In the essay below, originally published in the online journal archphoto.it, the psychologist Calogero Lo Piccolo presents some immediate but psychically sensitive reflections on the current Italian experience of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as its political implications, tentatively approaching intimate issues of subjectivity while nevertheless attempting to regain a vanishing objectivity. Lo Piccolo takes a step back, as it were, even while the world imposes the need to throw one metre’s distance between everyone. The act of urgent translation here takes on a strange role in the combined and uneven undevelopment of the crisis. In translation, the “ambassadors” from the future to whom the title refers become twofold: not only the young men in Japan to whom Lo Piccolo himself refers, but also we here in Italy, who have the uncanny role of bringing a message from an imminent future to the United States and elsewhere, exploiting the fortnightly gap in time that we have all now learned falls between exposure and symptom.
- Richard Braude
I first came across Verónica Gerber Bicecci’s work while participating in the Art Omi: Writers Translation Lab with Daniel Saldaña París. In between working on the proofs of my translation of his novel Among Strange Victims, our conversations were a way of getting to know more about each other, and when I expressed my interest in using images and text in a form of semiotic translation, Daniel suggested that I should get in touch with Verónica. That introduction not only flowered into a firm friendship but also led to my translating Empty Set, and collaborating with Verónica on various other exciting projects, among which stands out Palabras Migrantes/Migrant Words, which started its life as a bilingual audio guide to an exhibition in Jackson Hole and was later published in book form with images from the exhibition by the amazing Mexican artisan publishers Impronta.
When Verónica sent me Almadía’s beautiful edition of Mudanza, from which the essay “Origami” is taken, I fell in love with its unique movement between personal narrative and the appropriation of the narratives of the other artist-writers whose works and lives the book addresses. Indeed, I remember that I spent an inordinately long time reading the essays as I was constantly either researching its “characters” or stopping to consider what I had just read.
Verónica Gerber Bicecci’s genius lies in her passion for communication, which has led her to explore the boundaries of language and its interface with the image to open new spaces for expression. As a translator, it is extremely exciting to have the opportunity to occupy those spaces.
- Christina MacSweeney
English | Essay | Ireland/United States
June, 2019To celebrate Pride Month and Stonewall 50, we’re dedicating the June issue of InTranslation to a folio of translated Russian LGBTQ+ literature entitled Life Stories, Death Sentences, co-edited by author Margarita Meklina and translator Anne O. Fisher.
In this first post, we're featuring Margarita Meklina's foreword to the folio. It's followed by posts containing four translators' English renderings of poetry and prose by eight authors writing in Russian, and an afterword by translator David Louden.
We hope you enjoy this important issue. If you live in the NYC area, please join us on Friday, June 14 for a special bilingual event at The Brooklyn Rail's Industry City headquarters, where we'll present recorded Russian readings by the folio authors and live English readings by the translators, along with commentary by noted scholars of Russian literature and gender/sexuality studies.
- Jen Zoble and Donald Breckenridge, InTranslation Co-Editors
English | Essay | United States
June, 2019Philippe Delerm’s writings have been referred to as récits, snapshots, and essays. Sixty-one brief essays—ranging from one to three pages each—comprise the 178-page Le trottoir au soleil ("Sidewalk in the Sun"). A book of essays may or may not contain a narrative arc, but Delerm’s has a definite beginning and end, and the scenes, reflections, and narratives throughout certainly transport the reader from one point to the next. Essays may be read and appreciated in any order, however.
In Le trottoir au soleil, Delerm is an observer who conveys multisensory scenes that become snapshots of thoughts, of a time of life—from childhood to grandfatherhood. Scenes—each essay could be called such—range from a man standing at a kitchen sink doing dishes and listening to the radio, to the same man observing provocative teenagers in a city park, to remembrances of childhood vacations in contrast to grandparents’ outings. Delerm takes a signature approach as he both demonstrates and advocates being a watcher.
In a conversation with publisher Gallimard printed in the liner notes of a CD of recordings of the essays, Delerm is asked about the fact that in these essays he puts himself in the role of observer, more than participant, and furthermore seems a bit withdrawn from life. Having recently turned sixty, Delerm responds that he feels increasingly transparent. Yet he cherishes this transparent onlooker role, which does indeed permeate the collection. His is not a passive gaze, however, but a penetrating curiosity about, reflection on, and celebration of living. The essays are in turn humorous, poignant, provocative.
- Ellen Sprague
100 Refutations | Essay | Poetry
July, 2018To conclude the 100 Refutations series, we offer you a final essay by Lina M. Ferreira C.-V.
– InTranslation editors
100 Refutations | Essay | Poetry
June, 2018Welcome to the fourteenth and final week (plus two days) of 100 Refutations. For one hundred days, we’re publishing a daily poem from one of the countries recently denigrated by the president of the United States. Lina M. Ferreira C.-V., who conceived and compiled the series and translated many of its poems, has been working tirelessly on this enormous project, with the help of several collaborators, since the president’s comments in January. We’re accompanying the daily poems with a weekly essay by Lina, and the fourteenth one is featured here.
– InTranslation editors
100 Refutations | Essay | Poetry
June, 2018Welcome to the thirteenth week of 100 Refutations. For one hundred days, we’re publishing a daily poem from one of the countries recently denigrated by the president of the United States. Lina M. Ferreira C.-V., who conceived and compiled the series and translated many of its poems, has been working tirelessly on this enormous project, with the help of several collaborators, since the president’s comments in January. We’re accompanying the daily poems with a weekly essay by Lina, and the thirteenth one is featured here.
– InTranslation editors
100 Refutations | Essay | Poetry
June, 2018Welcome to the twelfth week of 100 Refutations. For one hundred days, we’re publishing a daily poem from one of the countries recently denigrated by the president of the United States. Lina M. Ferreira C.-V., who conceived and compiled the series and translated many of its poems, has been working tirelessly on this enormous project, with the help of several collaborators, since the president’s comments in January. We’re accompanying the daily poems with a weekly essay by Lina, and the twelfth one is featured here.
– InTranslation editors
100 Refutations | Essay | Poetry
June, 2018Welcome to the eleventh week of 100 Refutations. For one hundred days, we’re publishing a daily poem from one of the countries recently denigrated by the president of the United States. Lina M. Ferreira C.-V., who conceived and compiled the series and translated many of its poems, has been working tirelessly on this enormous project, with the help of several collaborators, since the president’s comments in January. We’re accompanying the daily poems with a weekly essay by Lina, and the eleventh one is featured here.
– InTranslation editors
The Brooklyn Rail welcomes you to our web-exclusive section InTranslation, where we feature unpublished translations of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and dramatic writing. Published since April 2007, InTranslation is a venue for outstanding work in translation and a resource for translators, authors, editors, and publishers seeking to collaborate.
We seek exceptional unpublished English translations from all languages.
Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry: Manuscripts of no longer than 20 pages (double-spaced).
Plays: Manuscripts of no longer than 30 pages (in left-justified format).