A series of knowledge-sharing open sessions for literary translators and appreciators of translated works from all backgrounds and experience levels.
How do we craft the backstories—both of the books we work on, as well as our own—over the course of our developing careers? Translators Chenxin Jiang and Alta Lynn Price unpacked some of their shared linguistic baggage, such as working in multiple language pairs and different genres, and talk about how to handle the temptations certain types of translation offer.
In Conversation
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Chenxin Jiang
Chenxin Jiang
Chenxin Jiang translates from Italian, German, and Chinese. Recent translations include Tears of Salt: A Doctor’s Story by Pietro Bartolo and Lidia Tilotta (Norton), shortlisted for the 2019 Italian Prose in Translation Award. She has also been a recipient of the Words Without Borders/American Academy of Poets prize as well as a PEN/Heim translation grant, and in 2019, she was a judge for the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize. She’s a member of the Third Coast Translators Collective and a Board member for the American Literary Translators Association.
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Alta L. Price
Alta L. Price
Alta L. Price runs a publishing consultancy specialized in literature and nonfiction texts on art, architecture, design, and culture. A recipient of the Gutekunst Prize, she translates from Italian and German into English. Her forthcoming translations include Juli Zeh’s novel New Year (World Editions, 2021), Giorgio Agamben’s latest book on the life and poetry of Friedrich Hölderlin (Seagull Books, 2022), and Mithu Sanyal’s novel Identitti (Astra House, 2022).
