All Things Translation—March 2024 at CAT

On behalf of all of us at the Center for the Art of Translation and Two Lines Press, Happy International Women’s Day! March is Women’s History Month, and we acknowledge that women’s history is—and will always be—a history in the making.

CAT lauds the women who make the translation community a thriving field where stories of womanhood from all around the globe are celebrated and shared with audiences around the world. Two Lines Press is especially proud to publish stunning works in translation written by women—and to work with so many outstanding women translators.

This year, we’re ecstatic about the range of female voices we are introducing to readers. Just last month we published About Uncle by Rebecca Gisler (trans. Jordan Stump), which chronicles a female narrator as she upends our expectations for caretaking. In May, we’re releasing Layla Martínez’s sensational Woodworm (trans. Sophie Hughes and Annie McDermott) to stoke your fires: it’s a “negative fantasy fever dream about the righteous power of feminine rage.” And we’ve got two dazzling follow-ups: a brilliant evocation of young womanhood by Finnish author Pirkko Saisio, whose book The Red Book of Farewells (trans. Mia Spangenberg) came out last year—and another testament to National Book Award Finalist Astrid Roemer’s incredible cultural commentary, Off-White (trans. Lucy Scott and David McKay).

Below, we’ve linked two of our blog posts celebrating Women in Translation Month—coming in August! Which means, of course, that our celebration of female empowerment continues all year long. 

Thanks for reading with us.

Latin American Horror is going on tour! Join us in Brooklyn (Books Are Magic)(opens in a new tab)(opens in a new tab) or in Chicago (Pilsen Community Books) for celebrations of Through the Night Like a Snake: Latin American Horror Stories, with contributing writers and translators. Through the Night Like a Snake is out March 12.

A boy explores the abandoned house of a dead fascist…
A leaked sex tape pushes a woman to the brink…
A sex worker discovers a dark secret among the nuns of the pampas…
The mountain fog is not what it seems…
Kermit the Frog dreams of murder…

In ten chilling stories from an ensemble cast of contemporary Latin American writers, horror infiltrates the unexpected, taboo regions of the present-day psyche. With contributions from celebrated horror practitioners like Mariana Enriquez and Mónica Ojeda, Through the Night Like a Snakearrives in pitch-perfect English translation, courtesy of translators Sarah Booker, Megan McDowell, Ellen Jones, Kit Maude, Julia Sanches, and more. 

This year, two of our Poetry Inside Out Teaching Fellows are based right here—in the San Francisco Bay Area! Lisa Wong and Yaxha Ruvein are incorporating translation and multilingualism into their daily curriculum using Poetry Inside Out as a guiding principle.

Teaching Fellows join a community of teachers, artists, poets, translators, and researchers working to explore and expand Poetry Inside Out as a classroom practice. Together, they enrich the collective knowledge of Poetry Inside Out instruction by developing strategies and approaches in their classrooms and sharing them with other teachers. 

We had the opportunity to observe Lisa and Yaxha in their classrooms and take photos of their great work with students. Both are incorporating Poetry Inside Out into regular teaching practices as a way to honor the linguistic and cultural backgrounds of their students while developing essential literacy skills.

We’d love to hear from you about what kind of content you’d like to see on our website. We’re beginning to reimagine the range of material you can read at catranslation.org, and we would benefit from knowing what you might like us to feature. More work in translation (poetry, stories, and hybrid works)? More author and translator interviews? More book reviews? More resources for emerging translators? More advocacy efforts? What translation-related content would be especially engaging and beneficial for you? 

Please click the link below to let us know what topics tickle your fancy. We welcome any and all suggestions. Thank you for your input!