The Linguist is a languages magazine for professional linguists, translators, interpreters, language professionals, language teachers, trainers, students and academics with articles on translation, interpreting, business, government, technology
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Sari Nusseibeh doing so, the review has availed itself of Richard's extensive international network of literary translators. With such a goodly display of literary talent on offer, I have found it hard to agree with Cervantes's dictum that "translation is the other side of a tapestry". The early days of InterLitQ, which I spent in a rented garden flat in London, were a flurry of activity, with lunches, drinks receptions, and meetings in myriad cafés, as I met an array of authors. However, I had no time to feel prey to an Eliotian sense of having "measured out my life with coffee spoons". After all, there were many texts to be evaluated, a heavy volume of editing to attend to, and a need to spread word about the review – at that time generally unknown to the reading public. Setbacks, always inevitable, were to follow hard on the heels of the heady days: the departure of our highly professional production assistant – hard to replace – who landed a tenured position at a US university; and the decision on two occasions by Arts Council England, firstly in 2011 and subsequently in 2015, not to provide financing. The review, which had been publishing for several years, was cut adrift from structural and economic moorings. At the end of 2011, the online issue www.interlitq.org went into abeyance for 18 months, although texts of considerable merit, such as Paul Scott Derrick's fine translations of poems by Pablo Neruda, support of the US poet and editor Glenna Luschei, now one of InterLitQ's three Vice- Presidents, alongside the Mexican journalist Elena Poniatowska and the Palestinian academic Sari Nusseibeh. Glenna has more than 50 years of experience in the world of publishing, having launched her Solo Press in 1966, and she is always on hand to offer the review her immense, hard-won wisdom. The first message I received from Glenna came on the day my mother died on 5 June 2016, the day after the anniversary of the tragic death of Glenna's daughter Linda in 1994; a shared sense of bereavement, and the desire to transform the pain of loss into a source of renewal, has brought us together. And so, with InterLitQ's 10th anniversary in sight, 2017 looks set to be a busy year as I seek to juggle my work as a United Nations translator with my editorial role and, after some fallow years, my own output in both fiction and literary translation. It is, of course, the readers who determine the longevity of any publication. And I hope to be fit to the task of providing readers of InterLitQ, currently to be found mostly in the Americas but also growing steadily in Europe, with a regular flow of high-quality international literature that reflects an immense diversity, and has the power to challenge our most deep-rooted preconceptions. interlitq.org continued to be published on its blog (www.interlitq.wordpress.com). Some years later, this oeuvre was to be republished in the magazine's 'Poetic Voices' series. A bright future? I believe that if InterLitQ continues to innovate, it stands every chance of going from strength to strength. We are no longer a quarterly, but will henceforth publish on a regular basis, striving to become a more fluid publication that engages constantly with our readers. One of our central objectives this year is to reach out to native French readers by providing a home for high-quality writing in French. Many years ago, in the course of trying to place the French translation of my story Trip to Hell, I was struck by the relative dearth of literary reviews in France. Our readership in France is growing, but it is a gradual process. We also have a loyal nucleus of readers in Argentina, where I have been resident for 16 years, and we aim to build on this momentum, acting as a bridge of interaction between the English- and Spanish-speaking worlds. It is an ambitious undertaking, but one that we aspire to. As is so often the case in the world of publishing, financing issues continue to dog us. As a not-for-profit corporation in New York, InterLitQ has no regular source of income and has always constituted a leap of faith. In my quest to take the review to new heights, I am blessed to count on the moral thelinguist.uberflip.com APRIL/MAY 2017 The Linguist 23 FEATURES Peter Robertson & Glenna Luschei Elena Poniatowska