Translators Aloud – Translators reading translations

Translators Aloud is a YouTube channel devoted to sharing the work of literary translators, for both published and unpublished works.

We provide a space for translators to read their own work and a positive platform for sharing great literature, read aloud by the translators themselves.

We showcase the world’s best new and classic books, poetry, plays, and short stories, presented by the talented people who translate them.

Recent Readings

What opens as a story on matrescence reveals itself to be an exploration of memory, trauma, and grief—personal, familial, and national—as the protagonist, Laura, struggling in her new motherhood, revisits stories from her own daughterhood and coming of age in a home, in a country, where the adults are still living with the trauma they experienced under the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. Borrowing elements of a Bildungsroman observed through the sieve of memory, the story recounts the past from the present through short, vignette-like chapters, pulling from the Latin American literary tradition of the short story, that come together like a reconstructed vase bearing its cracks. Author Bio Catalina Infante Beovic is a Chilean writer, publisher, and co-owner of Librería Catalonia in Chile. She has written three books of stories of the indigenous peoples of Chile with Sonia Montecino, anthropologist and recipient of the Chilean National Social Sciences Award. She published her first book of short stories, Todas somos una misma sombra, in 2018, followed by her English-language debut, “Ferns.” Published in 2020 by World Literature Today, “Ferns” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and adapted into a short film by director Paz Ramírez. Infante’s short stories and essays have appeared in World Literature Today, Columbia Journal, the HarperCollins Daughters of Latin America anthology, and the Deep Vellum Best Literary Translations anthology. The Cracks We Bear is Infante Beovic’s first full-length novel translated into English. Translator Bio Michelle Mirabella is a Spanish-to-English literary translator. In addition to her translation of Catalina Infante’s debut novel, The Cracks We Bear, her work appears in the anthologies Best Literary Translations (Deep Vellum, 2024) and Daughters of Latin America (HarperCollins, 2023), as well as in venues such as World Literature Today, Latin American Literature Today, and Southwest Review. A former ALTA Travel Fellow, Michelle holds an M.A. in Translation and Interpretation from the Middlebury Institute and is an alumna of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre and the Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference. Find more of her work at www.michellemirabella.com. “This slim and subtle work packs a stinging punch.” – Publishers Weekly (https://www.publishersweekly.com/9781642861594) “Reflective, sensitive, and often moving, Catalina Infante’s first novel revolves around a mother-daughter relationship, its silences, distances, and cracks.” – La Tercera “This novel gives voice to an uprooted Chilean daughter of political exiles, in search of her own intimate identity, in a country that was foreign to her from the very moment of her birth.” – Cine y literature Pre-order Link: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-cracks-we-bear/e4c636b8332fe973?ean=9781642861594&next=t

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Michelle Mirabella and author Catalina Infante Beovic's THE CRACKS WE BEAR (World Editions, 2025)

30 Oct, 2025 3:12 pm

Unholy Compromises is a short story collection set in the world of the Central Imperium. This particular story, The Xenophile, follows the fortunes of Darren Horn, who is sexually attracted to aliens and who is seeking an encounter with a member of the violent Ralgar race. Ralgars resemble giant lizards that change sex every fifty or sixty years. They are also highly belligerent and often fight and kill each other for fun. Darren will have to talk his way past their manager before he can even speak to them. But he is determined.
#NSFW

Jan Kotouč's Central Imperium series is an example of why I wish European science-fiction was more accessible to an American audience. This is grand-scale science fiction, with a storyteller's eye for both character and action, that doesn't back away from the essence of moral responsibility and the cost of duty... - David Weber, bestselling author of the Honor Harrington series

Translator bio
Isabel Stainsby is a translator from Czech, Slovak, German and occasionally French into English. She studied languages and linguistics at Cambridge and Bristol, with a year in the Czech city of Olomouc and time in Germany and Russia, then tried out various careers before becoming a freelance translator. She has translated eight books, plus a number of chapters and articles, and is looking to translate more. She lives in Glasgow, Scotland, with her husband and a very spoiled greyhound.

Author bio
Jan Kotouč has published over two dozen novels in his native Czech, with many being translated into English. His work includes the futuristic Central Imperium series, the Czech Lands alternative history series, and the military sci-fi Hirano Sector series. He has contributed to numerous anthologies and universes—including stories for the Honor Harrington series by David Weber—and the 1632 universe by Eric Flint. Other work has included creating the atmospheric setting and story background for the European Cybersecurity Challenge held in Prague in 2021, and is often the lead in charge of book-related program tracks on many convention committees, including Comic-Con Prague. He is also a lecturer at the Prague School of Creative Communication where he teaches writing workshops.

BUY THE BOOK: https://nazcapress.com/product/unholy/MM/48/

YouTube Video VVVqYXE5T1Nwb0Vlb2hQbUs4WlQtQzd3LkV2dzAySkZPTHJN

Isabel Stainsby reads "The Xenophile" from Jan Kotouč's UNHOLY COMPROMISES (Nazca Press, 2025)

23 Oct, 2025 1:11 pm

Description: Queer love poems from the Roaring Twenties (Loucos Anos Vinte). “A minha Amante” (pp. 112–13), “My Lover” (pp. 43–44). “Duma carta” (122–23), “From a Letter” (pp. 53–54). Author: Judith Teixeira (1880–1959) was perhaps the only bisexual woman poet to participate openly in Lisbon’s modernist literary scene. Her civil status—born to a single mother in the provincial city of Viseu, divorced at age thirty-three by her first husband, re-married the following year to the grandson of a viscount—had already made her the subject of scandal. But still more scandalous was the sexually transgressive writing she published under her own name only a few years before the rise of the Salazar dictatorship. Translator: Samantha Pious is a translator, poet, editor, and researcher. In addition to Judith Teixeira, she has translated selections from the poetry of Renée Vivien, which are available as A Crown of Violets (Headmistress Press, 2015, revised 2017), and from Natalie Clifford Barney, which are forthcoming. Order a copy of Judith Teixeira, Cactus Flowers: Selected Poems, trans. Samantha Pious (Headmistress Press, 2025): https://a.co/d/7kBr8dS https://headmistress-press.square.site/product/cactus-flowers-selected-poems-judith-teixeira-translated-by-samantha-pious/104?cs=true&cst=custom Praise for Cactus Flowers: “Samantha Pious’s translations from the Portuguese of Judith Teixeira’s poetry in Cactus Flowers resounds with sensual energy and burning tenderness. Reading these poems, one is struck not only with the passion of Teixeira’s queer love poems but by the way in which turbulent politics and social tensions are subtly traceable within the lines. […] The lone reader is thrown into the bodily world, reminding us that words first and foremost are of the body and its unique experiences.” —Allison Grimaldi Donahue “Judith Teixeira’s poetry has almost always, over the decades, discomfited specialists […] This English edition—with a selection and preface by Samantha Pious, wherein I would underline the sensitivity and care of her fine translations, as well as her personal commitment—allows Anglophone readers to connect with the first Portuguese woman writer to sing of lesbian love, transforming women’s bodies into objects of worship and of carnal consummation.” —Fabio Mario da Silva Find translator Samantha Pious online: https://samanthapious.com/ @samantha.pious Judith Teixeira died in 1959, widowed and without issue; the rights holder(s) is/are unknown. If you have information regarding her estate, please contact the publisher at headmistresspress@gmail.com.

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YouTube Video VVVqYXE5T1Nwb0Vlb2hQbUs4WlQtQzd3Ll80alR2TkhkX2Jr

Samantha Pious reads from CACTUS FLOWERS: SELECTED POEMS, Judith Teixeira (Headmistress Press, 2025)

16 Oct, 2025 2:01 pm

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