Translating Myself and Others

Novelist Lahiri, internationally known for writing fiction in both English and Italian (e.g., Dove mi trovo, or Whereabouts, which she wrote in Italian, then translated into English), is also an established literary translator and theorist of translation at Princeton. This volume collects her essays about translation (most previously published or given as lectures), some appearing in English for the first time; an appendix includes two essays in Italian. The collection is singular for Lahiri’s ability to integrate the personal and the theoretical, drawing her examples from literature and from life. These texts take on the tone of a personal essay when Lahiri writes about teaching translation in Princeton seminars, or being asked by Italians why an American of Bengali descent would be interested in “their” language. Essays about Pliny or the distinction between the Italian words “lingua” and “lingue” are more scholarly in style.