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Magpies
Lithuanian language
Lithuanian literature

Jul 20, 2019

Novelties

Coming across new vocabulary is one of the great pleasures of translating, and I can’t help but share my delight in coming across the wor...

E. Novickas

Mar 26, 2019

Magnificent magpies

I feel rather silly that I hadn't thought of looking for magpies on youtube before. After all, Pica Pica Press in interested in all thing...

E. Novickas

Aug 13, 2018

“Substantivum commune” – the uncommon common noun in Lithuanian

Let me explain. These are nouns that are common in the sense that they are both masculine and feminine. (Ahem—some may actually remember ...

E. Novickas

Feb 15, 2017

Inspirations

I have often been tantalizingly informed that the characters in Ričardas Gavelis’s fiction are recognizably based on real people in Lithu...

E. Novickas

Nov 9, 2016

My, oh my

I’m afraid recent events are, as usual, intruding upon the subject of translation, or is it the other way around? But how could you possi...

Apr 12, 2016

Life and translating

My friend Giedrius Subačius asked me a question I ponder often: which books or writers I’ve translated were the most difficult? The glib ...

Mar 8, 2016

Old Oak and its ilk

Well, a major read of Tūla is coming to a close, and I must admit, I feel rather sorry; it’s been so much fun. An aspect of Kunčinas’s wr...

E. Novickas

Feb 7, 2016

Ploughing the brain

Jurgis Kunčinas twice uses the appellation, in Lithuanian, gatvių artojai, "plowmen of the streets" in the novel Tūla. The plowing refers...

Jan 1, 2016

Ah, typos...

Once again, the twenty-tome Dictionary of the Lithuanian Language has come to my rescue, this time cheering me with one of its examples f...

E. Novickas

Oct 11, 2015

Sidetracks

Sidetracks are a professional hazard for a translator; after all, you need to know every last bit of it, don't you? Translating Jurgis Ku...

from The Saturday Magazine, No. 549, January 23

Apr 21, 2015

Tidbits on the life of magpies

"The councils which magpies appear to build together, at particular seasons, commonly called "folkmotes,'' are associated in the minds of...

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