ALTA45 Panel Translating Ukrainian Literature Values and Voices

This panel features translators of Ukrainian literature who will reflect on their projects, focusing on the importance of giving an international voice to Ukrainian authors and promoting the value of translations from Ukrainian, especially in the light of Russia’s genocidal war against Ukraine.

The theme of value will be addressed from different perspectives: how the translator’s values guide the selection of texts and how certain works are prioritized over others; how the war influences our understanding of human values and how they are highlighted via translation; how translation helps bring to the fore the values of disenfranchised communities (such as LGBTQ); how aesthetic and cultural values define the translator’s choices; and how translators derive personal value from their work.

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Moderator

Olena Jennings (moderator) is the author of the poetry collection Songs from an Apartment and the chapbook Memory Project. Her novel Temporary Shelter was released in 2021. Her translation with Oksana Lutsyshyna from Ukrainian of Kateryna Kalytko’s Nobody Knows Us Here and We Don’t Know Anyone and her translation of Vasyl Makhno’s poetry collection Paper Bridge are forthcoming.

Panelists

Vitaly Chernetsky teaches Ukrainian literature, culture, and film at Kansas University. He is the author of Mapping Postcommunist Cultures: Russia and Ukraine in the Context of Globalization and co-editor of numerous edited volumes. He translated into English, among other things, Yuri Andrukhovych’s The Moscoviad and Twelve Circles and Sophia Andurkhovych’s Felix Austria. Nina Murray is a Ukrainian-born American poet and translator. She is the author of the poetry collection Alcestis in the Underworld (2019) as well as chapbooks Minimize Considered (2018), Minor Heresies (2020), and Damascus Electric (2020). Her translations from the Ukrainian include Oksana Zabuzhko’s The Museum of Abandoned Secrets and Oksana Lutsyshyna’s Ivan and Phoebe are forthcoming. Roman Ivashkiv teaches translation and Slavic languages, literatures, and cultures at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests include translation, comparative literature, and language pedagogy. With the Canadian writer and translator Erín Moure, he published an English translation of the Ukrainian writer Yuri Izdryk’s collection of poetry entitled Smokes (2019).