Clik here to view.
‘Life in the Court of Matane’ by Eric Dupont (Review)
Tony's Reading List While I have read books by a couple of Canadian writers over the course of my reviewing career, it’s not a country that frequently appears on my virtual travel itinerary, and the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Spelling
Heart-rending. Heart-wrenching. Heart-stopping. Heartwarming. Sigh. Seriously. Heartwarming is the only one not to be hyphenated, in the Oxford Canadian at least. Is it any wonder I look everything up...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Careful
Two things this week: I’m currently spending much of my day translating Bestiaire, the book that made me want to become a literary translator. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to sit in front of my...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Accountability
As I (inevitably) fall behind on the translation I’m working on, a big help this time around has been to come up with a translation schedule ahead of time. I always do this, scheduling a certain number...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Word order
The German language comes with a handy guide for word order: Time, manner, place. In other words, you should write, “Yesterday morning (time), I travelled by bus (manner) to school (place).” French and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Practice
I’ve spent much of this week worrying. Worrying about which books to translate. What they’ll look like. How I’ll go about translating them. Then I came across this: ‘There are no guarantees. Just...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Rephrasing
This week on Québec Reads, I take a close look at what makes Lazer Lederhendler’s translation of The Lake (Malabourg by Perrine Leblanc) tick. Lederhendler says the following: The original sentence...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Responsibility
Seth Godin wrote this recently : It’s not your fault … but it might be your responsibility. That’s a fork in the road on the way to becoming a professional. This reminds me a lot of words you hear...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Faithfulness
It’s always something of a test to guess at what someone might come up with if they tried to translate your translation back into the original language. In this case below, as I near the end of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
P.T. Smith on Québec literature
Reviewer P.T. Smith has a great piece on Québec literature in translation this week over at the Three Percent blog. It’s very, very quotable… “The absence of American literature has been replaced by...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Rewriting in translation
I thought I’d share an interesting quote from Melissa Bull on translation with you. It’s taken from a subTerrain magazine article called “Nelly Arcan, Poetry, and the Quiddity of Québécois culture”...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Drafts
I’m a big fan of Austin Kleon’s work and I think I’m going to put his latest piece of advice into action on the next book I translate: Re-type each draft. Re-typing each draft means you go over every...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Jesse James
The novel I’m translating at the minute is about a husband and wife, a pair of well-to-do artists living in Montréal. And I’ve just spent the past 10 minutes reading about Jesse James on Wikipedia to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Afternoon off
I’m still translating away at Les portes closes. If I’m not quite on the home straight, I’ve really hit my stride. It’s funny: the first time I read the book, I enjoyed the passages written by the wife...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Joining the dots
Recently I’ve been distracted by other freelance jobs, but now I’m on the home straight: Radisson needs to be translated and sent off by December 1 and Les portes closes should hopefully be finished by...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Note to self: I love my job
After more or less a week of procrastination and making excuses, every time I actually sit back down in front of the computer and translate a few hundred words of the two great books I’m lucky enough...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Motivation
For the past few days, I’ve had a hard time pushing on with my Radisson translation. I had a long chunk left to check against the French before I went on, and I insisted on doing that first before...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Eighty percent of success is showing up.
This quote (sometimes attributed to Woody Allen) has been cropping up a lot in my thoughts lately. With two young children, there are plenty of days when I don’t feel like walking downstairs to the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Global writing for global translations
I spent an hour this morning listening to Tim Parks read Peter Stamm’s “Sweet Dreams” on the New Yorker Fiction podcast. It was enjoyable enough, although a few points in the translation jumped out....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Tools of the Trade: No More Tears
A few times a day, or a few times a week, I ask myself an important question: Would I cry if I lost this? Often the answer is “Hell, yes!” The solution takes no more than ten seconds. I make a backup....
View Article
![Various Artists – Old School / New School [iTunes Plus M4A]](http://i.imgur.com/GEFz815.jpeg)
![[Prime] Osprey Daylite Travel Pack 35 - Nightshift Blue $135 (RRP $199)...](http://files.ozbargain.com.au/n/87/976987l.jpg?h=1a642bba)
![Ruthie Foster – Just Say Yes (2026) [24-bit FLAC]](http://imageurl.xyz/images/2026/08/27/Ruthie_Foster-Just_Say_Yes-24BIT-WEB-FLAC-2026-ENRiCH.jpg)
