The Third Wheel started with the very simple and straightforward idea to provide literary translators with an exclusive and well-deserved space to discuss whatever keeps them up at night—craft, personal journeys, politics, or the aesthetics of translation. Partly because translators deserve a space of their own to create, express, confess, bicker, and brag and partly to lift the veil on the process itself, to show that literary translation is neither effortless nor something that simply materializes out of nothingness. Nine months later, we welcome our first issue, The Exophonic Translator, a playful attempt to do just that.

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The road to translation is long and treacherous. Before even approaching a text—before considering its atmosphere, poetics, or register, and before any strategy begins to take shape—a translator must first negotiate their own identity and articulate their story. Like a hero on a journey, they must navigate unfamiliar and often unfriendly terrain: self-doubt, debilitating anxiety, and the persistent need to prove themselves worthy of the task at hand.

It is a well-hidden but also a well-known struggle. A surprising amount of time and energy is spent simply mustering the courage to see oneself as eligible. For exophonic translators, the path is further obstructed by side quests and monsters like internalized inferiority complexes and crushing biases.

Just last week, in a translators’ group on Facebook, someone was looking for a Bulgarian to English translator, and one of the first casually offered, unsolicited opinions was: “Just be careful whom you choose. What you need is a native speaker,” from someone protecting the innocent author from working with “those impostors.”

Surely most of us L2 translators can remember recent instances of writers who’d “prefer native speakers,” well-meaning editors pointing out that there are more idiomatic forms of expression, or academics repeating the mantra of directionality. I personally have learnt to brush these off as an inevitable part of the game. After all, I am a language learner, a forever language learner at that (still guilty of committing minor offenses against grammar and syntax, as well as various microaggressions towards style), and my English will forever be imperfect. Besides, the occasional condescending comment builds character.

I started late with literary translation, and even later with translation into English, which isn’t my mother tongue. In fact, it isn’t the tongue of any member of my family. I have studied English mainly in a classroom setting—the least sexy way to acquire a language and also the most difficult to justify (when teaching English in Japan several years ago, I was told by a work friend that my expertise was highly questionable, because, well, I didn’t know all the words… Raise your hand if you know all the words!). Programmed to believe that translation out of my native language is a total “no, no,” or bad taste at best—a self-evident truth I didn’t question—I wouldn’t even consider trying. If I ever got tempted to dip my toes, I would simply diagnose myself with a bad case of hubris and move on.

The general climate has changed a lot since then. We’ve realized definitions should be questioned, language competency or translation skills can no longer be framed as a birth privilege, and being an L2 translator (in my case, an eternal L2 learner) does not have to be considered a disability.

However, what I describe is only a very limited personal experience of what the exophonic condition entails. It also means migration, conflict, displacement, neocolonialism and dissent, trauma, fitting in, or being left out. Over the past decade, the conversation has gained momentum through inspiring, narrative‑shifting collections like Kitchen Table Translation and Violent Phenomena, which—together with its social and personal dimensions—frame (exophonic) translation as a fundamentally political act.

The goal of our first issue is to spotlight translators who work from unconventional linguistic backgrounds: nonnative and multilingual speakers, heritage learners, and those creating outside dominant language hierarchies.

The result is before you, and we believe it contributes to the conversation in no small way. Our contributors reflect on how identity shapes their practice, highlighting the subtle ways in which background, language, and experience inform the act of translation.

After long hesitation to venture into poetry translation, Dmitri Manin finds the evidence in the work done—“a classical Hegelian quantity-to-quality trick,” and contemplates the role of convention in how we read and perceive poetry. Antonella Lettieri offers a quirky account of the serendipitous ways our experiences accumulate and layer themselves on top of each other, ultimately refracting the translated text in a way that is uniquely our own. Exophony provides the framework for Stiliana Milkova Rousseva and Max Kassoy’s analysis of Natalia Deleva’s Arrival and its Bulgarian translation, illuminating the arising structural and linguistic tensions. Susan Walton pulls back the curtain on some of the techniques behind her translation process—the stages that usually remain hidden to outsiders and are rarely discussed even among professionals. Danila Raycheva contrasts translation with self‑translation, exploring how liberties and limitations change when the translator is also the author. Denis Ferhatović examines his multilingual identity through the translation of folklore, reflecting on the political dimensions of positionality and the challenges that arise from translating at a physical distance, including limited access to resources. Jointly deconstructing a “difficult” book with a fellow exophonic translator, and mediating its most challenging passages through one another’s languages and lived experiences, forms the core of Ann Cefola’s discussion.

In conversation with Aron Aji and Jan Steyn, Ekaterina Petrova reflects on the evolving landscape of the MFA in Literary Translation at Iowa and the vulnerabilities inherent in being an exophonic translator. Lúcia Collischonn offers a broader overview of the current state of the field with the prevailing academic attitudes on the topic, as well as reflections on gatekeeping, asserting agency, and practicing disobedience. Pascal Nguyễn and Kim Trần of Major Books—a publisher specializing in Vietnamese literature in translation—discuss the challenges of running a boutique press with an ambitious vision, as well as the intrinsic value of working with the most suitable translator.

C. J. Anderson-Wu addresses concrete aspects of translation that are easily smoothed over or lost, while others—such as Quamrul Hassan, Tímea Sipos, Sritama Halder, and gabor g. gyukics—choose to speak through their carefully curated translated texts themselves.

We also invite you to reflect on a short excerpt from Yoko Tawada’s Exophony: Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue, translated by Lisa Hofmann-Koruda.

At the end, we would like to thank all contributors to the first issue for entrusting us with their translations and insights and for their patience throughout the editing process.

Marina, Petya, Andriana

Editor’s Note