Category: words

Roberta Mazza of the University of Manchester writes about her search for the origins of a Coptic fragment of Paul’s Letter to the Galatians that appeared on eBay in 2008 and ended up – like too many other pieces of dubious provenance – in the collection that forms the basis of the Museum of the Bible in D.C.

Literary translation is a difficult profession to break into. Plenty of people want to do it, but in the insular English-speaking world, there’s regrettably little work to go around, and it’s easier for publishers to entrust their books to already-known translators who are seen as less of a risk. But there are many benefits to widening our pool of working translators, not least because new translators often lead us to meet new writers. More than half of the books submitted for the TA first translation prize are debuts for their translators as well as English-language debuts for their authors, showing that translators are in the vanguard of literary change.

The opioid epidemic is reshaping life in America, including at the local public library, where librarians are considering whether to carry naloxone to battle overdoses. At a time when the public is debating arming teachers, it is another example of an unlikely group being enlisted to fight a national crisis.

“Those of you who’ve never read a Captain America comic book or seen him in the Marvel movies would be forgiven for thinking of Captain America as an unblinking mascot for American nationalism. In fact, the best thing about the story of Captain America is the implicit irony.”

“The ruling – the first of its kind in Europe – found that having only two genders for official purposes was unconstitutional. The court recommended creating a third gender category for people born with ambiguous sexual traits and those who do not identify as either male or female, or even dispensing with gender altogether in public documents.”

“Juan Rulfo (1917–1986), rightly revered in Mexico and outside, is regarded as one of the most influential Latin American writers of all time. … One reason for the surprising neglect of Rulfo today may be that his reputation rested on a slender harvest of work, essentially on two books that appeared in the 1950s.” Ariel Dorfman pays tribute to Rulfo – and explains why his work hasn’t fared as well in the English-speaking world as it might have.

“Long before the rise of ‘autofiction’, … many writers in the first half of the 20th century were experimenting with the limits of autobiography. Joseph Conrad, Ford Madox Ford, Henry James, Wyndham Lewis, Gertrude Stein, HG Wells, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf: all wrote memoirs as inventive, in different ways, as their novels (which were often themselves very autobiographical). And that list is only the tip of the iceberg.”

“The contravening consonant was perhaps the most unusual victim of a crackdown targeting words, phrases and even solitary letters censors feared might be used to attack Beijing’s controversial decision to abolish constitutional term limits for China’s president. … Experts say [the move] paves the way for Xi [Jinping] to become a dictator for life.”

Both Keira Drank and her publisher thought that her novel The Continent would be well-received, and, at first, it was. Then came the tweetstorms accusing Drake of writing a white-savior story and stereotyping. She took the criticisms to heart and reworked her text. Lila Shapiro reports on what happened next.

The core issue involves what the Canadian and international publishing industries see as a deeply damaging expansion of “fair dealing” copyright compensation (called “fair use” in other countries). As we’ve reported earlier, vague and imprecise language in the Copyright Modernization Act has resulted in universities setting their own fair-dealing guidelines, in many cases copying and distributing material to students without paying the publisher or copyright holder. This has created patterns of usage which other educational institutions, including K–12 schools, have then adopted. Canadian publishers have estimated they’re losing more than $50 million annually in copyright revenue.