Todd Portnowitz

Jan 19, 2024 | straitstimes.com | Jhumpa Lahiri |Todd Portnowitz |Clement Yong

Roman StoriesBy Jhumpa Lahiri, translated by the author and Todd PortnowitzFiction/Alfred A. Knopf/Paperback/204 pages/$36.63/Amazon SG (amzn.to/47y7rEh)3 starsRome is one of those cities that nigh everybody has an idea of. Whether it is the endless adventure in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960) or the dangerous mystique in Dan Brown thrillers, its representation in popular media has given it its own mythology.

Nov 1, 2023 | frontline.thehindu.com | Jhumpa Lahiri |Todd Portnowitz |Anusua Mukherjee |Vikhar Ahmed Sayeed

Jhumpa Lahiri is by now one of the canonical figures of Indian English writing, and some of her pieces will doubtlessly find a place in university curricula before long, if they have not already. Her style is exquisite: intimate and detached at the same time, with carefully chosen words that weave a feel of deceptive simplicity. It recalls Jane Austen writing with a fine brush on her “little bit of ivory, two inches wide”.

Oct 10, 2023 | lithub.com | Todd Portnowitz

Most translators of contemporary literature have at some point worked with an author who knows some English. And if an author knows some English, they’ll likely want to take a glance at what you’ve done with their prose. On occasion this can be helpful, when they save you from a mistranslated idiom, say, or clear up a particularly knotty passage; but most of the time, at least in my case, I find it to be a pain in the ass.

Oct 10, 2023 | kirkusreviews.com | Todd Portnowitz |Emily Wilson |Barbara Kingsolver

A masterful, highly readable rendering of the Greek classic. A bloody tale of ancient war and grief comes to vibrant life in modern-day English. While, in 2018, Wilson was the first woman to translate Homer’s Odyssey into English, her Iliad is the second by a woman in the past 10 years, following Caroline Alexander’s in 2015.

Jan 30, 2023 | languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu | Tom Metcalfe |Candida Moss |Silvia Ferrara |Todd Portnowitz

[This is a guest post by Chris Button]Below are my reconstructed Old Chinese onsets lined up with the 22 "tiangan dizhi"* calendrical signs ("ganzhi"). To be absolutely clear, the reconstructions are based on evidence unrelated to the ganzhi. It's just a very interesting coincidence that they happen to line up so well. Pulleyblank was clearly onto something! I'm not including the Middle Chinese reflexes here, but I have worked them out in detail and can send that over if there is interest.