Ahead of the workshop I’m giving for beginning literary translators at the Center for the Art of Translation and the Northern California Translators Association in San Francisco on March 20, I made this contribution to CAT’s Translator’s Toolkit series, which appears on their blog, Two Words:
A few years ago I attended ATA’s national conference—not a regular stop on my annual rounds—specifically to hear and meet Michele Berdy, an American expat who has lived in Moscow for decades and who writes a fine column for The Moscow Times explicating Russian vocabulary, idioms, and usage for English speakers. She was giving a workshop and delivering the Slavic Division’s keynote speech. Both performances were stellar, yielding multiple insights and new information but also a fabulous tidbit (assuming tidbits can be fabulous). Berdy told of a CD that collected vast quantities of Russian literature from the eleventh to the early twentieth century. Virtually everything by virtually every writer you ever have and haven’t heard of. And it was searchable.
For the whole article, click here.
The graphics used on this site were inspired by the work of Liubov Popova (1889-1924), a Russian artist and designer influenced by Constructivism and Futurism, as seen in her biography, by D.V. Sarabianov and N.L. Adaskina, Liubov Popova, translated by Marian Schwartz and published by Harry N. Abrams in 1990.