Our third most widely read piece of 2025 hails from our Fall issue: a fascinating interview with literary translator Jen Calleja conducted by Assistant Interview Editor Sarah Gear. Much of this discussion is anchored by Calleja’s experimental memoir, Fair: The Life-Art of Translation (Prototype, 2025), the summative advice of an industry veteran with a body of over twenty translated novels from German (including International Booker Prize nominee The Pine Islands by Marion Poschmann).
Needless to say, Calleja is a worthy mentor for aspiring translators. Here, she offers a deeply informative dive into the niche. The distilled life lessons in Fair are many, and as Gear says, it reads as both an “inspiration and manifesto.” This interview also spans the lives of translators in general, challenges of the field, and the implications of AI.
A key theme to anchor the discussion: What does it mean to be a translator? Calleja boldly takes this on, describing the core of it as “holding hope for dialogue and understanding that is face to face.”