A Rare and Fragile Cage: On Loving—and Being Trapped By—the Lithuanian Language

I’ll never forget reading The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel García Márquez in my early adolescence, when I was eleven or maybe twelve. It was a vintage Lithuanian edition, printed in 1980. My grandma had read it, my mom had read it, and then it circulated among her friends for years. The book had been read so many times that it looked like a piece of cloth.

It was mid-summer, and we kept the windows open on the fifth floor of a Soviet apartment block in my hometown, Ukmergė. A fly landed on my toe, and suddenly I saw my legs as old and wrinkled as those of the patriarch in the story.

Ten years later, I started a Spanish course because I wanted to visit Spain. I thought I couldn’t go without speaking at least a little Spanish. When I finally went to Barcelona, it was early March—chilly and rainy—and the basement room I rented in a cheap hostel had no windows.

In the hostel’s library, I found a Spanish edition of the same book. I read it out loud, thrilled just to know how to pronounce the words. But it sounded nothing like the version I had once known. The Spanish carried an energy the Lithuanian translation lacked. The Lithuanian Patriarch wasn’t necessarily worse—just different.

It was the first time I realized that language isn’t just a code that can be transferred from one system to another and still mean the same thing—that a translator is an artist, not a walking dictionary. Not only words must be translated, but also spirit and rhythm, the cultural nuance and humor that sometimes escape even native speakers.

It was the first time I realized that language isn’t just a code that can be transferred from one system to another and still mean the same thing—that a translator is an artist, not a walking dictionary.

I also realized that maybe I had spent my whole life reading and watching something slightly different from what it was meant to be.

Back then, before Netflix, Goodreads, or Amazon, we lived inside our own version of everything. We watched Hollywood movies dubbed in our language. It didn’t matter whether it was Scarface, Titanic, or Home Alone—we always heard the same Lithuanian voices. Rytis Zemkauskas, a well-known TV personality, translated The Sopranos and dubbed it himself. His voice also appeared in Beavis and Butt-Head and dozens of other series and films.

Lithuanian translators came up with endless variations of how to translate the F-word. Some cultural differences slipped through their eyes, and New York gangs sometimes spoke like poets.
In Lithuania, the funny character wasn’t even called Butt-Head. He became Tešlagalvis—literally, “Doughhead.”

We remember Die Hard with Bruce Willis as Kietas riešutėlis—“tough nut.”

And The Catcher in the Rye became Rugiuose prie bedugnės—“in the rye near the abyss.”

It’s not necessarily bad when a translation captures the spirit rather than the words. But still…

I grew up in translation.

We are a small country with a unique language spoken by barely four million people—and with an immense curiosity about the world.

We are a small country with a unique language spoken by barely four million people—and with an immense curiosity about the world.

During the Soviet era, harsh censorship shaped everything. Writers had to conform to ideological rules; many works were banned outright. Creativity was confined to safe topics, and genuine expression came at a cost. Meanwhile, Lithuanian voices abroad—especially those in the U.S.—became the voice of truth from the other side of the Iron Curtain.

After regaining independence, Lithuanians had an immense thirst for literature. It’s almost hard to believe that in 1991, the average book circulation was nearly 35,000—for a country of just three million—compared to around 1,600 today. The paper was cheap, translators were scarce, yet people devoured whatever they could find.

For us, a book existed only after it had a Lithuanian translation. Our national imagination is shaped by translators in ways we don’t even notice. Thousands of hours of translation are written into my memory. It shaped me as a writer. It gave me a peculiar intuition—one that isn’t always useful but is deeply rooted.

Our parents’ generation had little access to English. The Soviet regime understood the power of language well. My mother had more school hours of Russian than Lithuanian, and traveling even to Western Europe was rare until the 2000s.

We, their children, learned foreign languages unbelievably fast. Lithuanian millennials all speak good English, and many also speak Spanish or Italian from Erasmus years abroad. We started questioning translations, judging them as “good” or “bad.” It even became a mark of sophistication to claim that the translator had ruined a work—as if we ourselves would have done it better. Would we? I don’t think so.

Ten more years later, I found myself on the other side—working with translators.

One of my short stories was translated into Hebrew and published somewhere. I asked for a link. “Sorry,” the project manager wrote, “I didn’t see any point in sending it since you wouldn’t understand it.”

Another story appeared in Slovenian and Georgian. Again, I had no clue what was written there; I had to trust the translator completely.

And only when working with the wonderful English translator Erika Lastovskytė I did experience the real joy of being truly understood. She knew which words could be translated and which had to be reimagined. When I went to a writer’s residency in the UK, I read her translations aloud in a small local library, barely hiding my excitement. To have your writing translated—to hear your own world echoed back in another language—is the greatest reward.

To have your writing translated—to hear your own world echoed back in another language—is the greatest reward.

It would be hard to find another nation as proud and serious about its language. In Lithuania, one misspelled word can turn a politician into a clown, and a misplaced comma can be enough to cancel a date. Many of us would say that our language is something that must be preserved and fought for. However, I often hear people saying, “Oh, if only that book, or song, or movie were in English, it would be a bestseller, a hit, a blockbuster.”

Sometimes we feel locked inside the beautiful, rare, and fragile cage of Lithuanian.

The only way to reach international readers is to be translated into more widely spoken languages. The Lithuanian Culture Institute even has a program promoting translations of Lithuanian literature. It works: over the years, the program has become the broadest gateway to the world for Lithuanian writing. But still—it’s a long, expensive process, and translating one book, or even a hundred, is not enough.

In this age of speed and content almost forced into our brains, only the most devoted readers look beyond familiar names to discover new international voices, often hidden behind unpronounceable names. Events like the European Literature Night in New York, which brings together authors from across Europe, remind us that culture, too, must travel to stay alive.

We’ve translated millions of hours of American culture, yet it’s still not easy to send ours the other way.

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European Literature Night 2025 returns to New York for its seventh edition, uniting a dynamic lineup of authors and translators from across Europe for an unforgettable evening of readings, discussions, and literary exchange. Taking place tomorrow, October 23, 2025, at the Ukrainian Institute of America, the free event invites audiences to discover new voices and celebrate the vitality of contemporary European writing. Organized by EUNIC New York, coordinated by the Czech Center New York, and moderated by PEN America, this year’s program features thirteen guests: Artem Chapeye (Ukraine), Alois Hotschnig (Austria), Ariane Koch and Damion Searls (Switzerland), Gabija Grušaitė (Lithuania), Jonas Hassen Khemiri (Sweden), Katherine Vaz (Portugal), Khuê Pham (Germany), Liliana Corobca (Romania), Marek Torčík (Czechia), Peter Osnos and Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Poland), and Tobi Lakmaker (Netherlands). The evening concludes with book signings and an after-party reception—a vibrant celebration of literature that transcends borders and brings the best of European storytelling to New York City.