ALTA-Sponsored Events
Thursday, March 5, 9:00-10:15am
This panel takes as its premise that literary translation is inherently collaborative. Four prolific and prizewinning collaborative translators, working in such languages as French, Latin, Ukrainian, and Spanish, will discuss how collaboration has affected their practice. In addition, they will explore a spectrum of specific practices and collaborative experiences in their work.
Thursday, March 5, 5:00-7:00pm
Offsite Translator Meetup
The American Literary Translators Association will host an offsite translator meetup during AWP26. Food and drinks available for purchase. We’re thrilled to spend a few hours catching up with some of our favorite people in the world: translators!
Location: Crossbar Der Biergarten, 18 E Cross St, Baltimore MD. Crossbar is 0.6 miles, or a 15-minute walk, from the Convention Center.
Friday, March 6, 10:35-11:50am
F147. Poetry in Translation: Sound & Musicality Around the World, Sponsored by ALTA
Location: Room 324, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center
Moderator: Sergio Waisman | Presenters: Kristin Dykstra, Anna Deeny Morales, Karen Bishop, Vivek Narayanan
Can sound and musicality be translated? Taking cues from their translations of poetry from India, Chile, Cuba, Argentina, and Spain, the participants will consider: What happens to sound and musicality as it travels in and through translation? What is the relationship between sound, musicality, voice and memory, identity, race, and gender and sexuality in the translation of poetry?
Friday, March 6, 12:10-1:25pm
F169. Translating the Dead, Sponsored by ALTA
Location: Room 320, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center
Moderator: Diana Arterian | Presenters: Aaron Coleman, Chloe Garcia Roberts, C. Francis Fisher, Umair Kazi
Translators are anxious—about authorial intention, accuracy, misrepresenting the work. And that’s even when the author is alive! In this panel, we will discuss translating the writing of the dead, and the hard-earned lessons we have learned, including how to avoid exploiting common tropes (e.g., “the brilliant dead author”). We will also give practical advice on acquiring translation rights and engaging with estates—often essential elements of translating a nonliving writer’s work.
Saturday, March 7, 12:10-1:25pm
S159. Fractured Borders: Mapping South Asian Lit in Translation, Sponsored by ALTA
Location: Room 314, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center
Moderator: Gauri Awasthi | Presenters: Aruni Kashyap, Mahmud Rahman, Rohan Chhetri, Sadia Khatri
South Asia, home to hundreds of languages, has only recently gained global literary attention. Contemporary political tensions shape which languages and voices are translated and heard. Five translators working in Assamese, Nepali, Urdu, Hindi, and Bengali share their experiences navigating the global publishing world and explore the question “What happens to language when it travels?”
Saturday, March 7, 1:45-3:00pm
S189. Infect & Inflame: Intimacies Between Translator & Text, Sponsored by ALTA
Location: Room 324, Level 300, Baltimore Convention Center
Moderator: Hannah V. Warren | Presenters: Magdalena Zurawski, John Barger, Miriam Calleja Shaw, Robert Shoemaker
Literal translation practices can’t hold our source texts’ texture. The self infects and inflames translation: We must irritate English to create an effective equivalent. Considering our bodies as translation filters, we discard purity and embrace contamination. Five writer-translators will discuss and read translations from Maltese, German, Italian, Polish, and Spanish that approach intimacy and identity, investigating the blur between self and source.