C’è una frase, in questo romanzo, che mi ha costretta a posare il testo per qualche secondo:

There's a quiet kind of magic that happens when you translate a story. It's that moment when another writer's voice passes through you, and your task is to let it live again in a new language — without losing its soul. That's exactly how I felt while working on Woodstock, the beautiful new novel by Michelle Montebello, soon to be released in Italian.

C'è una magia sottile che nasce ogni volta che si traduce una storia. È quell'istante in cui la voce di un altro autore ti attraversa e tu cerchi di darle nuova vita in un'altra lingua, senza tradirne l'anima. È esattamente ciò che ho provato lavorando a Woodstock, il nuovo romanzo di Michelle Montebello, presto in uscita in Italia.

Most people think translation is about swapping one word for another. Simple, right? Except it’s not. In literary translation, one word can make or break a scene.

That’s the brutal truth most authors overlook when they think about translation. They imagine it’s a simple transfer of meaning—sentence in, sentence out. But dialogue isn’t math. It’s emotional physics: the rhythm, friction, and spark that make readers lean in, laugh, or tear up. And here’s the kicker—word-for-word translation is where this delicate physics collapses.