloth one.
(fiction)
I dreamed the sun, very low, / painting me a mustache of sweat and coal. (poetry)
the city’s landmarks / are illuminated / by your stopover in my thoughts
(TCTC translations/poetry)
Many are drawn to martins covered with feathers that seem to absorb ash, stained with orange glass shards. (poetry)
Apparently to be a poet—dogmatic on the outside / and lacking conviction within / is a hell one can leave / but doesn’t.
(poetry)
but the sea swoons / with delight in holy purity / but sand breaks the stone / that covers my face
(poetry)
A response to some of the fun and humor and movement of the poem. (poetry)
“The White Envelope (1975)” by Catherine Cusset, translated from the French by Armine Kotin Mortimer
All night long, Elena tossed and turned on her thin mattress and listened to . . . the coughs, the laughs, the sobs, and the whispers of all these poor people who had the same hopes as they did.
(fiction)
Greek amphorae sprouting branches in the toboroches / and Dante’s whole paradise embodied in a dragon fruit (poetry)
Cut right in the middle
(poetry)
And not one protection / has come to them / nothing sound
(poetry)
For what do I need / this beautiful key? (poetry)
“Chicago has nothing to be ashamed of in comparison with New York.” (nonfiction)
In the city that some used to call the Seattle of Italy, nowadays you can only overdose on poetry.
(nonfiction)
“The Last Moments of a Brave Mouse” by Ahmed Shaker, translated from the Arabic by Essam M. A-Jassim
The mouse saw the Ghost of Death approach him as the humans struck him with the shoe, stick, broom, and a series of quick kicks.
(fiction)
“Exchange of Glances”
“The Creature”
(translation)
In December 1989 in Romania, the crowds spilling into the streets chanted: “We will die and we will be free!”
(nonfiction)
The day before the world was supposed to end, Kasumi woke up in the morning and slipped into her school uniform as usual.
(fiction)
Another Chicago Magazine 