August 2021 Book Club Report: Samanta Schweblin’s Little Eyes
August 2021 Translated Literature Book Club Meeting I'm so grateful we could meet physically on the one-year anniversary of our book club and over a picnic at the beautiful green space at SMU at that. It was our first picnic and I think we pretty liked the idea and...
July 2021 Book Club Report: Mohamed Latiff Mohamed’s The Widower
July 2021 Translated Literature Book Club Meeting New restrictions kicked in last month because of the rise in COVID-19 cases, so we had to move our book club meeting online again. It was our second online meeting, and I guess we're slowly getting the hang of it. But...
Stella’s Translation Diary #2: Translation is Impossible
Translation is Impossible By Stella Kim Translation is impossible. That’s what I hear in the back of my head every time I sit down in front of my computer. Today I ponder what to do with Korean words, which, when translated into English, contain names of other...
June 2021 Book Club Report: Elena Ferrante’s The Lying Life of Adults
June 2021 Translated Literature Book Club Meeting We almost called off this month's book club meeting because of the two-person dine-in restriction, but one of the ladies had a brilliant idea of meeting at one of the benches at SMU...so there we were at a bench...
May 2021 Book Club Report: Fuminori Nakamura’s The Thief
May 2021 Translated Literature Book Club Meeting Harriett Press Book Club started after the Circuit Breaker lockdown in August last year, so we have been happily meeting physically for the past eight months. And for the first time in our book club's very young...
April 2021 Book Club Report: Eka Kurniawan’s Beauty is a Wound
April 2021 Translated Literature Book Club Meeting April has been such a hectic month that before the last Saturday of the month approached, three of us were already wondering if we would be able to finish reading Indonesian writer Eka Kurniawan's 470-page Beauty is a...
Lizzie’s Translation Diary #1: The Translation Process
The Translation Process By Lizzie Buehler When I began translating Korean literature six years ago, I felt very uncertain about the process of translation. I knew that I started with a Korean text, and my goal was to produce an elegant-sounding English equivalent...
March 2021 Book Club Report: Yeng Pway Ngon’s Unrest
March 2021 Translated Literature Book Club Meeting On the last Saturday of March, our book club met at Wisma Atria's Toast Box to discuss the late Singaporean writer Yeng Pway Ngon's Chinese-language novel Unrest, translated by Jeremy Tiang. Three of us had finished...
Stella’s Translation Diary #1: The Beginning
The Beginning By Stella Kim One of my favorite quotes about translation comes from Umberto Eco: “Translation is the art of failure.” No matter how well something is translated, it can never capture the original text in its entirety. This quote lingers in my head as I...
Hannah’s Translation Diary #1: The Rewards of Keeping a Translation Diary
The Rewards of Keeping a Translation Diary By Hannah Pang The idea of keeping a translation diary first took root in my mind when I came across Daniel Hahn’s translation diary on Charco Press’s blog in January this year. Hahn is a British writer, editor and translator...