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Book Cover for: Translation as Home: A Multilingual Life, Ilan Stavans

Translation as Home: A Multilingual Life

Ilan Stavans

Translation as Home is a collection of autobiographical essays by Ilan Stavans that eloquently and unequivocally make the case that translation is not only a career, but a way of life.


Born in Mexico City, Ilan Stavans is an essayist, anthologist, literary scholar, translator, and editor. Stavans has changed languages at various points in his life: from Yiddish to Spanish to Hebrew and English. A controversial public intellectual, he is the world's authority on hybrid languages and on the history of dictionaries. His influential studies on Spanglish have redefined many fields of study, and he has become an international authority on translation as a mechanism of survival.


This collection deals with Stavans's three selves: Mexican, Jewish, and American. The volume presents his recent essays, some previously unpublished, addressing the themes of language, identity, and translation and emphasizing his work in Latin American and Jewish studies. It also features conversations between Stavans and writers, educators, and translators, including Regina Galasso, the author of the introduction and editor of the volume.

Book Details

  • Publisher: University of Toronto Press
  • Publish Date: May 9th, 2024
  • Pages: 372
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.98in - 5.91in - 1.10in - 1.10lb
  • EAN: 9781487547929
  • Categories: Modern - 21st CenturyTranslating & InterpretingCaribbean & Latin American

About the Author

Stavans, Ilan: - Ilan Stavans is the Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities, Latin American, and Latino Culture at Amherst College.
Galasso, Regina: - Regina Galasso is an associate professor in the Spanish and Portuguese Studies Program and the director of the Translation Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Praise for this book

"Ilan Stavans embodies as an intellectual the subject of this original multifaceted volume. A true delight full of turns and surprises aptly edited and introduced by Regina Galasso."

--Alicia Borinsky, Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies, Boston University, and author of One-Way Tickets

"Polylingual polymath, Ilan Stavans pirouettes between penetrating insights into the crisscrossing of languages and his own neologistic restless play. Nobody does and thinks language with such depth, verve, and elegance. From Cervantes to Borges, Petrarch to Lahiri, the Talmud to Memes, Stavans forever shifts our understanding of language, not as a prison house of absolutes, but as the sine qua non of our liberatory imagination."

--Frederick Luis Aldama, Jacob & Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities, University of Texas at Austin