COML1181 - Writing the Translation

Literary translation is many things. Perhaps most of all, though, it is writing. It is a craft, and it is also a particular kind of imagination that both haunts and supersedes craft. Every translation, then, is as much the making of a new original as it is the learning from and listening to the ‘old’ one. We will pursue what Kornei Chukovsky calls “the high art of translation” in its multiple forms: as a discipline, as a tradition, as a force of disruption and change, and as a form of play. This is a course in two parts: seminar and workshop. We’ll first read and discuss translated texts, and texts about translation, from a multiplicity of language traditions. This will help us develop a shared theoretical and imaginative language for the course’s second portion, the workshop, in which you will try out your own translation work in conversation with your peers and me. A majority of the writers, poets, and theorists that we will encounter are working in the Russian-language tradition, but we will supplement this with texts by Anne Carson, John Keene, Sawako Nakayasu, among others. We will also consider translation between mediums, including video, music, and comics. And a user’s note: if you are concerned that your language skills are not far enough along to participate meaningfully in class, please set that worry aside! Translation is a great way to improve your language, and this course is less about result than about process.