{"id":2499,"date":"2025-10-29T16:22:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T15:22:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/SLD\/?p=2499"},"modified":"2025-10-29T16:22:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T15:22:19","slug":"how-and-other-stories-translated-by-michael-ishenko-and-liv-bliss-came-to-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/SLD\/how-and-other-stories-translated-by-michael-ishenko-and-liv-bliss-came-to-be\/","title":{"rendered":"How “And Other Stories” (translated by Michael Ishenko and Liv Bliss) Came To Be"},"content":{"rendered":"

How And Other Stories<\/em> (translated by Michael Ishenko and Liv Bliss) Came To Be<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\"Front

Front and back cover of Michael Ishenko’s “And Other Stories,” translated by Liv Bliss (Photo provided by Liv Bliss)<\/p><\/div>\n

When asked to tell the readers of the SLD blog something about one of my favorite translation projects ever, I (Liv) realized that there wasn\u2019t much I could say that hadn\u2019t already been said in the book itself. Michael Ishenko, fellow ATA member, author, illustrator, book designer, and translation partner extraordinaire, agreed. So here, reproduced and lightly modified with his kind permission, is the book\u2019s afterword, \u201cAbout This Translation.\u201d As idyllically unlikely as what follows may sound, I promise you that every word is true.<\/p>\n

Any ATA member interested in receiving their very own AOS <\/em>(no charge) need only send their mailing address to me at bliss.mst@gmail.com<\/a>. Don\u2019t be shy: I\u2019ve got lots<\/em> of copies.<\/p>\n

Liv:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Author Michael Ishenko and I had been professional colleagues for quite some time when he began sending me chapters of his fictionalized autobiography \u0418 \u0434\u0440\u0443\u0433\u0438\u0435 \u0440\u0430\u0441\u0441\u043a\u0430\u0437\u044b<\/em>, just to read. For me, it was pretty much love at first sight. The honesty, the insight, the scope\u2026 The self-deprecating humor, the visual immediacy, the whimsy\u2026 The characters, the settings, the plot twists\u2026<\/p>\n

And I began nagging, insisting that what I was already calling And Other Stories<\/em> couldn\u2019t possibly go untranslated. He demurred, justifiably pointing out the pitfalls. There\u2019s too much untranslatable subtext, he told me, having witnessed younger Beta readers of the Russian-language original scratching their heads over its Soviet-era realia and its cultural nuances. Endnotes abounded.<\/p>\n

Michael:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I included a total of seventy-one (71!) endnotes in the Russian-language original. As I wrote, I kept sending finished stories to my then-twenty-one-year-old great-niece \u201cfor queries.\u201d My answers to her questions actually made up the bulk of my cultural and historical notes. I hate notes in a book of fiction, but it was the best I could do to make things clear for the younger reader.<\/p>\n

Liv Bliss blended all those notes into the English narrative gently, tactfully, and seamlessly. As a result, the reader will be pleased to find not a single endnote in this book.<\/p>\n

Liv:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I normally try to rock as few boats as possible. Not this time. Unbeknownst to Michael, I started working on an episode from the book, planning to send him my translation and then hide under my desk for a week or two. And only days before I was ready to do that \u2014 his translation, of the same episode<\/em>, arrived in my inbox. Clearly, this thing was meant to be.<\/p>\n

Michael:<\/strong><\/p>\n

And when I compared those two translations, the choice of translator became obvious to me. If I had to write this book in English, I would be happy to accept this translation as my English original. But I couldn\u2019t write it myself, so Liv did it for me.<\/p>\n

Liv:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Having to adjust our intensive work on And Other Stories<\/em> to the rest of our professional and private lives presented some challenges. Progress was at times slow, but it was always steady. Early in the process, Michael began compiling cheat-sheets, often with illustrations, to cover elements of the next chapter in line for translation that he thought I might have difficulty with. This was invaluable to me. And any mistakes I still insisted on making that happened to escape his sharp eyes were usually caught by Nathalie Stewart, a long-time colleague and friend of Michael\u2019s who gave each chapter a close reading and found things that had eluded us both.<\/p>\n

Fellow translator Lydia Razran Stone once wrote that \u201cTranslating poetry is a series of compromises punctuated by miracles,\u201d and can\u2019t most creative translation be considered a kind of poetry? Miracles did happen in this project, for sure. But the fun, for me, came from the back-and-forth with Michael, the trading of ideas and inspirations, the dogged hunt for solutions that came closest to satisfying us both.<\/p>\n

I have worked with, for, around, and even against many authors in my translation career, and I can tell you that not one of those experiences has been remotely comparable to this. I have learned so much, on so many levels, from Michael. He has made me a better translator than he found me.<\/p>\n

Michael:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Speaking of compromises, I have to end with a few words about the way place-names have been transliterated in this book. Among the various Ukrainian place-names transliterated in line with the contemporary conventions, one \u2014 the name of my birthplace, Odessa \u2014 is spelled the old way. \u201cHere I stand,\u201d I basically told Liv. \u201cI can do no other.\u201d<\/p>\n

And once again, we were on the same page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How And Other Stories (translated by Michael Ishenko and Liv Bliss) Came To Be When asked to tell the readers of the SLD blog something about one of my favorite translation projects ever, I (Liv) realized that there wasn\u2019t much I could say that hadn\u2019t already been said in the book itself. Michael Ishenko, fellow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[123,84,99,11],"tags":[124,125,23,9],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8HJOu-Ej","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/SLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/SLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/SLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/SLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/SLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2499"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/SLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2502,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/SLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2499\/revisions\/2502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/SLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/SLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ata-divisions.org\/SLD\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}