On the “Commonplace: Conversations with Poets (and Other People)” podcast episode 56, Rachel Zucker speaks with poet and translator Jennifer Kronovet, who (under the pen-name Jennifer Stern) co-translated with Ming Di 明迪 the selected poems of Liu Xia 刘霞, Empty Chairs (Graywolf Press, 2015). Roughly the first half of the conversation is devoted to Chinese poetry translation, and from there it extends to
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.
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