Translator’s Note - Translations.observatorcultural.ro

Translator’s Note: a synopsis

Stelian Tănase | March 27, 2009

Translated by: Jean Harris

Stelian Tănase Maestro: a Melodrama Bucharest: Polirom, 2008 Stelian Tănase takes aim at Romanian society with a literary arsenal that relies on the grotesque, that owes a debt to opera buffa, and that uses a lens known to Bosch and Ensor. In this literary melodrama, Tina Marcu is a ...

Re: Learning to Read, from Tache de catifea / The Velvet Man

Ştefan Agopian | March 01, 2009

Translated by: Ileana Orlich

This excerpt comes from the first chapter of the novel Tache de catifea [Velvet Tache]The Velvet Man. The action unfolds in early 19th Oltenia, a province that would be incorporated in Romania when the country came into being in 1859. The novel therefore takes place during a time when ...

On Petre Ispirescu

Petre Ispirescu | December 22, 2008

Author: Jean Harris

Twenty-five years younger than Hans Christian Andersen but participating in the same zeitgeist, Petre Ispirescu (1830-1887) was born in a working class section of Bucharest. Never having gone beyond the fourth grade and originally destined for the church, he became a printer, a publisher and a ...

Synopsis of Vasile Ernu’s Born in the USSR

Vasile Ernu | November 01, 2008

Translated by: Florin Bican

The Observer Translation Project cites “ The Ironical Lucidity of a Man ‘Born in the USSR’” in this brief synopsis of Vasile Ernu’s Born in the USSR. Born in the USSR is a small encyclopedia of daily life in the Soviet Union, which didn’t lack enjoyable aspects. Some were ...

A Short Note on Vasile Ernu and His Novel

Vasile Ernu | November 01, 2008

Author: Florin Bican

Vasile Ernu was born in the USSR in 1971. He graduated the Faculty of Philosphy (Al. I. Cuza University, Iasi, Romania, 1996). He holds a master’s degree in philosophy (Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania, 1997). He was a founding editor of Philosophy& Stuff and associate editor of ...

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About this issue

This July, The Observer Translation Project leaves its usual format to present a special CRISIS ISSUE. Things are tough all over. Hard Times suddenly feels like the book of the moment. The global economic crisis impacts life as we know it, and viewed from Bucharest the effects reverberate in domains that include geo-politics and publishing in Romania and abroad, with the crisis at The Observer Translation Project as an instance of a universal phenomenon. read more...

Translator's Choice

Author: Stelian Tănase
Translated by: Jean Harris

From Maestro: A Melodrama. Episode 7

Emiluţa has an unfortunate thought. She’ll throw herself off the top of the building. Why? What the fuck? Let’s say for the cause of PeaceonEarth, for the slumdogs, Europe, for the lonely. Which is to say she doesn’t have a ghost of a reason. Viva Walachia! The way things stand, if ...

Translator’s Note
Translator’s Note: a synopsis

Author: Ştefan Agopian
Translated by: Ileana Orlich

How I Learned to Read (from Tache de Catifea / The Velvet Man)

The bearded man was the owner of an apothecary shop where he worked with two apprentices. Nobody paid me any mind, so I spent all day in what was supposed to be the shop. I say this because it was a large, dark room full of odors—a mix of smells from everywhere. The room hadn’t been cleaned ...

Translator’s Note
Re: Learning to Read, from Tache de catifea / The Velvet Man

Author: Gabriela Adameşteanu
Translated by: Patrick Camiller

Wasted Morning - Napoleon in Bucharest

“What you’ve got here is heaven on earth,” Vica says as she drops onto the kitchen chair. “But where’s your mother?” “At work,” Gelu lazily replies, leaning sideways against the door. “She’s doing mornings this week, didn’t you know?” He is tall and thin, with unset ...

Author: Petre Ispirescu
Translated by: Jean Harris

Youth Without Age and Life Without Death

It happened once as never before-y, ‘cause if it couldn’t be true, it wouldn’t make a story about the time when the poplar tree made berries and the willow tree broke out in cherries, when bears began to brawl with their tails, and wolf and lamb, unfurling their sails, threw arms around each ...

Translator’s Note
On Petre Ispirescu