Nepenthe

 

For The New Yorker This piece contains spoilers for the series finale of “The Americans.” My life prepared me to do one job, and this job was translating for “The Americans,” the FX show that wrapped up on Wednesday after six seasons. Most of the episodes contained at least a few scenes in Russian, and “The Americans” was the first show I’d encountered whose creators cared to insure that the dialogue was scripted and spoken in actual, idiomatic, living Russian. For the last three seasons, it was my job to translate these scenes, scripted in English, into Russian. It wasn’t just any Russian, either. The show begins in 1981 and ends in 1987, just before the language began to follow, and to facilitate, the country’s transformation by absorbing hundreds of words from foreign languages— office , bucks , management , and so many others that capitalism brought with it, but also electoral’niy , exit poll , and more to describe the mechanics of democracy—and by creating brand-new ...

  Não havendo, também não haveria contrapontos destes, nem cravos de cor nenhuma. Não sei quem foi, e acrescento: Que deixe de haver isenção nos hospitais públicos. Que passemos a pagar propinas nas escolas públicas. Que passemos a pagar taxa moderadora nos centros de saúde. Que os nossos filhos passem a pagar livros. Que os passes sociais acabem. Etm., etm., etm.

From BBC Culture :  Forget Romeo and Juliet or Rose and Jack: Frederic William Burton's achingly beautiful depiction of Hellelil and Hildebrand's last moment together will stay with you forever. So say the painting's many new fans on social media, where it has been stratospherically popular. Though it dates back to the 19th Century, a surge of TikTok videos about viewing The Meeting on the Turret Stairs – both online and in real life – has gone viral, describing the painting as "a breathless moment" and "life changing".  It might have been made the most vulgar thing in the world, [but] the artist has raised it to the highest pitch of refined emotion – George Eliot Painted in large, vivid swathes of red and blue, Burton's 1864 watercolour Hellelil and Hildebrand, The Meeting on the Turret Stairs boldly illustrates the couple's final tryst before Hildebrand's painful death. Here, the prince meets with the love of his life, Helleli...

From The NY Times   A new book by Shelley Puhak dismantles the legend of Hungary’s infamous “blood countess,” separating fact from myth. There once was an aging Hungarian noblewoman so desperate to cling to her beauty that she had young maidens tortured and murdered in order to bathe in their virgin blood. After her servant-executioners testified against her, she was walled up in the tower of her castle, visible only as a spectral figure in the barred window. So unforgettably lurid are the details of this story that its subject, Countess Elizabeth Bathory (1560-1614), became an enduring object of fascination. In the 1960s, the Guinness Book of World Records named her the “most prolific murderer,” responsible for 610 deaths. But as Shelley Puhak argues in “The Blood Countess,” her new account of Bathory’s life and times, there’s ample reason to believe that the legend of her depravity was concocted by her enemies in order to shred her reputation and remove her from publ...

Também se encontra em alemão.      

 

    Rivka Galchen for The New Yorker . In 1250, King Eric IV of Denmark was murdered while visiting his brother, Abel Valdemarsen. Although Abel was suspected of arranging the killing, he swore that it wasn’t so and became king himself. Less than two years later, when he set out to attack some peasants who weren’t paying taxes, he himself was killed by a wheelwright. He was initially buried at the cathedral. But monks there complained that the slain king was walking around at night, frightening them with strange sounds. The royal corpse was removed from the church and sunk in a bog, and a stake was run through its chest. In “ Killing the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World ,” John Blair, a professor emeritus of medieval history and archeology at the University of Oxford, examines the many historical accounts of such corpse-killings, in which the already dead, perceived to be causing trouble, are “killed” again. Today, we typically associate su...

 Para a RTP.    

 Para a RTP.   

Esta exposição convida a descobrir aspetos do dia a dia em Lisboa entre o século XVI e o início do século XIX, com enfoque nas profissões e ofícios que marcaram o ritmo da cidade. GEO

Find Korrine on LinkedIN and Substack . Togo’s first president was gunned down at his own gate in 1963. His crime? Daring to reject France’s money. Sylvanus Olympio wanted more than a flag and an anthem. He wanted a currency for his people. A future not chained to Paris. For that, he was shot dead by Togolese soldiers trained in France. Africa’s first post-independence coup. The weapon was not just the gun. It was the CFA franc. Created in 1945, it forced African nations to deposit their reserves in the French Treasury. It gave Paris veto power over African economies. It made independence a flag ceremony... and nothing more. France called it “stability.” In truth, it was financial slavery. An empire without the cost of soldiers. Olympio was killed. Lumumba was killed. Sankara was killed. Nkrumah was overthrown. The message was written in blood: Africa may raise its flags. But touch the money... and you will fall. And what did it mean for the people? A farmer in Togo sells cocoa for pe...

 Find Korrine on LinkedIN and Substack .   Right now, Congolese children are digging cobalt with their bare hands, so the world can call Teslas and iPhones “clean.” A Congolese father once sat on a porch staring at his daughter’s severed hand and foot. She was five. She was mutilated because her village missed its rubber quota. That rubber lined bicycles in Paris. Car tires in London. Factory belts in America. Leopold II of Belgium called it civilisation. It was genocide. Ten million Congolese lives traded for European modernity. 1960: Patrice Lumumba stood on independence day and refused to play polite. He told the truth: independence was won... not gifted. That Congo’s wealth should serve Congolese families. And for that, Belgium, the CIA, and local collaborators marked him for death. He was beaten. Humiliated. Flown to Katanga. Shot by a firing squad with Belgian officers watching. His body dug back up, hacked apart, dissolved in acid. His teeth stolen as trophies. Th...

Find Korrine on LinkedIN and Substack .   65 years ago, Nigeria celebrated political independence. But full independence was never achieved. Britain left behind the architecture of control. Borders drawn for profit, not people. Governments beholden to foreign capital. Economies designed for extraction, not growth. Nigeria as a single nation only came into existence in 1914, at the Amalgamation of Nigeria. In 2025, that makes the country just 111 years old. Much of Nigerian history was written by the coloniser, shaping how independence is remembered. Here’s the truth rarely said: The “Father of Nigeria” is a myth, a story crafted by those who benefit from forgetting. Nigeria was not born of unity or self-determination. It was forged by British businessmen and colonial architects; men whose names Britain still celebrates as “great” empire-builders. In Nigeria it was Sir George Goldie and his Royal Niger Company. Cecil Rhodes in Southern Africa, Ian Smith in Rhodesia. Different cou...

There are 6,800 years between the age of the Sumarian civilization of 5,500 BC and the Aztec civilization of 1,300 AD.  

  Interpreting Shōgun Was More Than Just Translation From Vulture : Shōgun is a show about fate. About cross-cultural differences, statecraft, chaos, about war never changing, and about getting my ship the Erasmus back. But most importantly, it’s a show about communication . Court etiquette of the Sengoku era, as well as the gender politics of the time, mean a lot of things cannot be said explicitly. Even if you speak the same language as someone, you can never fully know them, and yet you all have to work together toward a common goal. The making of Shōgun mirrored these themes in many ways. As a cross-cultural production — shot in Canada, produced by Hollywood, filled with Japanese actors — interpretation was key. Enter Eriko Miyagawa. The producer worked closely with lead actor/producer Hiroyuki Sanada to ensure the show was accurate to period Edo yet still relatable to modern Tokyo. From consulting on translating English scripts for Japanese actors, to t...