Hegan: The New Male Vegan
It’s hard not to have fun when newspapers roll out with brand new words like the 2008 recessionista , the “style maven with a budget,” or, more recently, the femivore, a stay-at-home mother who finds empowerment through feeding her family organic and locally sourced food. The latest neologism is hegan. This week, the Boston Globe […]
2010 Oscar Nominations for Foreign Language Films
The 82nd annual Oscar Awards are coming up, and while most people have their eyes on the Best Picture or Best Actor/Actress nominations, I’ve got my eyes on the Best Foreign Language film list. As usual, five feature length films were nominated — Ajami, El Secreto de Sus Ojos, The Milk of Sorrow, Un Prophète, […]
Catcher in the Rye in Translation
When news of J.D. Salinger’s death was reported late Wednesday afternoon, I was surprised, but then not. Despite being one of the most recognized American authors of the twentieth century, Salinger was also one of the most reclusive. After being thrown into the limelight in 1951 with Catcher in the Rye, Salinger moved to a […]
Hmong Hunting in Translation
Ever since I wrote about the Hmong language in A Note on Hmong Language and Culture, I’ve noticed more and more news items regarding the Hmong people. Maybe it’s just the kind of situation where the Hmong have always been written about and it wasn’t till I was made aware of it that they seemed […]
The Cherokee Language: Can it be Translated?
Last summer while I was researching various journals on translation testing methods, I constantly ran across articles mentioning the difficulty surrounding Cherokee language testing, specifically in the Bilingual Education Program. Although I don’t have the articles anymore, the gist was that under several testing programs it was nearly impossible to create an equal English language […]
Literacy in India & the Jaipur Literature Festival
When the 2nd UN Arab Human Development Report was released last year, I discovered some sobering facts regarding literacy in Arab states. With statistics like 65 million illiterate people in a region composed of 22 countries or “the total number of books translated into Arabic during the 1,000 years since the age of Caliph Al-Ma’moun […]
Poetry in Translation: Revolutionary Verse?
Language Hat posted a translation today of the Russian blogger Anatoly’s thoughts on free verse, specifically regarding Russian poetry. Anatoly writes: There is just such a Problem standing before scholars of literature, a large and natural one: to explain the transition of almost all world poetry to free verse during the 20th century. The rare […]
New Netherlands Translation Project
New York—home of the Big Apple, the state of opportunity, a region far more diverse than many others—is more than just New York City with its Chinatown, Little Italy, and the Bronx, a place peopled by hundreds of different cultures—it is also the historic New Netherland, the remainder of a large and powerful Dutch colony […]
Happy Hanukkah! or Chanukah! or Chanukkah?:How to Spell The Festival of Lights
Today at sundown marks the beginning of Hanukkah, the eight day Jewish Festival of Lights. Instituted to celebrate the rededication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, the festival is observed by lighting the eight candles in a menorah, eating, the recitation of scripture, and the giving of gifts. Coincidently it’s also one of the primary […]
Translation as Curation
Last week when I read an article in the New York Times discussing the first full-length Hebrew translation of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan—a translation which appeared only last month. “While the first two parts have long been available in translation, the third and fourth parts — in which Hobbes addresses religion and the state — had […]