Real Old

Hello, this is why I keep a journal. Just came across these notes:

“September, 2003: I attended a talk at NYU entitled “The Politics of Translation.” Panelist Susan Sontag argued that the word “foreign” in an American vocabulary has traditionally been allied with the past, with an old way of doing things. As a result America as a nation has always fostered its image— one of innovation and rebellion— alone.”

This seems like an incredibly astute comment on Sontag’s part, but I wonder how it can be proven? Someone would need to do a cultural study of Americans and translation, ie how Americans have thought about translation as a creative practice over the years– not just the much bandied-about very useful 3% statistic from the publishing market. How would such a study even be started? Still it should happen. We need a local anthropologist.

dt.

Graduate School (post MFA) & Translation

As I’m currently working on applying to PhD programs after my MFA in translation at Iowa, I wanted to compile the info I’ve been learning about potential schooling in translation after the MFA. The premise of the post being, of course, that the University of Iowa Comp Lit PhD program is incredibly receptive to creative translation projects& a wonderful environment for scholar/translators, and this seems to make it a glowing exception in the grad school firmament. I’ll keep on adding to this post when I come across new info. that might be of use to others.

-dt

UC Irvine/Comp Lit (woah):

The Schaeffer Fellowship provides $20,000 plus fee remission for 2 years to Ph.D. students in Comparative Literature for whom translation will be a crucial element of dissertation work. Students translating literary or historical texts or archival materials not previously reliably available in English as part of their dissertation research are eligible. Multiple fellowships per year may be awarded. Please contact the Department in advance if you are interested in the Schaeffer Fellowship.

*though it seems, from my unnamed source at Irvine, that creative translation is still viewed as second to theory in the program*

And, from a little legwork (though not much) it seems that the comp lit programs at Brown, University of Michigan, Princeton and Columbia are all fairly sturdy locations of translation studies. more to come.

The Art of Translation

NPR’s All Things Considered broadcast a story on literary translation this afternoon. It’s fairly basic to anyone who’s even dabbled in translation, but it’s been great to see the field getting more attention in the past few months. The version translated from a radio broadcast into an online article even includes a little fragment of Hugo to present the idea of comparative translation. Maybe this means that awareness of translation is really taking hold, as an important facet of how we learn about the world.

-ar

bits and bites from Silliman’s blog

Translation-related articles culled from Silliman’s amazing, expansive blog:

A Clayton Eshleman Reader is out with Black Widow Press , Ron Silliman reviews it on his blog.

Additionally, here’s a post about translating procedural poetry which takes the old form v. content question into the newer realm of procedural (rule-based, Oulipian) poetics. Blogger Francois Luong praises Cole Swensen’s translation of Pierre Alferi, which gives him points in our book.

and, just for fun: Russian Avant-garde books digitized at the Getty. They’re wild!

Roots&Branches Launch Nov 20th part 1

Brian and Theo Goedde get pumped for the new issue. Theo is the little one.

Natasa Durovicova (of 91st Meridian/IWP fame) and Theo get acquainted. Theo was born on the day of the last eXchanges launch (Silence&Song) to then-editor Emily Goedde. He sort of upstaged the last party, but we forgive him 'cause he's family.

Andrea Rosenberg and Mary Bryant, our fearless editors and gracious hostesses for the evening

Roots& Branches Launch Nov. 20th part 2

Emily Goedde reads from her translations of 12th century Chinese poet Zhu Shuzhen

[caption id="attachment_85" align="alignleft" width="199" caption="Diana Thow reads her translations from the Italian of poet Amelia Rosselli"][/caption]

Puja Birla entertains with her translation of an essay by Suryabala (in which Hindi is both the original language & protagonist)

Thanks to all for a great issue& great party! Keep an eye out for eXchanges Spring 2009 issue: Mirrors&Masks (more info TK)

Proust in Jewish

Liel Leibovitz has written a lovely article for nextbook on his foray first into reading and then — struggling, faltering, and eventually failing — into translating Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu into Hebrew. He seems to have taken Pierre Menard’s initial approach to recreating the Quixote, becoming a sort of modern-day Marcel, locked in isolation and scribbling madly on a legal pad with a fountain pen. Leibovitz sees in Proust a Talmudic attempt to complicate the straightforward in pursuit of richer understanding. I’m not sure I buy his conclusion, but it does make me wonder if Nabokov’s thorough commentary on his own translation of Eugene Onegin might be merely the continuation of a long tradition of over-elaboration.
-ar

More on ALTA

Over at Calque, Lucas Klein offers a detailed synopsis of this year’s ALTA conference.

Cassandra floats and can she.

Saw Anne Carson perform an amazing essay on translation called “Cassandra Floatcan” this weekend as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival:

The distinguished poet, translator, MacArthur Fellow, and professor of classics and comparative literature at the University of Michigan will perform her haunted and haunting poem-essay about the problems of prophecy (prescient Cassandra at the threshold of Agamemnon’s home on the eve of his murder) and translation (how to translate her cries of alarm and grief into language that can be understood and acted upon) in a performance flecked with the architectural demolition imagery of Gordon Matta-Clark. Carson’s poetry collections include Decreation, Autobiography of Red, Men in the Off Hours, and The Beauty of the Husband. (description from website).

Please see this if you can: it is a gorgeous presentation. Cassandra/veils/translation/cuts/Gordon Matta-Clark. She had volunteers walk large sheets of paper with prints of Gordon Matta-Clark photos around the room, while her collaborator (I don’t think I ever heard his name) played a slide show of the images (Gordon Matta-Clark systematically made large and small cuts into buildings that were already “slated for demolition,” took pictures of them, then watched as they were destroyed). Really provocative, distracting and distractable; I hope it can be recorded or put onto paper somehow.

In her so-gorgeous-you-are-jealous prose/poetry Carson writes that translation is like Cassandra, with “veils floating upwards;” a prophecy, a telling, yet also a body “slated for destruction.” The sheer brilliance of involving the images of Matta-Clark, such an important, ephemeral artist from the 70s, and his inquiries into demolition as a counterpoint to the discussion was both visually stunning and devastating.

Moving Targets…

Translator and poet Stephen Kessler has a new book (the title alone is compelling enough!) called Moving Targets: On Poets, Poetry & Translation, a collection of essays on topics ranging from poetry to translation to war, and a wide range of American and foreign poets.

For anyone in the Bay Area, he’s doing a reading at City Lights on Nov. 6.