Translating from the Portuguese
208 pages, 6 x 9
Paperback
Release Date:07 Oct 2025
ISBN:9781951470340
CA$30.95
Elizabeth Lowe charts her journey to becoming a translator through a series of vignettes relating her life as a "third-culture kid" and living and working abroad in a kaleidoscope of cultures and languages. She lived in Germany as a young child immediately after the Second World War while her father worked in the Nuremburg trials and as a newly married military spouse during the Vietnam War; she lived in Haiti just prior to Papa Doc's consolidation of power, in Brazil when the military dictatorship seized the country in its two-decade vise, at the University of Coimbra, Portugal during Salazar, and Colombia at the height of the guerrilla conflicts, and in Miami during the heyday of the cartels. The book is a reflection on translation as an art, on five decades teaching languages, literatures, and translation, and on her close relationship with writers from the Lusophone world. It explores theoretical aspects of translation as well as practical challenges faced by translators, especially those working in Portuguese literature. Lowe offers intimate insights into the creative process of the writers she translates and her own philosophy of literary translation.
This poignant book is a reminiscence, a treatise, a love song to a polyphonic world. Lowe introduces memories with the clarity and certainty of a filmmaker, and the stories that stem from them conjure the international postwar awe and intrigue of John le Carré. In its range alone, Lowe's prose is boundless, and her ear for the varied, rippling sounds found in language is pitch perfect. The Mount Rushmore of Lusophone translators is Gregory Rabassa, Helen Caldwell, Richard Zenith, and Margaret Jull Costa. With this work, Elizabeth Lowe has expanded the pantheon.'—Ezra Fitz, New York Times bestselling translator of literary fiction, narrative nonfiction, and screenplays
'Lowe's multilingual, multicultural background has undoubtedly led to a life shaped by translation. In turn, she has shaped translation like few others. Her memoir reveals her compelling approach: translation as storytelling and wordsmithing, friendship and community, scholarship and teaching, craft and alchemy. Full of adventure, serendipity, and insight, this book tells the story of a pioneering, inspiring, and fascinating life.'—Denise Kripper, author of Narratives of Mistranslation and translation editor of Latin American Literature Today
Through her work as both a translator and an educator, ELIZABETH LOWE has significantly impacted translation studies, particularly in the field of Portuguese-English translation. Her translations are praised for their accuracy and sensitivity to the cultural contexts they depict, and her efforts have helped elevate the academic status of translation studies, recognizing it as both an art and a rigorous discipline.
