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Translators Aloud is a YouTube channel devoted to sharing the work of literary translators, for both published and unpublished works.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
‘At Night I Rise to Mop the Floor’, by Yu Xinqiao, translated by Anne Henochowicz, appears on Paper Republic, the not-for-profit website run by translators and promoting Chinese literature in translation. It forms part of our latest free-to-read Read Paper Republic series, entitled ‘Home’, which encompasses themes of refuge, recollections, promised lands, prisons; the arms of family, and four concrete walls in the sky … Author bio Yu Xinqiao is one of the most influential contemporary Chinese poets. Born in Fujian and raised in Zhejiang, Yu Xinqiao dropped out of school to work as a labourer. That didn’t stop him reading (Dante included), and writing novels and poetry, and by age seventeen (1985) he was beginning to get noticed and published. Yu has always pushed boundaries politically; his poem ‘If I Have to Die’, set to music, has become an enormous arena-rock hit and stirring anthem of defiance. But as Anne Henochowicz explains, he can also be playful and tender. Translator bio Anne came to literary translation at China Digital Times, where she was Translations Coordinator from 2011 to 2016, and again from 2020 to 2022. There, she first read and translated essayists such as Li Jingrui and Tang Danhong, experimental poet Yu Xiuhua, and many ingenious bloggers and journalists. She also edited the Chinese Corner column at the Los Angeles Review of Books China Channel. She lives near Washington, D.C.

‘At Night I Rise to Mop the Floor’, by Yu Xinqiao, translated by Anne Henochowicz, appears on Paper Republic, the not-for-profit website run by translators and promoting Chinese literature in translation. It forms part of our latest free-to-read Read Paper Republic series, entitled ‘Home’, which encompasses themes of refuge, recollections, promised lands, prisons; the arms of family, and four concrete walls in the sky …

Author bio

Yu Xinqiao is one of the most influential contemporary Chinese poets. Born in Fujian and raised in Zhejiang, Yu Xinqiao dropped out of school to work as a labourer. That didn’t stop him reading (Dante included), and writing novels and poetry, and by age seventeen (1985) he was beginning to get noticed and published. Yu has always pushed boundaries politically; his poem ‘If I Have to Die’, set to music, has become an enormous arena-rock hit and stirring anthem of defiance. But as Anne Henochowicz explains, he can also be playful and tender.

Translator bio

Anne came to literary translation at China Digital Times, where she was Translations Coordinator from 2011 to 2016, and again from 2020 to 2022. There, she first read and translated essayists such as Li Jingrui and Tang Danhong, experimental poet Yu Xiuhua, and many ingenious bloggers and journalists. She also edited the Chinese Corner column at the Los Angeles Review of Books China Channel. She lives near Washington, D.C.

YouTube Video VVVqYXE5T1Nwb0Vlb2hQbUs4WlQtQzd3LmZfWmkyTWZiQ2tN

Anne Henochowicz and poet Yu Xinqiao read from 'At Night I Rise to Mop the Floor' (Paper Republic)

16 Oct, 2024 6:00 pm

Two occupied buildings: one the former headquarters of the NO-DO (a Francoist propaganda outlet) that has been taken over by a small group of fascists, the other the ruins of some abandoned film studios that have been converted into the barracks of a Marxist-Leninist cell. Drifting between these two spaces are Santiago and Ramiro; two characters who, although finding solace in two polarised political groups, cross paths and change each other’s lives. Discursive and devastating, Duval’s first novel is imbued with the same traits as the era she portrays. A sad, passionate, and all too real portrait of an ever more divided world, Duval’s story, in her powerful, shocking, yet considered prose, reminds us of the uncomfortable, but somewhat comforting similarities we may find with the “enemy”. To order: https://www.fumdestampa.com/shop/p/madridwillbetheirtomb Press: ‘What I tell here, after all, is a rather small story of love and violence, comments Elizabeth Duval in the author’s note to her scorching, exhilarating Madrid Will Be Their Tomb (fluently translated by Alice Banks), a novel of deep political and philosophical engagement, indelible imagery and great energy.’ Catherine Taylor, The Irish Times Selected for the Irish Times’ Best Fiction in Translation of 2023 ‘Duval narrates disorder and subversion with a writing that is sometimes contained, sometimes runaway, sometimes ironic and sometimes poetic. Modest and powerfully beautiful, this is writing that illuminates human mystery and lifts the reader into the air, leaving them on an edge where their convictions tremble and shake.’Juan Manuel de Prada, ABC ‘A marvellous novel.’ Nadal Suau, El Español Bios: Elizabeth Duval is a Spanish novelist, poet, philosopher, philologist, critic, and trans rights activist. She is the current secretary of communication for the electoral alliance Sumar. In 2020 she published Reina, the first memoir in Spain by a woman from GenZ, as well as Excepción, a verse poem. In 2021 she published the essay Después de lo trans and the novel Madrid será la tumba. In 2023 she published Melancolía, a sociopolitcal essay on how to recover hope when facing a grim future. She is also a regular contributor for national media outlets like El Diaro, Público, El País and La Sexta. Alice Banks is a translator from Spanish and French based in Madrid. In December 2022, Alice’s translation, Deranged As I Am, by Ali Zamir, was published by Fum d’Estampa Press. Her latest translation of Elizabeth Duval’s novel, Madrid Will Be Their Tomb, was published in October 2023. Alice is currently collaborating with Hablemos, escritoras to translate their podcasts and content. She also works as an Editorial Assistant for The European Literature Network, where she writes the monthly column, ‘La Española’. More recently with the European Literature Network, she worked as Assistant Editor on The Spanish Riveter magazine, to which she contributed several translations and articles. Alice is currently working on a co-translation of Lara Moreno’s latest novel, La ciudad, with Katie Whittemore (forthcoming with Open Letter) and a translation of Anne Sénès’ Chambre double, which will be published in June 2025 with Orenda.

This video is private.

YouTube Video VVVqYXE5T1Nwb0Vlb2hQbUs4WlQtQzd3LktQdW9ub1BBc0ww

Alice Banks reads from Elizabeth Duval's MADRID WILL BE THEIR TOMB (Fum d'Estampa Press, 2023)

9 Oct, 2024 6:00 pm

Giovanni Pascoli (1855–1912) is renowned as one of the founders of modern Italian poetry. Embodying the Zeitgeist of fin-de-siècle Italy, his works are inspired by French Symbolism and Decadentism. They also draw on the classical tradition so alive in Italian culture. His unique poetic voice is filled with traditional metrical forms, an uncanny use of onomatopoeic language, and a multilingual vocabulary. He fills his depiction of nature with haunting images and a disquieting sensitivity. Convivial Poems (Poemi Conviviali) is named for Il Convito, the literary journal where these twentu poems first appeared. The collection represents one of Pascoli’s highest achievements. Like T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, James Joyce’s Ulysses, and contemporary post-modernist works, it revisits the classical world to draw new symbols for the modern condition. Alexandros Alexandros is the Greek spelling of Alexander, and the protagonist of this poem is Alexander the Great. Here, Alexander has reached the end of known world, of which he has conquered a vast portion, driven as he was by a desire to gain not only power, but also knowledge, and to go where no one else had gone before. As he contemplates the ocean, the ultimate frontier, he muses on the meaning of desire. All things desired and longed for seem greater before we obtain them: dream is far better than reality. At the end of his long and victorious journey, Alexander is confronted with the illusory nature of human ambition. The translators: Elena Borelli teaches Italian and Intercultural Studies at King’s College London, UK. Her research focuses on the culture and literature of the late nineteenth century in Europe. She has published extensively on the notion of desire and issues of translation and reception during that time, as well as on the poets Giovanni Pascoli and Gabriele D’Annunzio. She is also a translator, producing (together with James Ackhurst) translations from contemporary and modern poets for The Journal of Italian Translation. James Ackhurst is a writer and translator based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has published translations (produced with Elena Borelli) in The Journal of Italian Translation and poems, stories, and criticism in takahe, Turbine, Poetry New Zealand, Snorkel, Pericles at Play, Poetry Salzburg Review, Quadrant and The Pantograph Punch. An Ancient Language for a Modern Soul: Poemi Conviviali by Giovanni Pascoli A podcast containing the poems read by actors and translators, with scholars and translators discussing the themes and characters of Poemi Conviviali. The poems are accompanied by harp music written specifically for the poems. https://www.poemiconviviali.com/ Press Reviews From Reading in Translation Borelli and Ackhurst’s translation restores the knotty and convulsive energy that animates Pascoli’s figures, less epic heroes and more fragile human beings, who stare into the abyss of modern life with bubbling restlessness, existential angst, and occasionally serene resignation. From Gradiva The highlights of this book are too numerous to be listed, so I will give a brief recount. In her introduction, Borelli claims that Alexandros is an “exquisite poem” (xii), and it remains thus in English, as well. From Annali di Italianistica Convivial Poems imbues vibrancy and life into Pascoli’s verse through a refreshing diction that speaks to the present.

Giovanni Pascoli (1855–1912) is renowned as one of the founders of modern Italian poetry. Embodying the Zeitgeist of fin-de-siècle Italy, his works are inspired by French Symbolism and Decadentism. They also draw on the classical tradition so alive in Italian culture. His unique poetic voice is filled with traditional metrical forms, an uncanny use of onomatopoeic language, and a multilingual vocabulary. He fills his depiction of nature with haunting images and a disquieting sensitivity.

Convivial Poems (Poemi Conviviali) is named for Il Convito, the literary journal where these twentu poems first appeared. The collection represents one of Pascoli’s highest achievements. Like T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, James Joyce’s Ulysses, and contemporary post-modernist works, it revisits the classical world to draw new symbols for the modern condition.

Alexandros
Alexandros is the Greek spelling of Alexander, and the protagonist of this poem is Alexander the Great. Here, Alexander has reached the end of known world, of which he has conquered a vast portion, driven as he was by a desire to gain not only power, but also knowledge, and to go where no one else had gone before. As he contemplates the ocean, the ultimate frontier, he muses on the meaning of desire. All things desired and longed for seem greater before we obtain them: dream is far better than reality. At the end of his long and victorious journey, Alexander is confronted with the illusory nature of human ambition.

The translators:

Elena Borelli teaches Italian and Intercultural Studies at King’s College London, UK. Her research focuses on the culture and literature of the late nineteenth century in Europe.
She has published extensively on the notion of desire and issues of translation and reception during that time, as well as on the poets Giovanni Pascoli and Gabriele D’Annunzio. She is also a translator, producing (together with James Ackhurst) translations from contemporary and modern poets for The Journal of Italian Translation.

James Ackhurst is a writer and translator based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has published translations (produced with Elena Borelli) in The Journal of Italian Translation and poems, stories, and criticism in takahe, Turbine, Poetry New Zealand, Snorkel, Pericles at Play, Poetry Salzburg Review, Quadrant and The Pantograph Punch.

An Ancient Language for a Modern Soul: Poemi Conviviali by Giovanni Pascoli

A podcast containing the poems read by actors and translators, with scholars and translators discussing the themes and characters of Poemi Conviviali. The poems are accompanied by harp music written specifically for the poems.

https://www.poemiconviviali.com/

Press Reviews

From Reading in Translation

Borelli and Ackhurst’s translation restores the knotty and convulsive energy that animates Pascoli’s figures, less epic heroes and more fragile human beings, who stare into the abyss of modern life with bubbling restlessness, existential angst, and occasionally serene resignation.

From Gradiva

The highlights of this book are too numerous to be listed, so I will give a brief recount. In her introduction, Borelli claims that Alexandros is an “exquisite poem” (xii), and it remains thus in English, as well.

From Annali di Italianistica
Convivial Poems imbues vibrancy and life into Pascoli’s verse through a refreshing diction that speaks to the present.

YouTube Video VVVqYXE5T1Nwb0Vlb2hQbUs4WlQtQzd3Lnh5Tk1YMllDMHBj

James Ackhurst and Elena Borelli read 'ALEXANDROS' from Giovanni Pascoli's CONVIVIAL POEMS

2 Oct, 2024 6:00 pm

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