Can You Trust a Translation?

What happens to a book when it crosses a border?In this episode of Transatlantic Bookmarks, we discuss translation, multilingualism, dialects, cultural context, and whether it is ever possible to experience a book exactly as its author intended. Ksenija shares her experience writing a novel in English rather than her native language, the politics of language in the former Yugoslavia, and the disastrous translation that nearly ruined Steinbeck for her forever.Along the way, we explore translated literature, Asian fiction, letter writing, the global dominance of English, the challenge of translating poetry, and the books that helped us understand cultures far beyond our own.📚 BOOKS MENTIONED:• The Correspondent by Virginia Evans• Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler• Orbital by Samantha Harvey• Fathers Before Sons by Ksenija Popović• Commissario Montalbano by Andrea Camilleri• Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck• Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en• Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami• Pachinko by Min Jin Lee• The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy• Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell• The Castle of Crossed Destinies by Italo Calvino• The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano💌 Our Substack & Show Notes:https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/📚 Read Ksenija’s Novels:https://transatlanticbookmarks.substack.com/p/publications📚 Ksenija on Goodreads:https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6449766.Ksenija_Popovi_🎙️ ABOUT TRANSATLANTIC BOOKMARKSHosted by European novelist Ksenija Popović and American engineer Sue Graham Johnston, Transatlantic Bookmarks uses books as the starting point for conversations about culture, history, psychology, morality, politics, and the questions hiding between the lines.New episodes every Saturday.👉🏻 CHAPTERS00:00 Intro07:57 The Football World Cup10:49 What We’re Reading12:32 How Many Languages Do Ksenija (and Melania Trump) Speak?19:08 The Challenges of Writing in a Foreign Language24:57 Accents and Dialects34:15 The Woes of Reading in Translation41:25 The United States and the Hegemony of English49:36 Asian Literature55:48 Why Ksenija Talks (a Lot!)58:15 Getting a Sense of Place Through Literature1:03:05 The Translator from Hell1:06:18 Translating Poetry1:08:20 Examples of Translation Gems1:10:07 Book Banning in the United States1:12:44 Book Recommendations1:14:29 Setting the Record Straight on Tolstoy