September 1, 2026
Ciphers Poufed Out
On a serendipitous proliferation of Bulgarians, “Women” “in” translation, queer Taiwanese literature, and Optatian with a Balkan twist: this is Miss Translation column 4.
Read MoreTranslation
She wore a robe over her nightgown, and it was like her body was back to normal.
Two Stories
July 7, 2026
World Cupcophony
What exactly are we living through: CANMEXUS 2026? USA & Former Allies 2026? Our very own annus infantinus?
On the field, every World Cup is a contest of idioms: between the Spanish-influenced juego de posición and post-German Gegenpressing, between philosophies that rely on holding the ball and those that assert themselves by working without it, between the set piece-heavy structuralism now fashionable in the English Premier League and the crashing unpredictability of the South American game. At an official level, however, the World Cup’s cacophony of on-field styles cedes to a party-pooper monolingualism.
May 13, 2026
Measuring “mistranslation,” assonance that won’t quit, plus two upcoming live (!) events
Deeply I Groaned
Mohammed Shatta
He saw Cairo as a cake dripping with delights
As things stand, the field of psychiatry offers us no precise definition for such cases of fleeting madness as those experienced by Mohammed Shatta, though literature has preserved an account of the phenomenon from the perspective of one of its more notable sufferers: L’avenir dure longtemps, by the French philosopher Louis Althusser.
April 6, 2026
As a habitual translator of deceptively simple poems myself, I was not deceived.
A Strange Pattern in the Middle
The Finishing Touch
Photograph this ass, servant!
The murdered Poet became for him the gash in the center of the sun, the model and the justification for being misunderstood. From the audience, during academic conferences, he hurled passionate and senseless accusations at the speakers, which were met with chuckles and mild feelings of guilt. Even though he had a stable relationship and many occasional lovers, more and more it seemed to him that the double seduction left unfulfilled on that far-off day was the one true memorable event in his life.
Unfit
In the end amnesia does the dirty work
I don’t care about anything else, I have them, when they wake up we can celebrate the prison break, the reunion, the successful hostage exchange, we can stop for breakfast, decide together what to do next.
July 28, 2025
The Desire to Be an Imbunche
On José Donoso and his translators
Too long, too hard, too loose, too crass: these are the problems that abridgment seeks to fix. They are only problems to a writer’s enemies: politicians, skimmers, benefactors, and prudes. (For now we will spare critics, editors, translators, educators, and, naturally, other writers.) Who, then, abridged The Obscene Bird of Night—and what were they trying to fix?
Our Butterfly
God said no
Delivered Youssef to the place in Maine. I say “the place,” because I don’t know how to describe it. Is it a camp? A hospital? An asylum?
Out Front
You have to be of age to mash the trash
Let me just finish disinfecting a table number marker and then off I go, I just have to put down what I’ve got in my hands to serve, I tell her that with my eyes, yes I’m coming, I’ve seen the whole thing, I saw you adding the sauces, the napkins, I know the order’s complete and besides that’s all I’ve got to do, serve, I’m available, I’m capable of taking that initiative. The crewmember calls for me all the same, she’s looking right at me and she calls for me.
Traces of Enayat
On Love and Silence
There’s a kind of intense curiosity that possesses us when we encounter an author who is truly unknown — a branch cut from the tree with no date of birth or death in evidence — or when their writing offers no clues to the wider life of their generation, to their close friends or literary influences.
