Collaborative Translation of Girls and Institutions by Daria Serenko

To close out Season 2, we spoke with three translators—Sasha Karsavina, Philippa Mullins, and Nadezhda Vikulina—about their collaborative translation of Girls and Institutions (excerpt in n+1, 2024), Russian writer and activist Daria Serenko’s polyphonic portrait of girls under late-state bureaucracy. From tangled pronouns to shifting registers, the trio walks us through their methods of translating a text where everyday office work gives way to flashes of levity and transcendence. Somewhere between the poetic and the prosaic, every sentence becomes a site of collective negotiation and female solidarity.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.paraphrasispodcast.com