New Books in Language and Translation

In this episode of the Vault, we revisit the Italian writer Italo Calvino’s James Lecture, presented at the New York Institute for the Humanities on March 30, 1983. Italo Calvino was one of the most inventive and widely read Italian authors of the twentieth century. Born in Cuba in 1923 and raised in San Remo, Italy, he began his literary career as a journalist and fiction writer after World War II, publishing his debut novel, The Path to the Nest of Spiders, in 1947. He went on to write some of the most formally original works in postwar literature, including Our Ancestors, Cosmicomics, Invisible Cities, and If on a winter's night a traveler. His work moved fluidly between realism, fantasy, and structural experimentation, earning him a reputation as one of the foremost practitioners of what would come to be called postmodern fiction. He died in 1985, in Siena, Italy. In this lecture, later published as “The Written and the Unwritten Word” in the New York Review of Books, Calvino reflects on writing, reading and what it means to live between the written world and the material world. He is introduced by NYIH fellow Susan Sontag. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

Jeffrey Shandler’s new book, Yiddish: Biography of a Language (Oxford UP, 2020), presents the story of Yiddish, the defining vernacular of Ashkenazi Jews, from its origins to the present. Shandler relates the multifaceted history of Yiddish in the form of a biographical profile. Through a series of thematic chapters—from “Name” and “Date and Place of Birth” to “Religion” and “Life Expectancy”—he offers surprising insights into the dynamic interrelation of the language, its speakers, and their culture and explores the varied symbolic investments that Yiddish speakers and others have made in the language. Join us for a conversation celebrating this new book with Jeffrey Shandler, Anita Norich, and Ayala Fader, moderated by YIVO's Academic Advisor and Director of Exhibitions Eddy Portnoy. Buy the book This book talk originally took place on February 17, 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Ingrid Piller speaks with Professor David Palfreyman (United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain) about his 2023 book Bilingual writers and corpus analysis. Palfreyman, D. M., & Habash, N. (2023). Bilingual writers and corpus analysis. Routledge. Link here Bilingual writers and corpus analysis is one of the first to represent the usage of bilingual writers in both their languages, offering insight into language corpora as extremely valuable tools in contemporary applied linguistics research, and in turn, into how much of the world’s population operate daily. This book discusses one of the first examples of a bilingual writer corpus, the Zayed Arabic-English Bilingual Undergraduate Corpus (ZAEBUC), which includes writing by hundreds of students in two languages, with additional information about the writers and the texts. The result is a rich resource for research in multilingual use and learning of language. The book takes the reader through the design and use of such a corpus and illustrates the potential of this type of corpus with detailed studies that show how assessment, vocabulary, and discourse work across two very different languages. This volume will be of interest to scholars, policymakers, and educators in bilingualism, plurilingualism, language education, corpus design, and natural language processing. For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

Aya Elyada is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research focuses on German and German-Jewish cultural history, Yiddish-German encounters, and the social history of language and translation. She is the author of A Lingering Legacy: The Afterlife of Yiddish in German-Jewish Culture (SUP 2026) and A Goy Who Speaks Yiddish: Christians and the Jewish Language in Early Modern Germany (SUP 2012), and co-editor of German-Jewish Studies: Next Generations (Berghahn 2023). She is currently working on a DFG-funded project (in collaboration with Prof. Astrid Lembke) on Old Yiddish adaptations of German literary texts, 1400–1800. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

Lyrical Translation: The Creation of Modern Poetry in Colonial Korea (U Hawai'i Press, 2026)is a literary history of modern Korean poetry's origins and its development through translation. As the use of Korean became increasingly restricted during the Japanese occupation, translation was not a choice but a necessity for higher education and intellectual labor. Yet it also had an expansive, creative function: Korean poets wielded it as an instrument to reimagine their literature. Around the turn of the twentieth century, intellectuals began abandoning classical Chinese as the default written language to embrace a new vernacular style in prose and verse that was closer to everyday speech. Pushing back against the perception of translation as a process of simple replication, Lyrical Translation reveals how poets used it to forge an entirely new mode of poetic composition. Dr. David Krolikoski is an assistant professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in the Department of East Asian Languages & Literatures. His research interests include modern Korean poetry, translation, poetics, postcolonial theory, and transnational literature, and his articles have appeared in Azalea: Journal of Korean Literature and Culture, The Routledge Companion to Korean Literature, Hyŏndae sihak, among others. Visit Dr. David Krolikoski’s University Profile here Buy Lyrical Translation: The Creation of Modern Poetry in Colonial Korea here About the host: Leslie Hickman is an Anthropology graduate student at Emory University. She has an MA in Korean Studies and a KO-EN translation certificate from the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. You can contact her at leslie.hickman@emory.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

In Embodied Encuentros: Oral History Archives of Latina/o/e Experiences (Ohio State UP, 2026), Elena Foulis offers a practical guide for completing ethical fieldwork in Latina/o/e communities, emphasizing equitable and culturally sustaining practices for gathering oral histories. In her critical decolonial model, Foulis centers the agency of the people within these communities while considering the diversity and complexity of their experiences. In doing so, she advocates for the importance of building oral history archives that challenge our understandings of Latina/o/e peoples. Foulis provides a conceptual framework for building on community knowledge that considers language, cultural practices, gender, and race. She suggests ways to involve students in ethical research; collect evolving oral histories; employ a language justice approach that acknowledges linguistic oppression, translanguaging, and bilingualism as essential aspects of this community; and consider the importance of digital archives for the creation of multimedia projects that foster community pláticas. Grounded in both theoretical approaches and a feminist ethics praxis, Embodied Encuentros ultimately outlines an important model for doing collaborative, ethical research—not only within Latina/o/e communities but within other minoritized communities as well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Emily Pacheco speaks with PhD candidate Brynn Quick (Macquarie University, Australia) about her 2025 paper, The (un)imagined work of determining patients’ English language proficiency. The conversation focuses on language policies in healthcare, the monolingual logic, and language access. Quick, B., Piller, I., & Lising, L. (2025). The (un)imagined work of determining patients’ English language proficiency. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2025.2594462 Abstract. This study investigates how Australian healthcare policies imagine communication between limited English proficiency (LEP) patients and healthcare providers to occur. This is done through a work as imagined (WAI) vs. work as done (WAD) analysis of 13 Australian medical policies from four levels of governance. Findings reveal that policies mostly conceptualise the work of determining if a patient needs a professional interpreter as an act of self-assessment that patients will do themselves. When policies direct healthcare staff to assess patients’ English language proficiency, they often instruct staff to ‘determine if the patient can understand English’, usually without clear instruction on how to do this. Finally, while communication is the goal that drives many of these policies, ‘successful’ communication is conceptualised as language-neutral, implicitly privileging English and erasing LEP patients’ language needs. These findings reflect a novel way of framing policies’ monolingual logic of WAI within the multilingual reality of WAD and mark an innovative contribution to the study of language access rights. For additional resources, show notes, and transcripts, go here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

In the wake of the September 11 attacks, US officials identified the so-called battle for hearts and minds as the “second front” in the war on terror. A wave of funding flowed into public diplomacy in the Middle East, seeking to change views of the United States through Arabic-language communications—often while hiding the traces of American origins. To what extent did this vast propaganda apparatus sway Arab public opinion? Which ideas and actors shaped American public diplomacy in this period? What are the lessons for information strategy today? The Long War of Ideas: American Public Diplomacy in Arabic After 9/11 (Columbia University Press, 2026) by Dr. Nathaniel Greenberg tells the story of American propaganda campaigns in the Middle East after 9/11, drawing on in-depth interviews with key players and previously classified documents. Dr. Greenberg shows how the United States tried to control perceptions of its response to 9/11 through news and entertainment, and reveals that Arab governments and unofficial actors were involved—knowingly or not—in distributing US propaganda. He explores the institutions, strategy, and rhetoric deployed in the war on terror, placing them in the context of American and Soviet influence campaigns during the Cold War. Greenberg argues that US government-backed broadcasting laid the groundwork for global information warfare, such as the rise of competing Russian and Chinese state media operations. Shedding light on the ideological underpinnings of American propaganda in Arabic after 9/11, The Long War of Ideas offers new insight into soft power in the twenty-first century. 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/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

Nicolas Levi is a researcher at the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He has authored numerous books related to North Korea and is a regular commentator on the country’s elite social and political structures. I Was a North Korean Diplomat: Inside the Secret World of Pyongyang's Foreign Service (Independently Published, 2026) is Levi’s tenth book, a collaborative work based on extensive dialogues with Han Jin-myung (a pseudonym),  a former member of the North Korean elite who served in a specialized military drone unit and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, before defecting in 2015. The book provides a rare, ground-level look at the life of the North Korean upper class, tracing Han’s journey from a privileged childhood in Pyongyang to the high-pressure world of international diplomacy and illicit regime fundraising in Southeast Asia. Through Han’s testimony, the book explores the psychological realities of loyalty, the "golden cage" of the North Korean elite, and the climate of fear following the 2013 execution of Jang Song-thaek, offering readers a unique perspective on the inner workings of the North Korean state. Anthony Kao is a writer who intersects international affairs and cultural criticism. He founded/edits Cinema Escapist—a publication exploring the sociopolitical context behind global film and television—and also writes for outlets like The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The Diplomat, and Eater. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language

This illuminating book Third Ear: Reflections on the Art and Science of Listening (Catapult, 2025) weaves personal stories of a multilingual upbringing with recent scientific breakthroughs in interspecies communication, revealing how the skill of deep listening enriches our curiosity and empathy toward the world around us. This book braids personal narrative with scholarly inquiry to examine the power of listening in building interpersonal empathy and social transformation. The daughter of Holocaust survivors, Rosner recounts growing up in a home where six languages were spoken, exploring how psychotherapy, neurolinguistics, and creativity illuminate the complex ways we are shaped by the sounds and silences of others. Drawing on insights from journalists, podcasters, performers, translators, acoustic biologists, spiritual leaders, composers, and educators, this hybrid text moves fluidly along a spectrum from the molecular to the global, revealing how “third-ear listening” can serve as a collective means of deepening understanding and connection to the natural world. About the Author Elizabeth Rosner is a bestselling novelist, poet, and essayist. Her works include Survivor Café: The Legacy of Trauma and the Labyrinth of Memory, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, and the novel Electric City, named a best book by NPR. Rosner’s essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Elle, and numerous anthologies. She lives in Berkeley, California. In my questions, I focus only on certain aspects of your book—especially language. This does not mean that your book lacks other dimensions to explore. It is a beautifully written work that invites discussion from several angles and points of view. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language