Usawa Recommends: World Translation Day Sep 2024
The selections explore translation as a dialogic art, dissecting the translator’s agency and devotion to the text while shaping a reader's engagement with literature.
Sonakshi Srivastava, the Translations Editor, recommends a few books that have influenced her understanding of writing in general, and translating in particular.
The past few months have been a period of slow burn for me. Bursts of reading come unannounced at certain times followed by periods of long lull. If I were to calibrate and catalogue my recent reads, a few outstanding recommendations would include (in no particular order):
1. Catching Fire: A Translation Diary by Daniel Hahn
A journal where the translator allows his words to meet the world. Hahn writes of his reflections, his process as he translates Diamela Eltit’s Never Did the Fire. Reading this book was almost like having a dialogue with Hahn. It allowed me the space to think and navigate through the various conundrums that the art of translating often presents.
2. This Little Art by Kate Briggs
A book that allowed me to love reading a little more. A thoughtful work on the written word spanning the theoretical and the reflective, the book’s art lies in inviting the reader’s curiosity and sustaining it through relatable discussions on translations, and translating.
3. Not to Read by Alejandro Zambra, translated by Megan McDowell
An utterly fascinating read – not only did this book outline a general theory of reading but also opened up my world to authors I had not read previously.
Sonakshi Srivastava
Sonakshi Srivastava is a writing tutor at Ashoka University, Sonepat, India. She is one of the recipients of South Asia Speaks mentorship programme (cohort 2021), working on translating the Hindi novel, “Titli” into English under the mentorship of Arunava Sinha. She was the contributing translator columnist at “The Bilingual Window’. She was longlisted for The Stinging Fly Translation Bursary 2022, and was awarded the Katharine Bakeless Nason scholarship for the Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference 2023. Her works have previously appeared in or are appearing in ASAP art, Usawa, Proseterity, The Monograph, Alipore Post, Hakara, potluck zine, orangepeel mag, Qissa mag, and Rhodora among others.