Clarissa Botsford

After graduating in English and Modern Languages from King's College, Cambridge, I moved to Rome with a temporary job as a "lector" and ended up staying. I worked in publishing, editing, and non-fiction translating, with a stint at Laterza Publisher's, and a year away in Boston working for the Bostonia Magazine and auditing classes at B.U. I later specialised in intercultural education and obtained an MA from University College, London in Comparative Education. A taste for literary translation developed later in life, when my three children had already left home and when I grew excited by the presence of what I called "new Italians" who wrote in Italian although it was not necessarily their language of origin, either because they'd grown up here or because they found new audiences  in the language. I worked with Igiaba Sego and Christina Ubax Ali Farah, who was a colleague of mine at the university where she taught Somali. I then came across the Albanian-Swiss writer Elvira Dones, and her novel Sworn Virgin was my debut full-length literary translation. Since then I have worked  prolifically with publishers both in the UK and in the US, including And Other Stories, McSweeney's, Europa Editions, and Harper Collins. I am passionate about words, getting them just right, being both the host and the guest of the two texts and two cultures. I love finding the right voice and slipping into it. As a Humanist celebrant, I cultivate people, listen to their voices, and  get inside their lives or loves. in order to represent them more personally. As a musician and singer, I'm happier in the inside parts, weaving in the harmony or providing a steady grounding with the bass. As a teacher, I prefer the role of facilitator. I think these different parts of my life here make me an ideal translator, indivisible but invisible. Being deeply attuned to Italian culture, daily life, politics, and infinite variety of linguistic expression, does the rest. I am in constant contact, at the same time, with my numerous family living in London, Bristol, New York, and Boston, and with events as they unfold there. My life, in this sense, reflects my practice.