There’s a very interesting piece on the Guardian website about translators being often overlooked. I’ve often wondered this myself, particularly when reading Tolstoy or Pushkin. Can I say I’ve ever really read Tolstoy? I’ve actually read Louise and Aylmer Maude. As a non-Russian speaker (Okay, I can manage “Hello, my name is Peter, how are you?” but then I get terribly lost and end up at “Goodbye” startlingly quickly.) how am I to know what a person’s writing style is like when it was written in another language with different grammatic conventions, nuances and styles. The work of the translator is to bring all those together in a translation that is both accurate to the original text but also faithful to the spirit of the work. I can’t even begin to imagine how such a feat is achieved. It’s impossible to under estimate how much we owe to good translation.

Los Angeles Times | Books | Literary T-shirts

There’s an interesting post on the Los Angeles Times book blog today about literary tee-shirts. My favourites come from Out of Print who do tees of classic book covers. I particularly like Moby Dick and 1984.  They’re $28 each and some of the proceeds from each shirt go towards helping literacy in Africa.