New Books in Language and Translation
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/language
Episodes
May 6, 2026
Jeffrey Shandler’s new book, Yiddish: Biography of a Language (Oxford UP, 2020), presents the story of Yiddish, the defining vernacular of Ashkenazi Jews, from its origins to the present. Shandler relates the multifaceted history of Yiddish in the form of a biographical profile. Through a series of thematic chapters—from “Name” and “Date and Place of Birth” to “Religion” and “Life Expectancy”—he offers surprising insights into the...
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Aya Elyada is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research focuses on German and German-Jewish cultural history, Yiddish-German encounters, and the social history of language and translation. She is the author of A Lingering Legacy: The Afterlife of Yiddish in German-Jewish Culture (SUP 2026) and A Goy Who Speaks Yiddish: Christians and the Jewish Language in Early Modern G...
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May 5, 2026 • 73 mins
In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Ingrid Piller speaks with Professor David Palfreyman (United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain) about his 2023 book Bilingual writers and corpus analysis.
Palfreyman, D. M., & Habash, N. (2023). Bilingual writers and corpus analysis. Routledge. Link here
Bilingual writers and corpus analysis is one of the first to represent the usage of bilingual writers in both their languages...
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Lyrical Translation: The Creation of Modern Poetry in Colonial Korea (U Hawai'i Press, 2026)is a literary history of modern Korean poetry's origins and its development through translation. As the use of Korean became increasingly restricted during the Japanese occupation, translation was not a choice but a necessity for higher education and intellectual labor. Yet it also had an expansive, creative function: Korean poets wielded ...
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In Embodied Encuentros: Oral History Archives of Latina/o/e Experiences (Ohio State UP, 2026), Elena Foulis offers a practical guide for completing ethical fieldwork in Latina/o/e communities, emphasizing equitable and culturally sustaining practices for gathering oral histories. In her critical decolonial model, Foulis centers the agency of the people within these communities while considering the diversity and complexity of their...
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April 21, 2026 • 41 mins
In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Emily Pacheco speaks with PhD candidate Brynn Quick (Macquarie University, Australia) about her 2025 paper, The (un)imagined work of determining patients’ English language proficiency. The conversation focuses on language policies in healthcare, the monolingual logic, and language access.
Quick, B., Piller, I., & Lising, L. (2025). The (un)imagined work of determining patients’ ...
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In the wake of the September 11 attacks, US officials identified the so-called battle for hearts and minds as the “second front” in the war on terror. A wave of funding flowed into public diplomacy in the Middle East, seeking to change views of the United States through Arabic-language communications—often while hiding the traces of American origins. To what extent did this vast propaganda apparatus sway Arab public opinion? Which ...
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Nicolas Levi is a researcher at the Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He has authored numerous books related to North Korea and is a regular commentator on the country’s elite social and political structures.
I Was a North Korean Diplomat: Inside the Secret World of Pyongyang's Foreign Service (Independently Published, 2026) is Levi’s tenth book, a collaborative work based on exten...
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April 14, 2026 • 63 mins
This illuminating book Third Ear: Reflections on the Art and Science of Listening (Catapult, 2025) weaves personal stories of a multilingual upbringing with recent scientific breakthroughs in interspecies communication, revealing how the skill of deep listening enriches our curiosity and empathy toward the world around us. This book braids personal narrative with scholarly inquiry to examine the power of listening in building inter...
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April 10, 2026 • 44 mins
Translator Ted Goossen talks about everything from first landing in Japan in 1968 to the differences between translating Haruki Murakami and Hiromi Kawakami, especially the complexities of Hiromi Kawakami’s latest book The Third Love.
Amy has a deep discussion with Ted Goossen about Japan, it’s emerging culture, it’s historically strong women and how Japanese literature and its themes are changing. In addition to talking about Hir...
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Panini’s Ashtadyayi is one of the most famous works in Sanskrit, a so-called “linguistic machine” that, through its 4,000 words, allows someone to generate words and grammar. Generations of commentators have tried to figure out exactly how to best interpret the work and explain its various contradictions and overlapping instructions.
Then, in 2022, Rishi Rajpopat, a PhD student at Cambridge, said he’d figured out how to unravel P...
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April 7, 2026 • 35 mins
In this episode of the Language on the Move podcast Dr Hanna Torsh talks to Katharina Gensch (University of Hamburg) about her new paper "English language education for older adults in a multilingual urban environment," which has just been published in Educational Gerontology.
Gensch, K. (2025). English language education for older adults in a multilingual urban environment. Educational Gerontology, 1-14. Paper here
Abstract. Th...
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Naming new discoveries is central to science, and for centuries, Latin dominated this process. The resulting terminology still shapes modern science, yet the influences behind its creation have remained largely unexplored. Naming New Things and Concepts in Early Modern Science: The Case of Natural History (Cambridge University Press, 2026) by Dr. Dominik Berrens is the first comprehensive exploration of how modern scientific termin...
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April 6, 2026 • 58 mins
Scholars are only beginning to consider the corpus of nearly one thousand extant books, as well as several periodicals, that constitute the Yiddish children’s literature of the 20th century. However, this body of work was important in both shaping and reflecting key aspects of the modern Jewish experience. We will explore what it means to limn the contours of a canon of Yiddish kidlit and discuss the unique vantage point that study...
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April 3, 2026 • 42 mins
"Honoured Investors,
As Zhongfu Group enters its eighth decade, we are pleased to announce the acquisition of two famous coal mines. These assets further demonstrate our steadfast commitment to promoting the interests of local government and the people of Jingzhou.
While the recent death of a Discipline Inspection Committee member has been regrettable, rest assured that any accusations of accounting irregularities or missing wage...
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Bangladesh in Anglophone and Vernacular Literature: Cultural Imaginings of a Postcolonial Nation (Routledge, 2025) illuminates individual and collective imaginings of postcolonial Bangladesh. It explores the emergence of Bangladesh as a nation from a variety of perspectives. The author studies the impact of Muslim nationalism on the subaltern life-worlds of East Bengal during the Partition, religious minorities and their insecurity...
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March 31, 2026 • 30 mins
In this episode of the Language on the Move podcast Dr Hanna Torsh talks to Lindsay McMahon, founder of the All Ears English Podcast, about pronunciation teaching for global English.
What does it mean to speak well? And what does it mean to teach others to speak English well? What does good English sound like for you?
These are questions which teachers of English, as a first, second or foreign language and everything in-between, ...
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Why did Langston Hughes's translations of Mexican and Cuban stories go unpublished for nearly a century?
A landmark book—the first complete publication of Langston Hughes’s translations of thirty-three stories by eighteen Mexican and Cuban writers In late 1934, Langston Hughes, already established as a leading voice of literary Black America, traveled to Mexico City, where he stayed for more than five months and began translating ...
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March 27, 2026 • 71 mins
The new book Yiddish in Israel: A History (Indiana UP, 2020) challenges the commonly held view that Yiddish was suppressed or even banned by Israeli authorities for ideological reasons, offering instead a radical new interpretation of the interaction between Yiddish and Israeli Hebrew cultures. Following the Israeli Yiddish scene through the history of the Yiddish press, Yiddish theater, early Israeli Yiddish literature, and high ...
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Lorena Sekwan Fontaine and Adam Muller, eds., The Erasure and Revitalization of Indigenous Cultures and Languages: A Special Issue of Genocide Studies International (Vol. 16., No. 2). A publication of the Zoryan Institute and University of Toronto Press.
This special issue of Genocide Studies International examines the erasure and revitalization of Indigenous cultures and languages a crucial area of analysis within genocide and hu...
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