WT reader with contributions by Amir Avraham, Fred Cave, Yana Foque, Daniel Frota, Virginie Gauthier, Daria Kiseleva, Mathew Kneebone, Fay Kolokytha, Menelaos Kouroudis, Jungmyung Lee, Ivan Martinez, Laura Pappa, Christine Pogatchnik and Maria Jimena Sanchez. Edited by Daniel Frota, Menelaos Kouroudis, and Maxine Kopsa.

‘If magic is sometimes very close to nothing at all, it might be indeed possible to mistake one for the other. No wonder language found its origin in myths. This summer reader is about the cup of coffee that keeps us awake every morning. How much of it has to do with caffeine and how much of it with our will to believe in rituals? Amen’.

The view of translation as a second-rate, derivative form of writing, seems to prevail in Western discourse on the subject since sometime around the 17th century. The lowly status of translation is reflected in standard book publishing practices and in modern copyright law. It is perhaps because of our desire to think of the translations as a trancparency, a clear window through which we see the meaning of the original, that we lose sight of the obvious impossibility of one-to-one correspondence and take for granted the presence of the translator and the choices and praxis involved in the task (Matvei Yankelevich).

Compilation of notes and introductions written by translators on different attitudes towards the level of transparency and authorship of their mediation, as well as the inescapable trade-off they have to face between form and meaning. Fifteen contributors dealing with analogous concerns in their practices, selected pages from their personal libraries, present in the book as facsimile versions.

Contributions by Derek Byrne, Fred Cave, Cecília Costa, Paul Elliman, Yana Foqué, Daniel Frota, Virginie Gauthier, Will Holder, Mathew Kneebone, Menealos Kouroudis, Pedro Moraes, Miguel Nóbrega, Maria Jimena Sanchez, Lisette Smits and Sarah Tripp.