Jeffrey Zuckerman
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jmz.bsky.social
Jeffrey Zuckerman
@jmz.bsky.social
930 followers 490 following 26 posts
knight-errant + anti-vampire
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jmz.bsky.social
You want a special Halloween early-voting sticker, don’t you? Go vote Mamdani before the polls close at 4!!! 🎃
October 31, 2025 at 5:19 PM
jmz.bsky.social
Aww, this makes my heart so full! JELLYFISH HAVE NO EARS has been longlisted for @littranslate.bsky.social's National Translation Award! literarytranslators.org/awards/2025-...
"Adèle Rosenfeld’s surreal exploration of deafness and intimacy arrives in English through Jeffrey Zuckerman’s luminous translation. As the protagonist slips further into hearing loss, the novel immerses us in a shifting sensory world, rendered with nuance and lyricism. Zuckerman masterfully preserves Rosenfeld’s balance of melancholy and absurdity, attuning English to the novel’s pulse of sonic absence. Jellyfish Have No Ears expands the vocabulary of loss—and listening—in a translation that feels both precise and otherworldly."
September 4, 2025 at 1:43 PM
jmz.bsky.social
my brain
right now
“I worry that it’s unfair to appropriate a novel in this way, to inscribe the circumstances of my life onto a painstakingly written book that has nothing to do with me. Or simply unprofessional. But are there that many other ways, once grief has grabbed hold of you, to seek solace, apart from identifying a similar sadness somewhere, anywhere? From finding parallels and borrowing words for a thing you can’t or won’t name? Here, listen closely, this is how I will say I’m hurting. And here, here’s how I will say I love (still, more, never again).” —Lara Vergnaud, “Winged Creatures” in the LARB
March 7, 2025 at 6:36 PM
jmz.bsky.social
my brain
right now
[Interview with Sandra Smith about translating Albert Camus’s letters] …important to do but it takes its toll. Even the Camus, the letters, because I know what happened to him, and I’m reading these letters—poor Maria! *You’re involved in that timeline.* You are. It’s very upsetting sometimes. But sometimes she writes six, eight, ten-page letters, because they write three times a day. When I was doing it alone, and there was so much more pressure on me, every time he would say, ‘Oh, Maria, write me a letter, write me a really long letter,’ I would be thinking, ‘No, no don’t, please don’t!’ *Have you ever considered writing fiction?* I cannot tell you how many people have asked me that. I wouldn’t feel confident about doing it. And also, I think the things that I might consider writing about would be very personal. I don’t know. A couple of people have asked me to write about my experience as a translator, but again, it’s partly [that it takes] time. There are some really good works by translators about translation. *So you don’t see translation as a form of creative writing?* Oh, no, definitely. I definitely do.
March 2, 2025 at 3:49 PM
jmz.bsky.social
hello to this book and this book only ❤️‍🔥
Omar El-Akkad’s ONE DAY, EVERYONE WILL HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AGAINST THIS
February 25, 2025 at 10:06 PM
jmz.bsky.social
see no evil / hear no evil / speak no evil
February 24, 2025 at 12:16 AM
jmz.bsky.social
my brain
right now
(From an interview with Sam Taylor) *How did translating The Heart compare with translating some of your other works, such as the novel “HHhH?”* It was the most difficult (and rewarding) book I’ve ever translated, bar none. With some books, I can translate 6,000 words per day, and feel fine; with The Heart, I translated 3,000 words and felt like I’d been run over by a freight train.
February 18, 2025 at 1:44 AM
jmz.bsky.social
Translation is always political, and one way to fight against genocide is to ensure a long life for those voices and ideas that otherwise would die unheard. To translate Karim Kattan's words is a political act, yes—but it is also an act of love, and an act of hope. 🖤🤍💚❤️
January 14, 2025 at 6:28 PM
jmz.bsky.social
This is already an extraordinary piece on the literature of Việt Nam in the New York Times, but this note especially blew me away—what a powerful argument against house style when it comes to foreign languages:
Note: The Vietnamese words in the original version of this essay used diacritical marks. To comply with New York Times style, the marks were removed before publication. Unfortunately, this practice alters the meaning of the words. In the case of Hỏa Lò Prison, for example, “hỏa” means “fire,” and “lò” means “furnace”: the Burning Furnace Prison. Without the marks, “hoa” means “flowers,” and “lo” means “worry,” rendering the term “Hoa Lo” meaningless. I look forward to the day when The Times and other Western publications celebrate the richness and complexity of Vietnamese, and of all other languages, by showcasing them in their original formats.
August 3, 2023 at 1:17 PM