New in translation! The Melting by Lize Spit

My translation of Lize Spit's bestselling debut novel The Melting (Het smelt) is now out in the UK with Picador Books with a Translator's Note by yours truly. The US edition will follow soon!

The Melting by Lize Spit international bestseller translated by Kristen Gehrman

Residency at the Vertalershuis Amsterdam

As a translator, you constantly have to make decisions on what to do about these little things. Do you just translate them as they are and preserve the Belgian-ness of the book? Or do you convert them into something more familiar for your target readership? If you translate "hostie" to "satellite wafer", are you then obliged to explain that it is a sort of puffy sugary disk with candy beads rattling inside? Would Americans appreciate encountering a "Rubbermaid" in a book they chose specifically for its foreign-ness?...

Translating The Chronicles

"Language is my way of getting a grip on things, of maintaining control in certain situations. Your body is bombarded with zillions of sensory impressions, and by giving them a name, you make them one-dimensional again, manageable," wrote best-selling Belgian author Lize Spit in her second blog post for The Chronicles. Actually, this is my translation of what she wrote. What she wrote was this...