Translations of Rumi raise questions not only about faithfulness to the original but also who is or is not entitled to try their hand.
translation
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A Freewheeling Translation of Dante’s Purgatorio
Mary Jo Bang’s interpretation updates this 14th-century poem for 20th-century readers.
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A Story of Sentences: Nanni Balestrini’s Ever-Changing Novel
Tristano, the most recently translated book by the Italian poet and novelist Nanni Balestrini may come as a surprise to those who know him through his two previously translated works of fiction, The Unseen and Sandokan.
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War Elephants and Pious Cats: Basil Bunting’s Persian Poems
The recent death of William Weaver, the acclaimed translator of Italo Calvino, Umberto Eco, Primo Levi and other modern Italian authors, spurred memories of the translation class he taught at Columbia University back in the late 1970s. A small group of students listened attentively to his thoughts about how best to go about rendering the literature of another culture into English.
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“Eye-Voices, a Choir”: New Translations of Paul Celan
The Romanian-born, German-speaking Paul Celan is one of the most translated poets in recent decades, and we’re still not through with him.