Vagabond Voices

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Remember the Translator

If you follow us on social media you'll have noticed we've begun a new project called Think in Translation, which will include podcast episodes and blog posts exploring translation from a variety of angles. We're passionate about translation, and support from The Space and Creative Scotland has allowed us to share our passion with a larger audience via this new project.

In addition to Think in Translation, starting with our novel Memoirs of a Life Cut Short, we've added the following text to the end of our translated books:

Vagabond Voices continues to celebrate translations and its translators. It is proper that translators are occasionally invisible (particularly when the reader is busy suspending disbelief), as their task is to present the authors and not themselves to the reader. But the actual words are not the authors’, but the translators’, and it is also proper that the reader recalls the presence of this intricate and generous craft.

We've also added our translators to our website, and we hope you'll take time to get to know them! Two of our translators, Matthew Hyde and Peter Graves, will be discussing translation with us in this season of our Think in Translation podcast, and we hope that over time we'll be able to add more translators' voices to the mix.

The podcast begins 29 March, whereupon we'll also be posting a more detailed article about why we've begun this project. We hope you'll join in the conversation with us on social media (#ThinkInTranslation) or via email or comments on our blog posts.