If Not, Winter (Anne Carson’s translation of Sappho) & Enig Marcheur (Nicholas Richard’s translation of Riddley Walker)

The guy who got famous betting against the housing market in 2007 just before that bubble burst - played by Christian Bale jn “The Big Short” - just wagered $1 billion on the collapse of the AI boom. www.wsj.com/livecoverage...

"Don't do it with publication in mind, don't do it for posterity, don't do it for the likes…Just write for the sake of it. Write to see what your own thoughts look like when you force them into sentences" Joan Westenberg on how regular writing debugs cognition www.joanwestenberg.com/p/why-you-sh...

You want a special Halloween early-voting sticker, don’t you? Go vote Mamdani before the polls close at 4!!! 🎃

A way to have a good weekend is to go to a local bookstore this afternoons and buy something random and counterintuitive from the staff picks shelf, and spend the next two days reading it.

Building up: The annual replastering of the Djinguereber Mosque, also known as Djingareyber, in Timbuktu. It was erected in the 14th century during the reign of Mansa Kankou Moussa and is 700 years old. Photo: Hameye Capii/AFP

🇦🇺Australian doctor Nada Abu Alrub volunteering in Gaza City writes: “Today’s shift cannot be written down; not even in a hundred years could words capture how horrific it was; not even in the worst imagination of any human being. So, I’ll only write this: This Was The Worst Day Of The Genocide...

If being anti-fascist is "antiamerican" then supporting America is __________?

Such a weird feeling to know that On the Calculation of Volume 6 just came out in Danish a month ago—and NOT want to know anything about it

More than 50,000 Palestinians have been left homeless in less than a week due to “large-scale destruction” caused by Israeli attacks across Gaza City, according to Gaza’s Civil Defence. 🔴 LIVE updates: aje.io/eb39up

Aww, this makes my heart so full! JELLYFISH HAVE NO EARS has been longlisted for @littranslate.bsky.social's National Translation Award! literarytranslators.org/awards/2025-...

@jeremytiang.bsky.social: "It’s not an either/or. I commend you, Jacques, for paying your translators well, but you could do that and put our names on the front cover." —On Translation: Como Conversazione VI (Passing Judgment)

Authors: If you found out that your publisher(s) failed to register with the U.S. Copyright Office, we can help. We provide ongoing legal assistance to our members and advocate for their work, particularly in the face of ongoing AI-related theft.

"All of the translators in this conversation, for reasons of temperament and structure, seem to have a masochistic relationship to their work. But as in masochism, the pain is a kind of pleasure, too." —On Translation: Como Conversazione III (Shame, Seams, Scars)

This feels like a spot of good news www.sciencedaily.com/releases/202...

I'm starting a movement. Every time you, or someone you know, gives AI agency, replace it with "Big Tech". See for example: "Big Tech" is killing my job. "Big Tech" is reading my CT scan. "Big Tech" is writing my paper. I asked "Big Tech" to be my girlfriend. Maybe that will speed up regulation.

Just finished ANIMA FATUA by Ana Lidia Vega Serova, tr. @robmunb.bsky.social and pub. @amaurea-press.bsky.social 🕊️ I’ve never read a book like this: it traces the story of a young Cuban-Russian girl growing up in the USSR. Brutal, tender & utterly memorable. Wonderful translation, Robin! 🪆🪆🪆

Do you think Medusa could stay underwater forever if she used her hair like little snake snorkels? My guess is that each hair snake would probably have its own little respiratory system and it wouldn’t be enough to oxygenate a full Medusa, but this is an important conversation to have

with alt text CIA approved tactics for populations under hostile occupation

In 2016, before Trump secured the GOP nomination, the Boston Globe made a fictional dystopian front page of what a nightmare world it would be if Trump won. And those just pretty much are our actual headlines now.

A friend recently said "I used ChatGPT to look up (I forget what exactly)." My look of disbelief followed by my "You did what?" completely caught them off guard. Like, people just think "well, it's there so that's what we're supposed to use." Kat hit it here. The sycophantic sentience is the drug.

Few if any experts know more about the deliberate use of starvation as a war crime than Alex de Waal. If he says it's happening, it's so.

il n'est d'idées que dans les choses

"There were empty pools, as old as time itself, where the memory of water still lingered." —Karim Kattan, EDEN AT DAWN

The first time Charlie Chaplin used his voice in a film, he wielded it to forcefully condemn the rising forces of fascism around the globe. Will we listen to his words today?

"You can see that Roosevelt's [New Deal works programs for discontented young men] are immediately defusing rightwing threats, *which is what Roosevelt means them to do.*" [emph me] I went back to this 2021 podcast w/ @rauchway.bsky.social It's so relevant. 1/ deepcast.fm/episode/...

Oh my gosh!!! 🪼💙🪼💙🪼💙!!!

“A 2010 study that analyzed 40 years of protest coverage in five major newspapers, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, found that the papers depicted protests — even peaceful ones — as nuisances rather than as necessary functions of democracy.”

When we negotiate fair terms for ourselves, we negotiate fair terms for all translators. Be wary of work-for-hire, and of working with editors/authors/agents who don't believe translators are part of a book's success.

Anima Fatua — Anna Lidia Vega Serova (tr. @robmunb.bsky.social ) minorliteratures.com/2025/05/27/a...

Historic news! Chagossians can finally go home to most of their homeland now that the UK + Mauritius have signed a treaty for the Chagos Islands and the US military base on Diego Garcia. Here are the 11 most important things to know: www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

Interviewer: can you explain this gap in your resume Me, a translator: The gap is also present in the original

This book is SO GOOD. If you'll allow a bookseller comparison moment, it's THE LEOPARD of now. Architecture as nation & memory, a deeply melancholy & beauty, an unusual novel centred on the profundity of ambivalence. And @jmz.bsky.social's translation is a rare justification of the word lapidary.

“Salt has no scent. What you smell is decomposing algae.” A decade ago, Karim Kattan wrote a short story set in Gaza. The translation I did is now live on @thedialmag.bsky.social and it rings so differently today. Read and reflect on the coruscating thing here: www.thedial.world/articles/lit...

This is the most powerful thing The Guardian has published in years. “In order to make earthly planetary survival possible, some versions of this world need to end.”

In times of dread and despair, hope and encouragement matter. As such, the news that this year's French-American Foundation Translation Prize jury has named my translation of Adèle Rosenfeld's JELLYFISH HAVE NO EARS as a finalist is especially moving… myemail.constantcontact.com/Translation-...

On #worldpoetryday, we are delighted to announce the publication of our forthcoming poetry collection, The Posthumous Book of Shahrazad, the English translation by @robmunb.bsky.social of @raquelmenendez.bsky.social's El llibru póstumu de Sherezade (Impronta, 2017), originally written in Asturian!

Read the piece — and its heart-wrenching preamble — in a quiet place.

my brain right now

I *love* Adèle Rosenfeld's hilarious imagination and biting social critique, and her story THE HEARING-AID BRIGADE was such a treat to translate for @wwborders.bsky.social! wordswithoutborders.org/read/article...

my brain right now

hello to this book and this book only ❤️‍🔥

see no evil / hear no evil / speak no evil

my brain right now

Peruvian artist Claudia Martinez Garay talks about a different notion of time: "the Aymara people say that you will never know the future, so that's why it's in the back, behind you. In front of you is the past, because you know that..." (cont)

I'm deeply honored to be named a 2025 NEA Translation Fellow! I'll be working on the extraordinary Palestinian novelist Karim Kattan's EDEN AT DAWN, a gay Song of Songs set in a sandstorm-snarled Jerusalem and narrated by the sky itself. www.arts.gov/impact/liter...

JUST PUBLISHED: It has been the honor of my career to co-author "Queer, HIV+ and Running Out of Medication in Gaza" with Afeef Nessouli @theintercept.com —a story about Palestine, AIDS, genocide, and an extraordinary survivor named E.S. Please read & share. theintercept.com/2025/01/13/i...

“My roots, my words remain Mauritian. Even when I set a novel elsewhere, this connection stays present and alive,” [Ananda Devi] said. She also underscored that “we remain under the yoke of colonization…” www.lemauricien.com/le-mauricien...

One unexpected thing in my qualitative study w natural scientists (one-hour interviews) is how deeply, deeply sad the climate scientists are. They say things like "you have enough information from us, why won't anyone act?" -- the psychological distress these people are enduring is very great.