Welcome to Literary Friction on NTS. I'm Carrie Plitt, here as always with my co-host Octavia Bright.

Hello, Octavia. Hi, Carrie. We've got the Brexit blues here at literary friction. So today we're going to be celebrating something that bridges borders rather than closest them.

Thank goodness. We're being positive. Only positive. So we will be talking about literary translation. We've deviated slightly from our usual format to bring you not one but three interviews

with people from different sides of translation in the UK.

They are Spanish author Melena Busquettes, Korean translator Deborah Smith, who just co-jointly

won the Penn International Prize with Han Kang for the vegetarian.

She's amazing. And German novelist and publisher of Pirini Press, Micah Seerfogel.

We'll be hearing from these three brilliant women shortly, discussing topics from what makes a good

translation to whether foreign fiction can ever make inroads in this country.

But first, let's talk about translation in the age of the dreaded Brexit.

Okay, let's be positive.

So, Octavia, in the wake of Brexit, do you think that translation is even more important?

Do you think translation can actually do something productive and important?

I do. I really do. And as a language as student, I know the merit in learning about another culture via its literature. It's kind of the perfect way in to the reality of being French

or German or Korean or wherever you might be from because it's

really an act of empathy reading and that's what I feel is so lacking at the moment post-Brexit.

You know, people are being very unempathetic towards one another and it's not about being right

or wrong. It's about being able to understand someone else's point of view and what brings you closer to that more than a narrative where you adopt the perspective of a

particular character. So yeah, I think it's vital. I think it's so important. Yeah. And as someone

who can't read well enough in another language to actually read fiction in its original form other than in English.

Obviously, the ideal is to read a book in Spanish or in French or in Korean, but if you can't

do that, do you think that translation is a good enough replacement?

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