Lisbon, 1938: Pereira, an aging, reclusive journalist who writes obituaries of famous writers and translates 19th-century French stories for the cultural section of an evening paper, is forced to confront, and ultimately denounce, the crimes of Salazar’s regime.
This, very succinctly, is the plot of Sostiene Pereira (Eng: Pereira Maintains), a short novel (136 pp.) by the Italian writer Antonio Tabucchi (1943-2012), first published in 1994 and translated into multiple languages.
Join OSTI on Saturday, March 7, for a discussion of this unforgettable work and its timeless themes.
We will discuss the book’s translation into English and other languages, as well as social and political considerations for translators, publishers, and journalists in times of government crackdowns on freedom of expression.
Feel free to read Sostiene Pereira in any of your working languages.
Everyone is welcome. Bring your questions and comments for discussion.
About the discussion hosts
Marella Feltrin-Morris has published articles on translation, paratext, and pedagogy, as well as on modern and contemporary Italian literature. Among her most recent publications are the article “The Representation of Pain in Pirandello’s Short Stories: Towards an Ethics of Translatability” (2023) and the book chapter “Diego Marani’s Interpreters, Linguists, Lawbreakers and Loonies” (2023). Her translations of short stories by Luigi Pirandello, Paola Masino and Massimo Bontempelli have appeared in North American Review, Two Lines, Exchanges and Green Mountains Review. She is a contributor to the collaborative digital edition, Stories for a Year, an ongoing project that will provide the first complete English translation of Pirandello’s short stories. To date, over twenty of her translations of Pirandello’s short stories have appeared in Stories for a Year.She is Professor of Italian and coordinator of the Translation Studies Minor at Ithaca College.
Allison deFreese is president of the Oregon Society of Translators and Interpreters (OSTI). Her book-length translations, into English, include works by María Negroni, Karla Marrufo, and David Anuar. Her work also appears in The Harvard Review, The New England Review, Latin American Literature Today, and Poetry Northwest. She teaches in the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley's MA in Spanish Translation and Interpreting (TIP) Program.