https://www.paraphrasispodcast.comhttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!T5kU!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F67e2a395-190f-47ad-8883-6cb507bf98aa_1126x1126.pnghttps://www.paraphrasispodcast.comSubstackSun, 17 May 2026 02:25:05 GMThttps://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/bonus-on-calendars-waterfalls-andhttps://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/bonus-on-calendars-waterfalls-andMon, 15 Dec 2025 15:01:38 GMTWhat does a translator do when one Russian word summons an entire visual world while English barely has a name for it? Nadezhda, Sasha, and Philippa unpack the long Google Doc trail behind a tear-off calendar, a photo mural, and the quiet surrealism of office décor that says everything without saying much.

]]>https://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/collaborative-translation-of-girlshttps://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/collaborative-translation-of-girlsMon, 01 Dec 2025 15:02:58 GMTTo close out Season 2, we spoke with three translators—Sasha Karsavina, Philippa Mullins, and Nadezhda Vikulina—about their collaborative translation of Girls and Institutions (excerpt in n+1, 2024), Russian writer and activist Daria Serenko’s polyphonic portrait of girls under late-state bureaucracy. From tangled pronouns to shifting registers, the trio walks us through their methods of translating a text where everyday office work gives way to flashes of levity and transcendence. Somewhere between the poetic and the prosaic, every sentence becomes a site of collective negotiation and female solidarity.

]]>https://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/bonus-annabel-kim-on-what-ifhttps://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/bonus-annabel-kim-on-what-ifMon, 17 Nov 2025 14:02:10 GMTWhat do we do with a word that means both “if” and “yes”? Annabel shares the experience of grappling with the ending poem of Plasmas, where conditional grammar runs up against an imaginative imperative. Annabel ultimately lands on a solution that preserves the tremble between if and yes.

]]>https://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/annabel-kim-on-plasmashttps://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/annabel-kim-on-plasmasMon, 03 Nov 2025 14:01:33 GMTAnnabel Kim joins us to talk about Plasmas (Deep Vellum, 2022), Céline Minard’s posthuman sci-fi series of vignettes that read like a syntactical tornado. As Annabel unpacks Minard’s invented jargons and depictions of estranged humanity, we follow a translation journey shaped by ecological grief, disorienting prose, and the polysemous charge of language that refuses clarity.

]]>https://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/bonus-spencer-lee-lenfield-on-translatinghttps://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/bonus-spencer-lee-lenfield-on-translatingMon, 20 Oct 2025 18:22:02 GMTWhat happens when you translate from a poetic tradition that sidesteps rhyme into one that can’t help but hum in iambic pentameter? Spencer weighs the trade-offs of bringing Korean free verse into rhyme-chasing English, and why the occasional slant rhyme might be a translator’s best currency.

]]>https://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/spencer-lee-lenfield-on-biologicityhttps://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/spencer-lee-lenfield-on-biologicityMon, 06 Oct 2025 13:04:08 GMTSpencer Lee-Lenfield brings us Biologicity (Black Ocean, 2024) by South Korean poet Shin Hae-uk, a collection with offbeat turns, twisted logic, and sudden switches in vocabulary. Spencer walks us through how to navigate deliberate fragmentation in the Korean word order, and the strange intimacy of rendering a poet who can comment on your translation in real time. We close with a glimpse into Spencer’s in-progress translation of Shin’s newest collection.

]]>https://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/bonus-mark-harman-on-retitling-kafkahttps://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/bonus-mark-harman-on-retitling-kafkaMon, 15 Sep 2025 13:03:41 GMTWhat happens when a title becomes too familiar? Mark Harman defends his decision to ditch “The Metamorphosis” for “The Transformation”—a shift that scraps the Latinate gloss, restores fidelity to Kafka’s voice, and moves against cultural habit.

]]>https://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/mark-harman-on-franz-kafkas-selectedhttps://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/mark-harman-on-franz-kafkas-selectedTue, 02 Sep 2025 12:53:42 GMTMark Harman returns to Kafka with Selected Stories (Harvard University Press, 2024), a collection that combines courtroom logic with surrealist punchlines. We discuss Kafka’s subtle irony, the mysteries tucked behind the lines, and the challenge of translating a voice that leaves the reader deliberately responsible for the text. As Mark delves into the subtle nuance and humor of Kafka’s Austrian-flavored German, he shows why Kafka is a one of those writers who we will never be finished translating.

]]>https://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/special-episode-3-the-doctoral-program-415https://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/special-episode-3-the-doctoral-program-415Thu, 28 Aug 2025 13:02:21 GMTDuring the 2024-25 academic year, the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard celebrated its departmental anniversary—and Paraphrasis is launching a series of summer special episodes to commemorate the occasion. In our last edition of the series, guest host Esther K. Heller sits down with two Harvard University in Comparative Literature alumni, Prof. Andrea Bachner who graduated in 2007 and Dr. Michael O’Krent who graduated this spring (2025). Together, they reflect on their experiences in the Comparative Literature department at Harvard, examine how the field has evolved, and explore what lies ahead for the next generation of comparatists.

]]>https://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/bonus-adam-mahler-on-the-poets-nameshttps://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/bonus-adam-mahler-on-the-poets-namesMon, 18 Aug 2025 15:03:58 GMTWhat’s in a name? How do you translate a poet’s name that appears in multiple forms: sometimes in Hebrew as “the good name,” sometimes in various Spanish renderings, used by the poet himself for the sake of his rhyme scheme? In this bonus episode, Adam reflects on the quiet act of restituting “Shem Tov.” This isn’t a word puzzle, he tells us. It is a decision grounded in emotion.

]]>https://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/adam-mahler-on-shem-tov-ardutielshttps://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/adam-mahler-on-shem-tov-ardutielsMon, 04 Aug 2025 20:39:27 GMTIn this episode, Adam Mahler discusses his translation of Shem Tov Ardutiel’s Moral Proverbs and Other Old Castilian Poems of Jewish Authorship (forthcoming from the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library at Harvard University Press). This collection captures the flourishing of Jewish poetry written in Old Spanish during the medieval period. Adam delves into the linguistic texture of this Old Castilian verse, inflected by folk wisdom, Hebrew poetics, and Maimonidean philosophy. He discusses his choice to prioritize line length and communicability over rhyme scheme, and he recounts his decisions regarding a 900-line devotional poem to Joseph, each line ending hypnotically with the same name. At the end of the episode, Adam makes a case for endnotes as windows into these texts’ layered, associative meanings.  

]]>https://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/special-episode-2-the-undergraduatehttps://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/special-episode-2-the-undergraduateTue, 29 Jul 2025 18:54:16 GMTDuring the 2024-25 academic year, the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard celebrated its departmental anniversary—and Paraphrasis is launching a series of summer special episodes to commemorate the occasion. In the second edition of the series, guest host Jess Jensen Mitchell sits down with two alumnae of the college, Professors Moira Weigel of Harvard University, and Pelin Kivrak of Emerson College. Together, they reflect on their career trajectories after Harvard, their memories of undergraduate life, and their ongoing roles as educators and mentors.

]]>https://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/bonus-miriam-udel-on-rhyme-schemeshttps://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/bonus-miriam-udel-on-rhyme-schemesMon, 14 Jul 2025 13:01:13 GMTWhat’s it like to tame an unruly stanza? And what happens when you’re tasked with translating an erratically rhymed Soviet-era poem, complete with dirt-caked children and a state-dispatched bath squad? In this bonus episode, Miriam Udel shares her translation of Boots in the Bath Squad by Leib Kvitko, a wacky tale of hygiene propaganda and childhood grime. She reflects on the joy of chasing rogue rhymes and the “almost-audible click” when a tricky stanza finally snaps into place.

]]>https://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/miriam-udel-on-honey-on-the-pagehttps://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/miriam-udel-on-honey-on-the-pageMon, 07 Jul 2025 13:03:04 GMTIn this episode, Anna speaks with Miriam Udel about Honey on the Page (NYU Press), her 2021 anthology of Yiddish children’s literature from the 20th century. A project born of her roles as Yiddish scholar, teacher, and mother, the collection brings together folktales, fool stories, and bedtime parables for readers both steeped in Jewish culture and entirely new to it. Miriam walks us through the sticky-sweet meaning behind the book’s title—a nod to a ritual invitation to Jewish literacy. We also hear about her process of commissioning visual illustrations with the late artist Paula Cohen to recast vintage scenes in a contemporary key, both cartoonish and candlelit in equal measure. Along the way, we meet weary winds, bickering couples, and a whole lot of Jerusalem alley cats.

]]>https://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/special-anniversary-episode-1https://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/special-anniversary-episode-1Mon, 30 Jun 2025 13:01:50 GMTDuring the 2024-25 academic year, the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard celebrated its departmental anniversary—and Paraphrasis is launching a series of summer special episodes to commemorate the occasion. In our first edition of the series, guest host Lara Norgaard sits down with Spencer Lee-Lenfield and Sandra Naddaff, two members of the Comp Lit faculty who are also alumni of Harvard College. Together, they discuss the past, present, and future of Translation Studies at Harvard. Along the way, Spencer and Sandra speak to their own journeys into the discipline and how translation developed from something seen as a technical skill into a critical practice and dynamic area of study in North American academia.

]]>https://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/bonus-anton-hur-on-gerunds-tech-broshttps://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/bonus-anton-hur-on-gerunds-tech-brosMon, 16 Jun 2025 14:33:48 GMTWhat is a title? For Anton Hur, it’s “the most liberated thing” in a translator’s toolkit. Listen in on how Your Utopia got its name, as a blunt-sounding gerund in the English was traded in for something with sharper edges. Anton explains why the Korean title To Meet Her (Geunyeoreul Mannada), though thematically crucial, didn’t sit right on the tongue, and how his suggestion, “Your Utopia,” skewers the tech-bro fantasy of sleek, bloodless progress.

]]>https://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/anton-hur-on-your-utopia-by-borahttps://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/anton-hur-on-your-utopia-by-boraMon, 02 Jun 2025 13:02:45 GMTIn this episode, translator and debut novelist Anton Hur discusses his English translation of Your Utopia (Algonquin Books, 2024), a fantastical and moving collection by South Korean author Bora Chung. From reordering stories to recharging sad robots, Anton shares his journey with Chung’s genre-bending work—and how a casual pitch at a book fair eventually led to Chung’s name on literary longlists. We discuss topics ranging from zombies in space and sentient elevators to the question of whether balancing the beautiful and the faithful in translation is a trade-off or a tandem act. We also hear how Anton navigates the push-pull between the solitary act of translating-writing and the collaborative dynamic of publishing. Along the way, Anton reflects on authorial paratexts, deadpan satire, and the ever-tricky desire to “make English pop.”

]]>https://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/bonus-damion-searls-on-titles-andhttps://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/bonus-damion-searls-on-titles-andSun, 18 May 2025 14:39:58 GMTWhy do German nouns seem to bristle with energy while English ones feel flat? And how did he land on Overstaying—a title that’s as pushy and off-kilter as the novel itself? Damion takes us behind the decision to swap a dense German noun for a lopsided English gerund.

]]>https://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/damion-searls-on-overstaying-by-arianehttps://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/damion-searls-on-overstaying-by-arianeMon, 05 May 2025 13:38:58 GMTDamion Searls reflects on his translation of Overstaying, Swiss author Ariane Koch’s surreal debut novel (Dorothy Project, 2024). He talks through the book’s oddball humor and syntactic sleights—from “brushy fingers” to the German impersonal pronoun “man”—while unpacking the slipperiness of the German word for “visitor” and the politics of hospitality. This episode ends with Damion discussing an encounter with the most inaccurate—and most insightful—review of his work he’s ever read.

]]>https://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/gitta-honegger-on-the-children-ofhttps://www.paraphrasispodcast.com/p/gitta-honegger-on-the-children-ofTue, 05 Nov 2024 19:32:56 GMTIn the last full episode of our first season, we hear scholar, translator, and performer Gitta Honegger discuss her German to English translation of The Children of the Dead, written in 1995 by the Nobel Prize winning author and playwright, Elfriede Jelinek. Considered to be Jelinek’s magnum opus, the 666 page novel takes place at dingy Alpine resort swarming with lacivious, reanimated corpses. Anna dives into the sinuous linguistic body of the translation, reaching the difficult question of collective guilt at its heart. The episode ends with a special reading by Jelinek and Honegger.

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