Welcome to Hopscotch Translation

Across our (still unfurling) conversations we’ve been circling (like an asymptotic dog about to sit but never quite sitting) a series of questions about how languages can co-habit space in multilingual texts. We’ve inherited certain choices as “correct” or “default”—we’re curious about how to make these defaults visible as choices while also imagining what other possibilities might exist… READ MORE

Wherever Lyamlahy uses the word ‘mémorial’ in the original, Schwartz translates it as ‘requiem’ to echo the title she has chosen—a quiet but profound act of coherence that knits the English version into itself, giving it its own internal logic. This is not translation as mere transference. It is translation as co-authorship, as architecture… READ MORE

Being your own translator means you can act on what the dissection reveals. I felt a constant urge to modify certain parts, not to correct the original but to deepen it. Gradually the Greek became an original in its own right, and parts of the French, in turn, became translations of it. Little by little, neither version was quite the original anymore. In the end I might say that both versions are originals… READ MORE

Seeing how underground interest persisted and grew despite overt reprimands, the modern Turkish translation has sought to restore historical balance. It suggests that societies do not move linearly from “repressed” to “free.” Still, to many readers, these works appeared “foreign,” while their source material was perceived as borrowed. Readers often expressed disbelief at what their predecessors at the empire’s edge engaged with, such as cuckolding, lesbianism, impotence, and nymphomania… READ MORE