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: literary
Crocodile Tears (Mercedes Rosende): media file
Reviews and media coverage of Crocodile Tears, by Mercedes Rosende, published by Bitter Lemon Press. The Times (The best thrillers and crime novels of 2021 so far), 8 March 2021 “The first of Uruguayan writer Mercedes Rosende’s novels to be published in English tells the unlikely tale of how a cowardly kidnapper, a psychotic jailbird, more »
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 »
Encuentro de autores y traductores, XXI Feria internacional del libro teatral, Madrid 2020
Despite hopes that it might go ahead as scheduled in October, Madrid’s annual theatre book fair fell victim to the second wave of the Covid19 pandemic. However, with some last-minute funding, the meeting of writers and translators went ahead online. I received around 50 plays over the weekend of 21-22 November, and had a full 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 »
A Wedding to Die For (Pablo Canosales)
In A Wedding to Die For (La boda de tus muertos) by Andalusian playwright Pablo Canosales, the López family – the parents Jesús and Sofía, and their two children Mari Tere and Josete – attend the wedding reception of the oldest of the three children, Pablo. Time stands still – as they drive towards the more »
Lapland (Marc Angelet and Cristina Clemente)
Lapland is a play about truth and lies, knowledge and illusion, home and exile, identity and loss, innocence and maturity. The action takes place on Christmas Eve. Monica and Ramón, and their son, Pablo, have travelled from Spain to spend the holidays with Monica´s sister, Nuria, her Finnish husband, Olavi, and their daughter, Ana. They 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 »