Translator

Bangalore: The many tongues heard at midnight in the backseat of a cab

By night, Bangalore’s first-world dreams flicker out, and in their place rises the familiar roar of the third world – endless construction, half-finished roads, dust in the headlights, a city...

Digitising Urdu’s cascading calligraphy

An interview with Abeera Kamran and Zeerak Ahmed, by Sophia Smith Galer...

The gardens of Babur: Kabul’s lament

From winter in Afghanistan, Abdul Bacet’s photo essay reflects on the history of the Gardens of Babur in Kabul....

Sidetracked: Exile in Hollywood

Translator reviews an established Japanese translator’s debut novel and Boris Dralyuks’s translation of Alexander Voloshin’s mock epic poem....

Tehran: The price of now; spiraling infration and currency collapse

In Iran, we have a common joke: "I fell and felt something break. Thank God it was my leg and not my phone!" Yes, it's irrational. Your body should be...

Karachi: Surveillance, panic and chaos: the price the people pay for safer streets

Rapper Kashan Ali calls himself a ‘middle-class lover boy’. His Instagram reels score thousands of views, featuring music on broken hearts, unrequited love, cricket, and most recently, e-challans. Over a...

Kyoto: Zen and the art of being a tour guide

“Is there a good place to scatter my mother’s ashes?” This question came from a traveller visiting from the UK. He had a pensive gaze. His mother, he said, had...

Gaza: How genocide has transformed the daily lexicon

*This article was written in December 2025 under the prevailing conditions at that time. Genocide changed Gaza’s shape. But it also twisted time itself by the neck, rewired daily routines,...