Between the Sheets: Translating Sex in Catherine the Great and the Small

Katarina’s sexual maturation is integral to the story, and Knežević’s depictions of sex are from a woman’s perspective: honest and unvarnished, as if she were heeding the advice of Katarina’s Aunt Sandra: “If you’ve gone so far as to choose a medium of expression, then at least use it to express every bit of you.” We will discuss the author’s decisions in writing about sex and the translators’ decisions in translating these scenes—linguistic and extra-linguistic, e.g., use or avoidance of cliché, euphemism, humor, and romance-genre tropes; writing and translating characters whose views of sex conflict with our own.

Event handout (pdf): https://bit.ly/3cBaQHB (opens in new tab)

Event handout (Google doc): https://bit.ly/309szRH (opens in new tab)

…

Moderator

Paula Gordon translates from Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian, including plays, film dialogue, and interviews. Her translation of Ljubomir Đurković’s play Refuse is pending publication by Laertes Press. Her co-translation, with Ellen Elias-Bursać, of Catherine the Great and the Small, by Olja Knežević, was released by Istros Books this summer.

Presenters

Ellen Elias-Bursać translates fiction and nonfiction from Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian. Her translation of David Albahari’s novel Götz and Meyer was given the 2006 ALTA National Translation Award. She is President of the American Literary Translators Association. Olja Knežević is an author and translator. Novels include Milena & Other Social Reforms, written in English and then translated for publication in Montenegro (2011); Gospođa Black (2015); and Katarina, velika i mala, which was awarded best unpublished novel in 2019 by Croatian publisher VBZ, published, and then released in English by Istros Books.