Category: Reflections on Kin

A Prize for Kin

My translation of Miljenko Jergović’s Kin was awarded the prize for “Best Literary/Scholarly Translation into English” by the American Association for Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL) at its just completely conference in Las Vegas. They don’t seem to have updated their website yet, but here’s the link for all the long- and… Continue reading A Prize for Kin

Chat GPT for Literary Translation: Test No. 1

I’ve been following Tom Gally’s YouTube videos on various aspects of Chat GPT and foreign languages, including his several videos on the software’s potential use in translation. It’s surprisingly good, the software, I mean. I thought why not try it on a text I had already translated to see what it could do. So I… Continue reading Chat GPT for Literary Translation: Test No. 1

Kin praise from the music world

A friend from across the country sent me a note today to say that Marissa Lorusso and Lyndsey McKenna’s NPR music newsletter had plugged my translation of Jergović’s Kin, which made me say what!? Here’s what seems to have happened. They contacted a handful of their favorite musicians and asked them to tell them about… Continue reading Kin praise from the music world

People Reading Kin

I’ve been very happy to see several positive reviews of Kin in the past few days since its official release. Sarah McEachern’s piece in the LA Review of Books, “Entangled in Family: On Miljenko Jergović’s Kin and Semezdin Mehmedinović’s My Heart,” takes the title and the book’s biggest thematic thread as its main focus, with… Continue reading People Reading Kin

Kin’s Arrival, blogging, and podcasting

My copy of Kin came in the mail a few days ago, all 911 pages of it. It made the mailbox sag a bit. I didn’t have time to think much about it at the time, but since then I have scrolled back through the blog that I kept while translating the book beginning in… Continue reading Kin’s Arrival, blogging, and podcasting

Kin in The Harvard Review

This month was earlier slated to be when Archipelago Books released Miljenko Jergović’s Kin in my translation, but that got pushed to the middle of next month. Instead, a short piece, “In Springtime When we Air Out the Graves,” has appeared in this month’s Harvard Review (No. 57), alongside work by Rita Dove, Gregory O’Brien,… Continue reading Kin in The Harvard Review

Prelim Praise for Kin

Here, from the Calvert Journal, is one of those pre-release teasers about “books to look forward to in X year” (which, in this case is the year 2021). Matt Janney calls it, appropriately, a “time-travelling, place-hopping epic, […] at once a history of family and an ode to Yugoslavia.” This is, well, a teaser. Of… Continue reading Prelim Praise for Kin

Family Humor

I’m proofing Kin, which has been slow going – I’ll post separately about that – and am finding myself laughing at many things that before I didn’t notice or don’t remember noticing as funny. Jergović’s humor is almost always rather dark, and I recall someone noting how frequently he found himself laughing while reading another… Continue reading Family Humor

Kakania in The Massachusetts Review

An excerpt from the fifth part of Kin is in the current (summer 2020) issue of The Massachusetts Review. Thanks to the editors, especially Corine Tachtaris and Jim Hicks, for their interest and support. It’s a strong issue with plenty of global awareness and representation, including translations by Patty Crane (Tomas Tranströmer), Peter Bush (Juan… Continue reading Kakania in The Massachusetts Review