Hi Lucy ! Thank you for joining me today. I have recently read The Phone Box at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina , which you have translated from Italian into English, and I’d like to ask you a few questions both on this specific book and more generally on translation. So let’s begin… How did you get started in literary translation? A: I studied Italian and Spanish at university, and there was always a translation element, and I always found it really fun, but we had a career talk from a translator who said (to my memory, at least!) that you can either translate manuals for washing machines and make a living, or you can translate books or subtitles or comics and not make a living. And that either option involved having no company, lots of time on the computer, and maybe some cats. I already knew that I wanted to make a living, I quite liked having some company, and I wasn’t a huge fan of computers or cats… so I wrote it off immediately. Fast forward four years and I’d mov
Wild Swans is brilliant! Isabel's daughter sounds like a great read too, I'll look out for it!
ReplyDeleteYes, I'd definitely recommend reading Isabel's Daughter. I came across it completely by chance: I had agreed to swap books with a reader on www.readitswapit.co.uk and she sent me the wrong book... it turns out it was a lucky mistake!
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