English Episodes

How far do you go to translate the work that you seriously loved? In the case of Jon Fosse, the Norwegian author, the extraordinaire Damion Searls - learnt Norwegian to bring Fosse to the anglophone world.

Here is Damion Searls - talking about Jon Fosse and translating his new book ‘A Shining’.

For people who live in twin cities - Akshara Book stores have a few copies of ‘A Shining’ and ‘Aliss at the fire’ both masterfully translated by Damion Searls.

On 25th December you can have the Full 92...

(00:06) Introduction to Mike Fu and His Translation Journey

(01:06) Welcoming Mike Fu to the Podcast

(01:19) Exploring the Life and Works of Taiwanese Writer, Sanmao

(03:23) Introduction to the Book, Stories of Sahara

(06:18) Understanding the Chinese Language and Its Variants

(08:16) Mike Fu's Journey into Translation

(09:54) The Journey of Translating 'Stories of the Sahara'

(12:17) Mike Fu's Involvement with ALTA Mentorship

(14:04) Mike Fu's Work with Shanghai Literary Review

(16:25)...

(00:06) Introduction and Background of Simon Wickham Smith

(01:35) Simon's Introduction to Mongolian, Tibetan, and Manchu Languages

(06:13) Simon's Encounter with Mongolian Literature and Culture

(10:17) Simon's Meditation Practice

(12:45) Introduction to Mongolia and Its Sociopolitical Situation

(17:07) Overview of Contemporary Mongolian Literature

(22:35) Simon's Translation Works: Politics and Literature in Mongolia

(30:05) Simon's Translation Works: The Secret Life of Sixth Dalai Lama...

(00:07) Introduction to Greybees and its Author

(01:47) Background

(01:55) Early Life and Influences

(05:35) Journey into English Language and Literature

(07:23) Living in Hollywood: Impact on Literary Temperament

(12:10) Approach to Translating Prose and Poetry

(15:56) Mentors and Collaborators

(20:32) Experience as an Editor and Reviewer

(32:23) Discussion on the Novel 'Greybees'

(44:46) Reading from 'Greybees'

(47:02) Conclusion of the Podcast

The novel 'Grey Bees' is one of the mo...

(00:06) Introduction to Jenny Bhatt

(01:37) Jenny's Early Writing Journey

(03:49) Transition from Engineering to Writing

(07:00) Challenges of Balancing Work and Writing

(08:55) Turning Point: From Engineer to Full-Time Writer

(10:18 )Journey to Getting Published

(19:59) The Art of Translation

(26:27) Teaching Creative Writing

(32:05) Desi Books: A Platform for South Asian Literature

(45:36) The Intricacies of Book Promotion and Literary Awards

(47:08) The Art of Writing and Publishing...

(00:02) Introduction to Christina Kramer

(00:39) Journey as a Language Learner

(04:31) Teaching Career

(07:26) Introduction to Macedonian Language

(08:49) Work on Macedonian Grammar

(09:58) Contemporary Literature and Writing in Macedonian

(11:57) Christina's Transition from Linguist to Translator

(15:34) Translation Workflow and Challenges

(16:55) 'Freud's Sister'

(19:54) 'Bai Ganyo, Incredible Tales of Modern Bulgarian'

(23:03) 'Fear of Barbarians'

(27:57) Translation Choices and Ch...

(00:06) Introduction and Background of Sevinc Turkon

Sevinc Turkon earned a Ph....

(01:35) Sevinc's Multilingual Background and Journey into Translations

You know Turkish, Bulgarian, and German....

(04:12) Sevinc's PhD Dissertation and the Need for Multiple Translations

Your PhD dissertation was about the need for multiple translations....

(09:34) Sevinc's Experience Teaching Orhan Pamuk's Works

You wrote a book on teaching the works of Orhan Pamuk....

(17:40) Sevinc's Insights on Contem...

(00:08) Introduction to Karin Tidbeck

(01:20) Karin's Journey into Storytelling

(02:42) Karin's Fascination with Speculative Fiction

(05:37) Influences and Inspirations

(07:36) Exploring the Jagannath Collection

(07:58) Character Development and Role-Playing Games

(09:17) Karin's Experience in the Gaming Industry

(16:22) Challenges of Self-Translation

(19:19) The Creative Process Behind Jagannath

(33:06) The Story Behind the Title 'Jagannath'

(39:51) Insights into Contemporary Swedish ...

Robin Myers is a Prolific Spanish-to-English translator. Her latest book-length translations include In Vitro by Isabel Zapata (2023), The Book of Explanations by Tedi López Mills (2022), and Copy by Dolores Dorantes (2022); her translations have appeared in Granta, The Baffler, Kenyon Review, The Common, Harvard Review, Two Lines, Waxwing, and elsewhere.

A 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellow, she was longlisted twice for the 2022 National Translation Award in poetry and amo...

Sebastian Schulman is a writer, editor, and literary translator from Yiddish, Esperanto, and other languages. His translations and original work have appeared in over a dozen literary journals, including Two Lines, Words Without Borders, and ANMLY. His translation of Spomenka Stimec’s Esperanto-language novel Croatian War Nocturnal was published by Phoneme Media/Deep Vellum in 2017. After several years as the executive director of the leading Yiddish arts and culture organization KlezKanada, Seb...

Max Lawton is a translator, novelist, and musician. He received his BA in Russian Literature and Culture from Columbia University and his MPhil from Queen’s College, Oxford, where he wrote a dissertation comparing Céline and Dostoevsky. He has translated many books by Famous Russian Writer, Vladimir Sorokin and is currently translating works by Antonio Moresco, Michael Lenz, and French writer Celine. He is writing his doctoral dissertation on phenomenology and the twentieth-century novel at Colu...

Lara Vergnaud is a translator of prose, creative nonfiction, and scholarly works from the French. She received two PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants, a French Voices Grand Prize, and the French-American Foundation Translation Prize. Her translations include novels by Zahia Rahmani, Fatima Daas, Ahmed Bouanani, Mohamed Leftah, Franck Bouysse, and Joy Sorman.

In this episode, Lara talked about her work, Indie Presses and Translation as an intimate experience.

To read some really wonderful article...

For over 25 years, Leah Janeczko has been an Italian-to-English translator of fiction for all ages. Originally from Chicago, Leah has lived in Milan since 1991. Her recent translations include Glowrushes by Roberto Piumini, nominee for the 2024 Hans Christan Andersen Award; the Women at Hitler’s Table by Rosella Postorino; and Lost on Me by Veronica Raimo.

In this episode, Leah talked about her journey into translations, her translation of The Women at Hitler’s Table, and her love for translati...

Sung Ryu is a Korean-English translator who calls South Korea, the US, Canada, and Singapore home. Her translations include Tower by Bae Myung-hoon (Honford Star, 2021), Shoko’s Smile by Choi Eunyoung (Penguin Books, 2021), I’m Waiting for You: And Other Stories by Kim Bo-Young (co-translated with Sophie Bowman, Harper Voyager, 2021), and the Korean edition of Grandma Moses: My Life’s History (Suo Books, 2017) by Anna Mary Robertson Moses.

In this conversation, she spoke about the book she tran...

Christy Lefteri holds a PhD in creative writing from Brunel University, where she was a lecturer for many years. She is the author of Songbirds and the international bestseller The Beekeeper of Aleppo, which won the Aspen Words Literary Prize and was the runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

In this episode she spoke about influences on her writing, Themes she is drawn to and about making of the new novel ' The Book of Fire'.

To buy 'The book of Fire' -

https://amzn.to/46tiUVY

* For...

Owen Good is a Northern Irish translator of Hungarian poetry and prose. Good is the translator of Krisztina Tóth’s short story collection ‘Pixel’, Zsolt Lang’s ‘The Birth of Emma K’. His translations have been published in Modern Poetry in Translation and The Poetry Review. He also co-edits Continental Literary magazine and Hungarian Literature Online. He teaches translations too.

His rendition of Krisztina Tóth’s work received Close Approximations Prize and was nominated for the TA First Trans...

Michael Katz is the C. V. Starr Professor Emeritus of Russian and East European Studies at Middlebury College. His published research includes numerous articles and two books, The Literary Ballad in Early Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature (1976) and Dreams and the Unconscious in Nineteenth-Century Russian Literature (1984). A prolific translator, he has made a number of works available for English language readers, including prose by Tolstoy, Turgenev, Sleptsov, Jabotinsky, and others.

His ...

Today on the eve of International Translation Day, We have Will Evans with us on Harshaneeyam. Will studied Russian Literature in college and, with a mission to bring Quality Translations from across the world to readers, Started Deep Vellum Publishing and set up a book house in Dallas, Texas, in 2013, when there were no independent shops selling books in the city.

Today after Ten years, Deep Vellum sales cracked $1 million. It has published over 1,000 books in 70 languages by authors from 100 ...

In the ongoing series of conversations we are having with Translators from Across the world, Today, we are talking to Dr Mariam Rahmani writer and Translator about her first book-length translation of the contemporary Iranian cult hit novel ‘In Case of Emergency ‘ by Mahsa Mohebali, written originally in Farsi. It was named the Best Book of 2022 by The New Yorker. Her debut novel, Liquid, is forthcoming from Algonquin Books in 2025.

Rahmani holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from UCLA and an...

Quyen Nguyen-Hoang is a writer, translator and art curator born in Vietnam. Her poems and translations have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Jacket 2, the Margins, and various literary anthologies. She is a Stanford University graduate, a 2020 PEN/Heim Translation grant recipient and a winner of the Winter/Spring 2022 Gabo Prize for Literature in Translation. She is pursuing a PhD at Stanford University.

Chronicles of a Village is set in an anonymous Vietnamese village based on the author’s persona...

Ann Goldstein has been an editor and the head of copy desk at New Yorker Magazine. She worked for the magazine for over 40 years. She has translated works of Famous Italian Writers like Elena Ferrante and Paolo Pasolini. She is the editor of The Complete Works of Primo Levi in English. She has received a Guggenheim fellowship, the PEN Renato Poggioli prize, and awards from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She was the panel chair for translated...

In the ongoing series of Conversations we are having with reputed translators from across the world - we have with us today Dr Uilleam Blacker, who is an Associate Professor of Ukrainian and East European Culture at University College London.

In this episode, We can hear him talking about his translations, contemporary Ukrainian Literature, how the ongoing war affected Writers, the book,' Life Went On Anyway' and its author, Oleg Sentsov.

Dr.Uilleam Black is the author of 'Memory, the City and...

In this episode, Anurag Basnet speaks about his stint in the publishing industry, his love for translations and his much-lauded work ‘ Fruits of the Barren Tree’, which is translated from the award-winning Nepali novel ‘Phoolange’ written by author Lekhnath Chetri.

‘Fruits of the Barren Tree’ depicts the plight of an ordinary man caught in the Gorkhaland movement of the late 1980s, which focused on creating a separate state out of the Darjeeling region. It is the story of a failed campaign and ...

Today, Award-winning Translator and editor Daniel Hahn is talking about his approach to translations, Evaluating a work of translation and his translation of the Portuguese novel 'Resistance' by Julian Fuks.


Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor, and translator with around a hundred books to his credit. His work includes translations from Europe, Africa, and the Americas (encompassing fiction, nonfiction, children’s books, and plays) and many nonfiction books, including The Oxford Companion to Chil...