New Books in Language and Translation Podcast By Marshall Poe cover art

New Books in Language and Translation

New Books in Language and Translation

By: Marshall Poe
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This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: ⁠newbooksnetwork.com⁠ Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: ⁠https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/⁠ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/languageNew Books Network Science Social Sciences
Episodes
  • Yiddish in Israel: A History

    Yiddish in Israel: A History
    Mar 27 2026
    The new book Yiddish in Israel: A History (Indiana UP, 2020) challenges the commonly held view that Yiddish was suppressed or even banned by Israeli authorities for ideological reasons, offering instead a radical new interpretation of the interaction between Yiddish and Israeli Hebrew cultures. Following the Israeli Yiddish scene through the history of the Yiddish press, Yiddish theater, early Israeli Yiddish literature, and high Yiddish culture, author Rachel Rojanski tells the compelling and yet unknown story of how Yiddish, the most widely used Jewish language in the pre-Holocaust world, fared in Zionist Israel, the land of Hebrew. Join us for a discussion of this book with Rachel Rojanski in conversation with Rachel Brenner, Shachar Pinsker, and Sunny Yudkoff. This book talk originally took place on May 27, 2020. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language
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    1 hr and 11 mins
  • Why Did Langston Hughes's "Troubled Lands" Go Unpublished for Nearly a Century?: A Conversation with Ricardo Wilson

    Why Did Langston Hughes's "Troubled Lands" Go Unpublished for Nearly a Century?: A Conversation with Ricardo Wilson
    Mar 27 2026
    Why did Langston Hughes's translations of Mexican and Cuban stories go unpublished for nearly a century? A landmark book—the first complete publication of Langston Hughes’s translations of thirty-three stories by eighteen Mexican and Cuban writers In late 1934, Langston Hughes, already established as a leading voice of literary Black America, traveled to Mexico City, where he stayed for more than five months and began translating short fiction by prominent Mexican and Cuban writers. These stories, as he wrote to a friend, explore “the revolutions and uprisings, sugar cane, Negroes, Indians, corrupt generals, [and] American imperialists,” and are “mostly all left stories, because practically all the writers down here are left these days.” But when Hughes proposed publishing the stories as a book, to be titled Troubled Lands: Stories of Mexico and Cuba as Translated by Langston Hughes (Princeton University Press, 2026), his agent discouraged him from further pursuing the project and it remained unpublished, until now, with only a handful of the translations making their way into contemporary magazines. This volume presents Hughes’s translations of these stories together for the first time as he originally envisioned. Edited by Ricardo Wilson, the book also features an introduction and brief biographies of the included writers. Troubled Lands features thirty-three stories by eighteen writers, including Rafael Felipe Muñoz, Nellie Campobello, Lino Novás Calvo, Luis Felipe Rodríguez, Germán List Arzubide, Pablo de la Torriente-Brau, and Juan de la Cabada. The collection depicts Mexico in the wake of its revolution and Cuba in the years between the brutal regimes of Machado and Batista. Hughes was a noted translator of poetry, but his commitment to translating fiction is less well known. Troubled Lands provides a window into this important dimension of his work and illuminates his deep interest in Mexico and Cuba. Ricardo A. Wilson II is a creative writer and scholar. He is associate professor of English at Williams College and founder and executive director of The Outpost Foundation. Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language
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    49 mins
  • Danny Bate, "Why Q Needs U: A History of Our Letters and How We Use Them" (Bonnier Books, 2025)

    Danny Bate, "Why Q Needs U: A History of Our Letters and How We Use Them" (Bonnier Books, 2025)
    Mar 21 2026
    Every letter you’re reading right now has a fascinating story to tell, having been on a long linguistic, historical, political and social journey. The English alphabet is a tool we’ve inherited down the centuries from ancient creators around the world. The alphabet hasn’t always had its present form, but rather has undergone all sorts of changes and evolutions to suit the needs of the time. Did you know that five English letters come from a single graphic grandparent? Or that we may know the specific person who invented the letter G? Do you know why Z is the sixth letter for the Greeks, yet the last for us? Or why Q needs to be followed by U?In Why Q Needs U: A History of Our Letters and How We Use Them (Bonnier Books, 2025), linguistic expert Dr. Danny Bate takes readers on a fascinating odyssey through the English alphabet, not just to share fun facts but to reveal the alphabet’s hidden mechanisms and inspire a newfound sense of wonder in this ancient tool. He will not only leave readers amazed by the letters they use every day but equipped to spot connections in languages across the world. He also aims to explain and defend the peculiar way English today uses these ancient symbols. Why does a silent final E turn hop into hope? Why are the Cs in circus pronounced differently? And why is there an L in salmon and a K in know? Each chapter is a self-contained adventure into history, etymology, politics and more, but will also contribute to a general appreciation for how our alphabet developed, how it has changed and how it fits into a wider world of writing. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language
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    55 mins
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