Capitalists Must Starve - a conversation with Park Seolyeon and Anton Hur
On October 26th, author Park Seolyeon and translator Anton Hur will join In Other Words at Tills Bookshop in a conversation about writing and translating political fiction, explored through their latest novel: Capitalists Must Starve.
An Evening With Kate Briggs
Join us at Tills Bookshop for an evening with Windham-Campbell Prize-winning author and translator, Kate Briggs.
Woman, Idle: Laura Vogt in conversation with Annie Rutherford
Join us for the Edinburgh launch of Laura Vogt’s latest novel to be translated into English: Woman, Idle. Published in the UK by Héloïse press and translated by Caroline Waight, Woman, Idle explores two main questions: What kind of woman have I become? What kind of woman do I want to be?
Crossing Terrains: A discussion on translation, the natural world, and colonialism with Nedra Rodrigo.
Join In Other Words for an intimate roundtable with translator Nedra Rodrigo about translation as a decolonial practice focusing on the land.
Our Brilliant Friends: Three Seminars on the Neapolitan Novels
For a second summer in a row, we are delving into the world of Elena Ferrante. This time around, our series of three seminars will focus on the Neapolitan Novels, which for many has marked the entry point into Ferrante’s Naples. Published between 2011 and 2015, the four novels follow Elena Greco and Lila Cerullo over the course of their sixty-years-long friendship. The world of the Neapolitan Novels have changed our reading lives, and the way in which we understand authorship and translation. My Brilliant Friend, the first novel in the series, topped The New York Times Book Review list of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. A television adaptation directed by Saverio Costanzo has garnered critical acclaim, and Ferrante’s success has created renewed interest in the writing of Italian female authors.
The Translation Table at the Feminist Library, Florence, 2025
The Translation Table, our reading group dedicated to translated literature and literature about translation, is running a special series of events at the Biblioteca Femminista, in Florence. Held in a historic feminist space in the city, and directly supporting its work, the focus of our discussion is the complex ideas surrounding the translation of literature. Our group is made up of poets, professional translators, students, and folk that enjoy reading translated literature. Moving between Italian and English, our conversations have focused on four works we chose with love:
Chronicles of a Heartache - four seminars on Elena Ferrante’s standalone novels
Chronicles of a Heartache is our series of four seminars that took place over the summer of 2024. Each session explores one of Ferrante’s standalone novels: Troubling Love (L'amore molesto), The Days of Abandonment (I giorni dell'abbandono), The Lost Daughter (La figlia oscura), and The Lying Life of Adults (La vita bugiarda degli adulti).
Translation Table - Diamela Eltit, ‘Never Did the Fire’ (trans. by Daniel Hahn) and Daniel Hahn, ‘Catching Fire’.
Never Did the Fire is a peculiar novel, full of ambiguity, strangeness and repetitions.
Eltit’s experimental style has, throughout her career, gone hand in hand with her political commitment: elements of it, for example its ambiguity and strangeness, seem to have even been instrumental, at times, to bypass the censorship. How to translate this language, so embedded in its time and circumstances?
Translation Table - Sharon Dodua Otoo, ‘Ada’s Realm’ (trans. by Jon Cho-Polizzi) and Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, ‘The Language of Languages’
As a consequence of colonialism, the relationship between languages is often a hierarchical one. In "The Language of Languages", Kenyan writer Ngūgī Wa Thiong'o addresses this issue from a variety of points of view, and ultimately suggests the idea of a network of languages instead, with translation at its centre, where "all languages end up giving to and taking from each other, laying the groundwork for a complex independence and interdependence within and between cultures". While this might be only something we can dream about for now, it is without a doubt a great way to think about translation and its future. This idea is also explored by Jon Cho-Polizzi, translator of Ada's Realm: "On a historical scale, translation is intrinsically tied to projects of colonisation – attempts to extract greater profit or maintain structures of power through controlling access to the language and culture of the colonised subject." Translation theory itself, Cho-Polizzi states, has historically been a eurocentric discipline which should be decentralised.
Translation Table - Shushan Avagyan, ‘A Book, Untitled’ (trans. Deanna Cachoian-Schanz) and ‘Violent Phenomena’ (ed. Kavita Bhanot and Jeremy Tiang)
To read A Book, Untitled is no mean feat. On both levels - that of Avagyan’s original writing, and through Cachoian-Schanz’s translation, Book or Girq (as it is known) asks its readers to accept the uncomfortable feeling of not being able to always understand what is going on, or to be sure of whose voice we are reading.
Translation Table - Mireille Gansel, ‘Translation as Transhumance’ (trans. Ros Schwartz) and Yoko Tawada, ‘Scattered All Over the Earth’ (trans. Margaret Mitsutani)
Both Yoko Tawada’s Scattered All Over The Earth (tr. Margaret Mitsutani) and Mireille Gansel’s Translation as Transhumance (tr. Ros Schwartz) deal with the idea that language and identity are interconnected and able to create, transform, and mould each other in response to life experiences. Each writer reflects on experiences of forced displacement, either personal or fictional, and through these works they explore what it means to lose one’s native language and be forced to rebuild one’s self around, and through, an entirely new one.
Translation Table - Kate Briggs' 'This Little Art'
This Little Art is a dense, bold and thought-provoking essay which explores translation in a very personal, heartfelt way. It can be a great introduction to complex ideas about translation as it makes the reader feel intimately involved in the translator’s world.