Translating Loss

The Loss Of Things I Took For Granted

Adam Kotsko | Slate | 11th February 2024

Today’s college students struggle with basic literacy, this professor reports. Their “reading resilience” is low and comprehension basic. In part, this is because they have grown up with smartphones. But it is also because the way reading is taught is insufficient, and this is deeply troubling. They are not simply “choosing TikTok over Jane Austen”. “They are being deprived of the ability to choose” (1,600 words)

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Translating Philosophy

Damion Searls | Words Without Borders | 14th February 2024

Translator’s notes on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. A challenging task, given that this is a deeply thoughtful work of philosophy about the relationship between language and thought. The case is made for a looser, less consciously “highbrow” approach. Previous versions have been “too firmly in the grip of how the German language operates” to convey the work’s literary beauty as well as its ideas (5,000 words)