Category: The Potbellied Virgin

  • Cookbooks–a translator’s best friend

    Maybe I just tend to translate books full of food, even elaborate meals (the Virgin’s Jubilee breakfast in La Virgen Pipona/The Potbellied Virgin being a favorite example) but I have found, mostly by chance, that international cookbooks provide a wealth of information for the translator. Plenty of ingredients–herbs, spices, cuts of meat–have straightforward parallels across…

  • My Grandmother’s Dictionary Stand

    My grandfather was a woodworker, and one of the things he built for my grandmother was a dictionary stand. It has shelves for smaller books and a hinged, inclined top to hold a large book open. In their different ways, my grandparents both loved words. My grandfather was a storyteller who regaled guests at our…