Crossing Borders

A collection of stories and essays about translating and translators

"What an astonishing collection, it seemed as if I could drink it--these pieces exude such humanness, refer effortlessly to the tender place that exists in between languages, and somehow leave you with both everything and nothing to say." --Ella Frances Sanders, author of Lost in Translation

In Joyce Carol Oates's story "The Translation," a traveler to an Eastern European country falls in love with a woman he gets to know through an interpreter. In Lydia Davis's "French Lesson I: Le Meurtre," what begins as a lesson in beginner's French takes a sinister turn. In the essay "On Translating and Being Translated," Primo Levi addresses the joys and difficulties awaiting the translator. Lynne Sharon Schwartz's Crossing Borders: Stories and Essays About Translation gathers together thirteen stories and five essays that explore the compromises, misunderstandings, traumas, and reconciliations we act out and embody through the art of translation.