{"id":2275,"date":"2023-02-28T11:00:42","date_gmt":"2023-02-28T11:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/?p=2275"},"modified":"2023-02-28T11:00:42","modified_gmt":"2023-02-28T11:00:42","slug":"its-been-a-while","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2023\/02\/28\/its-been-a-while\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s been a while…"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been a good few months now since I last posted anything here, and I\u2019m sorry for the long silence. Since I started this blog in 2018, I think the longest gap between posts up until now has been a couple of weeks, even during the madness of the Covid lockdown almost three years ago. So I wanted to try to return to some kind of rhythm, starting by explaining why things have gone quiet (and ending with a round-up of recent reads!)<\/p>\n

This time last year, I felt that I had reached a stage where I was just churning out reviews, in a way that was great in the sense of talking about lots of great books, but not as mindful as I have always tried to make this project. It was also taking its toll on me \u2013 every week I was reading one book while writing about another I\u2019d read a few weeks previously, and I was starting to lose both the enjoyment that has always fuelled what I do here and the sense that I was making any real kind of difference. I took some time to think about what I wanted Translating Women to be\/ do going forward, and wrote about<\/a> my misgivings that in not slowing down to reflect and recalibrate on an ongoing basis I was becoming part of a problem instead of part of a solution.<\/p>\n

I thought that after that I\u2019d have so much to write about, to share thoughts on, and to review. And I do\u2026 but I haven\u2019t been able to do the regular writing. The main reason for this is what I think is usually described as \u201cburnout\u201d \u2013 three years on from the moment when a global pandemic changed our lives, it doesn\u2019t feel that things have slowed down or become more manageable. The demands and pressures alter, but don\u2019t reduce. I don\u2019t want to start listing those pressures here \u2013 I feel very aware that I am privileged just to be able to write this, that I am not living in a warzone, that my home has not been razed by an earthquake, that I still have employment in a time of recession. And so my struggles to write regular blog posts while all that is going on in the world seems like a relatively insignificant problem, even if it\u2019s one I didn\u2019t want to ignore.<\/p>\n

I have a half-written post on my favourite books of 2022 that I still hope to finish and share with you (yes, I know 2022 is rapidly fading to a distant memory, but there were still some great books!) \u2013 one way or another, I\u2019ll write about those books here. And maybe \u201cslow writing\u201d is the way forward, because it gets away from the focus on new releases \u2013 don\u2019t get me wrong, I love new releases (and there are some 2023 releases I\u2019m very excited about, which ideally would have been another blog post!), but that doesn\u2019t mean that if I haven\u2019t already read or written about something that was published last year, it should fall off the end of my list. I also want to talk to you about my translation of Darina Al Joundi\u2019s Marseillaise My Way<\/em>, the sequel to The Day Nina Simone Stopped Singing<\/em><\/a>, about my new (well, no longer that new, but I refer you to the previous paragraph!) book on activism in translation and publishing<\/a>, and about English PEN’s brilliant digital publishing initiative PEN Presents<\/a>, which I am immensely honoured to be involved with.<\/p>\n

So I hope to get back to some kind of rhythm here \u2013 perhaps not as regular as in previous years, but without the long silence of the past months. In the meantime, here are some of the things I\u2019ve been reading and doing:<\/p>\n

I went to see the theatrical adaptation of Olga Tokarczuk\u2019s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead<\/a> <\/em>(based on Antonia Lloyd-Jones\u2019s translation for Fitzcarraldo Editions) and it was excellent. I always loved the narrator, Mrs Duszejko, and she is brilliantly brought to life onstage \u2013 the production captured all of the injustice and intrigue, but also all of the humour. (I have to thank Katie Brown<\/a> for organising our trip \u2013 without her I likely wouldn\u2019t even have realised that Drive Your Plow <\/em>was coming to Bristol!)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Ave Barrera\u2019s The Forgery<\/a> <\/em>(translated by Ellen Jones and Robin Myers for Charco Press and published last year) was a magnificent start to my year\u2019s reading \u2013 I was completely swept away by the story of a down-on-his-luck painter brought into a shady underworld of obscene privilege and finding himself trapped both physically and psychologically. The translation was so lexically rich and peppered with understated irony \u2013 I would love to know more about how Jones and Myers navigated the co-translation.<\/p>\n

I finally read (in French) Nina Bouraoui\u2019s Tous les hommes d\u00e9sirent naturellement savoir<\/a><\/em>: I\u2019ve been reading Bouraoui\u2019s work for 20 years now, and this one felt like a powerful and near-flawless culmination of everything I read of hers in the early 2000s. It\u2019s available in translation by Aneesa Abbas Higgins (Penguin, 2021)<\/a> and well worth a read whether or not you already know Bouraoui\u2019s work. I also did an online event in November with Nina and Aneesa to launch Nina\u2019s latest novel Satisfaction <\/em>in Aneesa\u2019s translation for H\u00e9lo\u00efse Press \u2013 I\u2019m hoping a recording will be available on YouTube soon, and will share it here if so!<\/p>\n

A book I abandoned: Dorthe Nors\u2019s Wild Swims<\/a><\/em>, translated by Misha Hoekstra (Pushkin Press, 2020). I just couldn\u2019t get into any of these short stories, and about half-way through decided to stop. I\u2019ve tried reading Nors before (Mirror, Shoulder, Signal<\/em>, same translator and publisher, from 2017 I think) and struggled with it then too. All the reviews I’ve seen of her work are very positive though, so I guess I\u2019m just missing something!<\/p>\n

Thank you as always for reading \u2013 I hope to be back with more translation talk soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been a good few months now since I last posted anything here, and I\u2019m sorry for the long silence. Since I started this blog in 2018, I think the longest gap between posts up until now has been a couple of weeks, even during the madness of the Covid lockdown almost three years ago. 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