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The Haggadah, the Jewish religious text read at Passover, is 3,000 years old. It has been translated more than any Jewish book, from ancient times, to 14th-century Sarajevo, to the just-published "New American Haggadah." Jonathan Safran Foer and Nathan Englander have constructed a new Haggadah, religious, yet modern, for the American Jews of their generation.

Jonathan Safran Foer and Nathan Englander discuss The New American Haggadah, their take on a traditional Passover prayer book. The Haggadah recounts, through prayer, song, and ritual, the extraordinary story of Exodus, when Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt to wander the desert for forty years before reaching the Promised Land. Safran Foer edited Englander's translation, and major Jewish writers and thinkers like Jeffrey Goldberg, Lemony Snicket, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, and Nathaniel Deutsch also provide commentary. It is designed and illustrated by the Israeli artist and calligrapher Oded Ezer.

As Google Translate and similar programs gain traction, Princeton professor David Bellos talks about the art and science of translation and other communication challenges. Bellos is director of the Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication at Princeton University and a recipient of the Booker International Translator’s Award. His new book is Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything (Faber & Faber, 2011). 

→ Event:  David Bellos will be reading at McNally Jackson bookstore tonight at 7PM.

Last week, Nafissatou Diallo — the hotel maid who has accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, of attempted rape — spoke to the media about the incident. She claims to have been badly misquoted in a taped conversation being used by the defense to discredit her. The conversation was in her native dialect, Fulani, a West African language. Her claims highlight the difficulties of translation, and the weighty responsibility on translators and interpreters to get the tone and the meaning of words correct in cases like this.

Sophia Jansson, niece of Finish writer Tove Jansson, and translator Thomas Teal talk about the new translation of Tove Jansson’s novel Fair Play. It tells the story of the intertwined lives of Mari and Jonna—a writer and an artist—who live at opposite ends of a big apartment building.

Lydia Davis discusses her English translation of Gustave Flaubert’s acclaimed classic novel Madame Bovary, considered the first masterpiece of realist fiction. In this landmark translation, Davis honors the nuances and particulars of a style that has long beguiled readers of French, giving the novel a new life in English.

When flipping open a favorite book, it's easy to skip over the small "translated by" line.

But, in reality, translating is as much of an art form as writing an original work. The history of translation is as old as the history of printing and publishing itself, and it will always be an important component of writing and of literature.

Acclaimed translator Edith Grossman explains the cultural importance of translation. Her book Why Translation Matters looks at why translation is often ignored or misunderstood. She’ll be joined by Laurence Senelick, who just published translations of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard, and The Seagull; and Idra Novey, executive director of Columbia University’s Center for Literary Translation, whose most recent book of poetry is The Next Country.