Translation as Transhumance

Mireille Gansel grew up in the traumatic aftermath of her family losing everything - including their native language - to Nazi Germany. In the 1960s and '70s, she translated poets from East Berlin and Vietnam to help broadcast their defiance to the rest of the world. Winner of a French Voices Award and an English PEN Award, this half memoir, half philosophical treatise is a humanist meditation on the art of translation. Gansel considers estrangement as her price paid for the priviledge of moving between tongues, and muses on how translation becomes an exercise of empathy among those in exile. `In this memoir of a translator's adventures, Mireille Gansel shows us what it means to enter another language through its culture, and to enter the life of another culture through its language. A sensitive and insightful book, which illuminates the difficult, and often underestimated task of translation - and the role of literature in making for a more interconnected and humane world.' - Eva Hoffman, author of 'Lost in Translation: A Life in A New Language'