Why Translate? On Bringing Persian Stories to European Readers

Every book we publish crosses at least one border twice: once when we acquire it, and again — invisibly, word by word — when our translator carries it into English. The second crossing takes a year. The first took a phone call. This imbalance is the first thing you should know about translation.

Translation is a form of hosting

When Martin Ellison began translating The Cartographer of Silence, he moved to Isfahan for a month. Not to learn Persian — he had studied it for eleven years — but to learn the silences: how long a pause between mother and daughter can last before it becomes a sentence.

“A translation should be a house where the guest can hear the owner’s accent, but never feel unwelcome.”

What we insist on

• Every translation is prepared with the author, in the room or on the phone.
• Bilingual editions keep the original text visible; the original is not luggage, it is the passenger.
• Idioms are not smoothed away — they are footnoted only when the sentence cannot carry them.

None of this makes translation fast. It makes it responsible. We think a small house can afford responsibility precisely because it is small.