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Photo of Dust Breeding, by Man Ray, ca. 1920, by Liquid Liquid / Flickr.comOur columnist looks back through the centuries to rekindle our fascination with dust. Using the word itself as her p…
Veronica Esposito
Pages from the Voynich Manuscript by IanDagnall Computing / Alamy.comWhat does it say about our society that we are so fascinated by an object that seems to retain a meaning that nobody on earth can a…
August 13, 2024Can translation make us mentally healthier? Can adding new words to the English language somehow increase the amount of positive emotions that we experience on earth? This, in short, is the argument l…
Photo by Karolina Grabowska / Pexels.comFrom the missing work of Sappho to Lucy Ellmann’s thousand-page, stream-of-consciousness novel Ducks, Newburyport, our columnist considers the linguistic, cultu…
Photo by ink drop / Stock.adobe.comGoing back to the medieval period, the word besa is a small word with large implications throughout Albanian society, from law to literature to history. And in a wor…
April 3, 2024Photo by Katie Barrett / UnsplashIn her ongoing column about untranslatable words, Veronica Esposito here considers the Dutch concept of niksen—to do nothing. But is niksen really somethi…
Photos of Handley Cellars Painted Mural at the AV Historical Museum courtesy of Courtney DeGraff / Anderson Valley Winegrowers Association / avwines.comIn her column for this issue, Veronica Esposito…
February 6, 2024Photo by New Africa / Adobestock.comIn her column Untranslatable, Veronica Esposito considers why various words are so difficult to translate. Here, she considers how hygge presents an in…
Photo of Kim Yuna, courtesy of UPI / Alamy Stock Photo / Molly Riley Is this idea of mass frustration distinctly Korean, or is it more international in scope? In her ongoing column on untranslatable…
October 19, 2023Photo by Enrique / stock.adobe.comIn her ongoing column of untranslatable words, Veronica Esposito considers the Japanese art of wabi-sabi and how its iconic image of an aged, cracked bow…
Photo courtesy of Castle Rock Entertainment / RGR Collection / Alamy Stock PhotoFrom the Middle Ages to Seinfeld, schlemiel and schlimazel characters enjoy an interesting history. Veronica Esposito tr…
September 5, 2023In her column Untranslatable, Veronica Esposito considers why various words are so difficult to translate. Here, she looks at the famously difficult Tshilubà word ilunga and wonders what…
Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer (1817), oil on canvas, 119.5 x 99.5 x 9 cm bpk Bildagentur / Hamburger Kunsthalle, SHK / Elke Walford / Art Resource, NY What is sehnsucht…
In her new, ongoing column, Veronica Esposito highlights an untranslatable word—its history, its contemporary usage, and why it’s so hard to translate. To begin this new project, Esposito delves into…
Guadalupe Nettel, Samanta Schweblin, Mónica Ojeda, and other Latin American women writers are responding to themes that particularly speak to a younger, female audience—bodily autonomy, redefiniti…
Still from Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Lilies Films / Arte / Hold Up Films, 2019) What to make of the arrival of an LGBT period drama from the time of Louis XV into the twenty-first cent…
January 11, 2021Barbara Epler started working at New Directions after graduating from college in 1984, and she has been its president and publisher since 2011. In 2015 Poets & Writers…
December 6, 2020Since 2003, Jessica Cohen has published over twenty books translated from Hebrew to English. Among other honors, she shared the 2017 Man Booker International Prize with author David Grossman for…
October 27, 2020Ari Larissa Heinrich / Photo by Tara Pixley Ari Larissa Heinrich is the translator of Qiu Miaojin’s Last Words from Montmartre (New York Review Books) and Chi Ta-wei’s The Membranes…
Margaret Jull Costa is one of the most accomplished and decorated translators currently at work. A translator for over thirty years, she debuted with a translation of The Hero of the Big Hou…
August 31, 2020Yasmine Seale is a writer and literary translator living in Istanbul. Her essays, poetry, visual art, and translations from Arabic and French have appeared widely, including in Harper’s,…
June 22, 2020Photo by Camila Valdés Megan McDowell has translated many contemporary authors from Latin America and Spain, including Alejandro Zambra, Samanta Schweblin, an…
Bonnie Huie’s translations include Qiu Miaojin’s Notes of a Crocodile, which won the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize and was longlisted for the PEN Translation Prize. She is also th…
May 18, 2020Emma Ramadan is a literary translator based in Providence, Rhode Island, where she is the co-owner of Riffraff, a bookstore and bar. She is the recipient of an NEA Translation Fellowship, a PEN/H…
March 30, 2020John Keene is the author of Counternarratives, which received an American Book Award and the Republic of Consciousness Prize. He is also the recipient of a Lannan Literary Award and a Ma…
