My plan for the summer is a simple one. I will work during the day, look after the kids, keep house, walk the dogs. Then, when the heat has subsided, I head down to the beach in the evening with a deckchair, a good book, my goggles and a sandwich. There are almost always friends more »
Category archives: blog
My year in translation: June
The last major day-to-day restrictions are being lifted and we are entering la nueva normalidad, the new normal. Another neologism I would be happy never to hear again. My main concern focuses on the beach. It was completely off limits for a while; I wasn’t even allowed to take the dogs there. Then we were more »
My year in translation: May
We’ve been in lockdown for six weeks now, and I can feel it taking its toll. During the weeks when I am with my kids, I focus on them. I barely work, I deliver coffee to their bedrooms in time for the first class of the day (a civilized 9 o’clock start replacing the brutal more »
My year in translation: April
We are two weeks into lockdown and I have the sense that work is slowing down around me, although for the time being I have plenty to keep me busy. For this month, I have some edits to incorporate, two more paid samples to translate, a romantic modernist poem to produce, two short stories for more »
My year in translation: March
The month gets off to a good start. A longstanding client has confirmed that a big project will be going ahead. The job involves producing bilingual content for a section of the corporate website, a kind of online museum. It will be a bit different from my usual work. I will be copywriting into English more »
My year in translation: February
As a literary translator from Spanish, I often cast envious glances at colleagues working from northern European languages. The Scandinavians, in particular, seem to provide generous funding not only of samples but also, if rumour is to be believed, of whole books. It’s always been hard to imagine Spain providing public funding of that sort more »
My year in translation: January
My translation year begins with Jauría, Jordi Casanovas’s verbatim drama fashioned from the statements of the victim and perpetrators of the Pamplona gang rape case that shook Spain in 2016. Although not graphic, it is nevertheless harrowing to translate, with the text offering a claustrophobic insight into the way a group of peers normalized their more »
Spanish genitalia
A couple of weeks ago I did a Twitter thread on how Spaniards (and Gaditanos in particularly) pepper their informal speech with reference to genitals. The thread went viral (over 2 million views when I last checked) so I thought I’d reproduce it here. But do take a look at the original thread, too, as more »
Oda a Carrefour
Up on the Roof
A man, about 50 years old. He speaks Spanish with an accent that is at once identifiably local and non-native Christ! Here I am at the fucking beach and it’s closed. It’s over there. On the other side of some crappy barriers and some plastic tape. Is it because of all those people from Madrid, more »