Problems in Literary Translation

In this seminar we’ll explore developments in the field of translation studies that have taken it beyond the once common metaphors of fidelity and betrayal — of being faithful or unfaithful to the original.  We’ll focus on (mis)translations as symptomatic of the poetic and political dynamics of a negotiation between cultures in a particular historical moment.  We’ll discuss a variety of approaches to the theory of translation, from system theory to postcolonial and globalization studies, both by reading critically and by theorizing from the translation practice itself.  Participants will experiment with collaborative translations of poetry from “their” language(s) and a comparative critical analysis of the poetics and politics implicit in influential translation projects in these languages.  The poetry of Yehuda Amichai will serve as our anchor, providing both a case study and an alternative theoretical model.  We will read closely Amichai’s last book Open Closed Open, where he foregrounds translation-work as valorized woman’s-work, and offers a meditation on translation as a metonymy for poetry — for the translator/poet’s intertextual wrestling with the authority of the past or for her/his struggle against the political and academic “newspeak”of the present.

Guest discussions by local translators and translation scholars.

Students will work in small groups and present their translation and critical process to the seminar.  Collaborative oral and written projects will be encouraged.  Seminar paper:  an annotated translation project with theoretical introduction.

Reading List:

Lawrence Venuti, The Translation Studies Reader, London & New York:Routledge, 2000.

Tejaswini Niranjana, Siting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism, and the Colonial Context, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.

Yehuda Amichai, Open Closed Open, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 2000 [2006 paperback edition]