Episode 56: Jennifer Kronovet

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Rachel Zucker speaks with poet and translator Jennifer Kronovet about translating the Chinese poet Liu Xia, choosing a pseudonym, the ethics of translation, negotiating appropriation, how to engage other cultures when you’re not from that culture, translating Yiddish poet Celia Dropkin, how to pull an older work into the present, being a Jew in Berlin, learning a new language to find your own lineage, an amazing coincidence about a small town in Romania, Paul Celan, Charles K. Bliss, a perfect language you can’t speak, language diversity, kung fu, writing a sci-fi novel, the body, prepositions, the Sapir Worth Hypothesis, mother-linguists, raising children in another country and language, being with someone who is learning to talk, the trucks in China, and much more.

Books by Jennifer Kronovet

• The Wug Test (Ecco, 2016)

• Case Study: With (Above/Ground Press, 2015)

• Empty Chairs (co-translator, with Ming Di, as Jennifer Stern, Graywolf, 2015)

• Awayward (BOA Editions, 2009)

Other Books and Writers Mentioned in the Episode

• Number the Stars by Lois Lowry (HMH Books for Young Readers, re-printed in 2011)

• The Diary of Anne Frank

• Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (University of Chicago Press, 2003)

• Alphabet by Ingrid Christensen (New Directions, 2001)

• Liu Xia

• Liu Xiaobo

• Jeffrey Yang

• Lucas Klein

• Paul Auster

• Celia Dropkin

• Faith Jones and Sam Solomon, co-translators of Dropkin

• Paul Celan

• C.S. Giscombe

• Monica de la Torre

• Lupe Gomez

• Don Mee Choi

• Wang Jiaxin

Other Relevant Links

• “Jennifer Kronovet studied Yiddish so she could communicate with the dead”, by Patrick Cox via PRI

• The Wug Test (the actual test, not Jenny’s book)

• PEN America

• Asymptote Journal

• Circumference Magazine

• Circumference Books

• Hopscotch Bookstore/Reading Room

• Introspectivists

• “Hey Allen Ginsberg Where Have You Gone and What Would You Think of my Drugs?” by Rachel Zucker

• Diane Wolkstein discussing her work on Monkey King: Journey to the West on Radio National (Australia)

• Charles K Bliss

• The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

• George Lakoff

• “Variations on the Right to Remain Silent” by Anne Carson, from A Public Space, Issue 7

• Dan Visel

• Stephania Heim

• “Anonymous Sources” by Eliot Weinberger