Anna Aslanyan & Daniel Trilling on translation in reportage
London Review Bookshop Podcast
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What's the Hardest Thing to Translate?
i don't think there is a perfect translation. What's a perfect translation to me will be a horrible translation to any number of people. The hardest thing is when your source makes little sense or nonsense. And it's only so much you can do to beat it into shape. As a journalist, in order to do my job properly, i have to not help them and just sort of observe. You always want to help. But also, people's experiences that you might want to get them to talk about could themselves be very distressing for them to bring up again - maybe i would find them distressing to hear about. Having to deal with the language obstacle as well creates extra complications
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