Paraphrasis Podcast

Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard

Paraphrasis is a podcast dedicated to the art and practice of literary translation, brought to you by a team of graduate students in the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard. www.paraphrasispodcast.com

  1. 12/15/2025

    Bonus: On calendars and untranslatable wallpaper

    What does a translator do when one Russian word summons an entire visual world while English barely has a name for it? Nadezhda, Sasha, and Philippa unpack the long Google Doc trail behind a tear-off calendar, a photo mural, and the quiet surrealism of office décor that says everything without saying much. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.paraphrasispodcast.com

    8 min

  2. 12/01/2025

    Collaborative Translation of Girls and Institutions by Daria Serenko

    To close out Season 2, we spoke with three translators—Sasha Karsavina, Philippa Mullins, and Nadezhda Vikulina—about their collaborative translation of Girls and Institutions (excerpt in n+1, 2024), Russian writer and activist Daria Serenko’s polyphonic portrait of girls under late-state bureaucracy. From tangled pronouns to shifting registers, the trio walks us through their methods of translating a text where everyday office work gives way to flashes of levity and transcendence. Somewhere between the poetic and the prosaic, every sentence becomes a site of collective negotiation and female solidarity. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.paraphrasispodcast.com

    25 min

  3. 11/17/2025

    Bonus: Annabel Kim on “What if”

    What do we do with a word that means both “if” and “yes”? Annabel shares the experience of grappling with the ending poem of Plasmas, where conditional grammar runs up against an imaginative imperative. Annabel ultimately lands on a solution that preserves the tremble between if and yes. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.paraphrasispodcast.com

    4 min

  4. 11/03/2025

    Annabel Kim on Plasmas

    Annabel Kim joins us to talk about Plasmas (Deep Vellum, 2022), Céline Minard’s posthuman sci-fi series of vignettes that read like a syntactical tornado. As Annabel unpacks Minard’s invented jargons and depictions of estranged humanity, we follow a translation journey shaped by ecological grief, disorienting prose, and the polysemous charge of language that refuses clarity. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.paraphrasispodcast.com

    17 min

  5. 10/20/2025

    Bonus: Spencer Lee-Lenfield on translating rhyme across languages

    What happens when you translate from a poetic tradition that sidesteps rhyme into one that can’t help but hum in iambic pentameter? Spencer weighs the trade-offs of bringing Korean free verse into rhyme-chasing English, and why the occasional slant rhyme might be a translator’s best currency. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.paraphrasispodcast.com

    4 min

  6. 10/06/2025

    Spencer Lee-Lenfield on Biologicity

    Spencer Lee-Lenfield brings us Biologicity (Black Ocean, 2024) by South Korean poet Shin Hae-uk, a collection with offbeat turns, twisted logic, and sudden switches in vocabulary. Spencer walks us through how to navigate deliberate fragmentation in the Korean word order, and the strange intimacy of rendering a poet who can comment on your translation in real time. We close with a glimpse into Spencer’s in-progress translation of Shin’s newest collection. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.paraphrasispodcast.com

    21 min

  7. 09/15/2025

    Bonus: Mark Harman on retitling Kafka

    What happens when a title becomes too familiar? Mark Harman defends his decision to ditch “The Metamorphosis” for “The Transformation”—a shift that scraps the Latinate gloss, restores fidelity to Kafka’s voice, and moves against cultural habit. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.paraphrasispodcast.com

    4 min

  8. 09/02/2025

    Mark Harman on Franz Kafka’s Selected Stories

    Mark Harman returns to Kafka with Selected Stories (Harvard University Press, 2024), a collection that combines courtroom logic with surrealist punchlines. We discuss Kafka’s subtle irony, the mysteries tucked behind the lines, and the challenge of translating a voice that leaves the reader deliberately responsible for the text. As Mark delves into the subtle nuance and humor of Kafka’s Austrian-flavored German, he shows why Kafka is a one of those writers who we will never be finished translating. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.paraphrasispodcast.com

    18 min
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
4 Ratings

About

Paraphrasis is a podcast dedicated to the art and practice of literary translation, brought to you by a team of graduate students in the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard. www.paraphrasispodcast.com

Information

  • Creator
    Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2025
  • Episodes
    36
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard University
  • Show Website
    Paraphrasis Podcast