In a collection of 80 new translations of multilingual queer literature from around the world, Dr. David Gramling (Department Head) published the first English translation of Murathan Mungan’s 1983 short love story Rapunzel and the Drifter, about a taxi driver and his passenger in Ankara, Turkey. What made this a particularly intriguing translation (and translation process) was that the Turkish language has no gender in its third-person pronouns, and that the story focuses on various transgender and cisgender experiences. Translating the story into English required all sorts of acrobatics around grammar and word choice, so as to honour the characters’ experiences as they would have occurred in Turkish. Dr. Gramling is always happy to chat about the joys and challenges of literary translation, and its relationships to multilingual queer experience. The book is available here: https://headofzeus.com/books/9781789542332
Book cover image: Courtesy of publisher, Head of Zeus (headofzeus.com)
Featured image: Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
