-
Signs (taken for wonders?)
The exotic is always alluring; borrow a few words from another language, or a cinema icon from another era, and the possibilities blossom. Or wilt. I always enjoy reading signs (we recently turned the car around to photograph a sign for “Salad Shrimp” offered right next to night crawlers; imagine our disappointment when it was…
-
Orientation: Stone Windows
alabaster window It’s orientation week, for students and visiting faculty alike. I want to say disorientation as well (notice my self-restraint–no parenthesis around the prefix, though both training and inclination leave me tempted to ask a word to be its opposite even as it is defined, greedily hoping to hold ambivalence and precision in the…
-
Travel guides new and old
I love reading travel guides. I’ve bought several in preparation for my upcoming trip to Argentina, and I’ve pretty well cleaned out the public library’s shelf. (Good news for those planning their own trips: I leave at the end of the month, and all books will be returned.) The university library has just one book…
-
Bored as an oyster?
Razor clam, boredom long past The translation I’m working on includes the phrase, aburrirse como pingüinos— become bored as penguins? A little sleuthing around turned up the phrase, aburrirse como una ostra or una almeja— bored as an oyster, or bored as a clam. Bivalves likely lead pretty dull lives (though a razor clam can…
-
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…
-
Argentina Count-Down (part 1)
I picked up a 6-week, inter-library loan on campus the other day, and the return date was none other than my departure date for Argentina. Aack! I’ve got as many to-do lists as a woman could wish for, but checking things off the lists is proving harder. So the packing/planning/copying/reserving/panicking begins in earnest. I spent…
-
Argentina Count-Down (part 1)
I picked up a 6-week, inter-library loan on campus the other day, and the return date was none other than my departure date for Argentina. Aack! I’ve got as many to-do lists as a woman could wish for, but checking things off the lists is proving harder. So the packing/planning/copying/reserving/panicking begins in earnest. I spent…
-
Globe Oranges — a story
Many years ago, a student arrived on the first day of class with a very small infant in her arms. When her turn came to introduce herself, she said she had studied in [country x] for a semester and come back with a little [country-xian]. Which got me thinking. . . and marked one of…
-
Amalia Gladhart
I am a writer, translator, and professor of Spanish and Latin American literature and theater. I learned Spanish when my family spent fifteen months in northern Ecuador when I was in middle school. I’ve been working on my Spanish ever since. This site has links to my published fiction, translations, and blog, and announcements of…