AustLit

'Often, when asked what I do for a living, I say I am a writer as well as a translator. It is not a word that I would use in my native language: the Italian ‘scrittore’ is far too grandiose. It implies that you have published at least one book, probably more, whereas the English word ‘writer’ covers a larger semantic field, encompassing people who write habitually for a public in various media domains, such as this journal. In turn, when I answer that question in Italian, I am more likely to call myself a ‘giornalista’ – a word that overlays poorly on the English ‘journalist’, since, due to a series of cross-borrowings and mistranslations, a journalist is not someone who writes for a journal.'  (Introduction)