Karen Ocaña
Jeffrey Kastner
Born in Toronto in 1960, Karen Ocaña grew up multilingual. She began translating, unofficially, at age four. Officially, Karen’s translation career took off in 1980 with a stint in Quebec City, post-referendum, at the Ministère d’Industrie, Commerce et Tourisme. Karen earned a B.A. in French (U of T/86) followed by an M.A. in Comparative Literature (McGill/96) followed by a Graduate Diploma in Translation (McGill/2002). Karen’s translations of essays by Gilles Deleuze, Gilbert Simondon, Bernard Cache, Michel Maffesoli and José Gil have appeared in various publications, but her first published translation was of two poems by David McFadden, from his collection Gypsy Guitar, into Spanish (Indigo magazine, 1990). Rooms is her first book-length translation.
