How do we translate in such a way that our commitments, intuitions, social positions, and political conditions are consciously accounted for in our practice? In this practical seminar, we will take a single question—where is meaning located?—as a point of entry into some of the creative and critical problems that animate modern and contemporary approaches to literary translation. Reading widely and comparatively among works of theory, innovative translations, and reflections by translators on their practice, we will ask: What does it mean to locate meaning in a word, in a sound, in an image; in the subject, in the body; in rhythm, in syntax; in a site of production or one of reception? And what do our decisions about the location of meaning imply—not only about our conceptions of language and its relation to the world, but about our selves and our relations with others, with literature, with readers, and with history?
This practical seminar combines elements of the traditional workshop with rigorous and critical engagement with histories and theories of literary translation. We will be attentive, on the one hand, to the potential of practice to challenge theory and, on the other, to the ways in which theory informs and occasionally fails practice. Each session will begin with generative exercises designed to animate and complicate a concept from that week’s assigned readings. Collective reflection on these in-class exercises will serve as the ground for an expansive seminar-style discussion of the texts and concepts in question, with a focus on how our practices can learn with or against them.
The course is designed for anyone with reading ability in a language other than English, irrespective of prior experience with literary translation. Participants will choose a single text—in any genre, from novel to libretto—with which they will work throughout the entire course. The primary objective is not, by the end of four weeks, to produce a polished piece of writing; our aim is to make our thinking about and practice of translation more informed, deliberate, and adventurous. Readings may be drawn from Plato, Walter Benjamin, Ezra Pound, Gayatri Spivak, Barbara Cassin, Yoko Tawada, Uljana Wolf, Christian Hawkey, Sawako Nakayasu, Don Mee Choi, Lydia Davis, Harry Mathews, Susan Bernofsky, and others.
