Car(ry)ing Across: A Toolkit for Attentive Translation

Aug 21st - Sep 4th, 2024

Novelist Emma Donoghue once stated: “Translators are the closest readers – the ones who pay the most meticulous attention to every shade of meaning of every word.” Literary translation is also widely regarded as a bona fide form of creative writing. But what, exactly, do these statements entail? What should translators pay attention to as readers of a literary text? And what should they draw attention to (or divert attention from) as its writers?

In this hands-on seminar, we will explore such questions by attending to Middle English literary fragments and their modern translations. We will think of translation amply, as a movement between not just languages but dialects and disciplines. In this sense, the course is suited to aspiring or seasoned translators, writers, and artists at large; knowledge of a foreign language is encouraged but by no means required. 

During the first two sessions, we will develop a toolkit of widely applicable translational strategies and procedures. We will then use them in our own careful renderings of literary works. Participants will have the option to translate brief texts from a foreign language into English, from one English dialect or register into another, or from a verbal to a non-verbal art form. The third session will be devoted to presenting and workshopping our creations. 

We will support our attentional exercises with readings by St. Jerome, Schleiermacher, and Jakobson, among others.

Taught by Argentine critic, writer and translator Josefina Massot