Rosalía de Castro

The Tarzan method

my first bilingual dictionary

In working last week with translator and writer (and multimedia, book designer and theatre guy) Daniel Canty on his current translation in progress of Little Theatres as Petits Théâtres, I remembered the original inspiration for the wee bilingual Galician-English dictionary at the back of my theatres. It was my childhood Whitman Classics edition of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes. No wonder that I’d always been drawn to translation!

The 19th Century in the 21st: Rosalía de Castro in English

cover of Rosalía de Castro's Galician Songs
to appear in February 2013 from Small Stations Press and the Xunta de Galicia

Rosalía de Castro (1837-1885) attends her ear to the smallest of musics: rhythms of words and how they operate in transporting song and conversation into the page. How line-breaks work. Rhyme. How a copla or popular ditty might function as a break or cut, a secession, as Chus Pato might say.

Syndicate content