Literary Translation Lab

Course Description

Between the language of the universe and the universe of language, there is a bridge, a link: poetry. The poet, says Baudelaire, is the translator” (Octavio Paz). "The true goal of the mind is translating: only when a thing has been translated does it become truly vocal” (Franz Rosenzweig). This course introduces students to the art of translation and gives them the opportunity to workshop their own projects. It is open to graduate and undergraduate students working in any language, media, or genre, so long as they have advanced reading proficiency in their source language and fluency in the target language (English). The goal is for each student to produce a translated work (graphic novel / illustration, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, song, film subtitles, journalism, game, etc.), as well as a critical introduction that explains its significance, context, and challenges involved in its translation. In the process, students will be encouraged to consider how the experience of translation might influence their own creative work. We will consider translation as a mode of 1) reading and interpretation; 2) constrained writing; 3) cultural contextualization and cross-pollination; and 4) interrogating the tension between linguistic idiom and creative idiosyncrasy. Throughout, we will ask the difficult question, posed by the Formalists, of what makes a text literary, and then we will think as a group about how this literariness can be represented beyond the text's original language.