A translator on the words that will not move

Yuki Oda has translated the same poet for eleven years and has published two of the poems. We talked mostly about the ones she has not.

Some words are not difficult. They are simply not available. You can spend a decade being honest about that.
Yuki Oda

In this episode

1. 05:00 The first poem, and the four versions she destroyed.
2. 21:30 On a single word she has never solved.
3. 38:00 Whether a translation can be finished at all.
4. 58:20 What her editor thinks of the timescale.
5. 1:09:00 Forty more years.

Mentioned

• This Little Art by Kate Briggs
• Barthes, inevitably
• A dictionary annotated by her grandmother

Recorded in a library study room, whispering.