Does Translation Transcend Difference? Part 2

This roundtable posits that translation is always already predicated on difference—first and foremost linguistic, but also cultural and often racial, ethnic, religious, ideological, and temporal—while at the same time reciprocal. In other words, despite, or perhaps because of, translating a text by an author who is radically different, both source text and translation gain something in the act of translation.

Taking the Amanda Gorman controversy as an inflection point in translation, this roundtable, rather than asking who should be allowed to translate, asks what happens when translators engage with texts written by authors who are radically different than themselves. Format: Each roundtable participant should be prepared to discuss, citing their own work: 1) their experience translating a text by an author who is/was in some way radically different than themselves, and 2) what was gained in the act of translation.

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Organizers

George B. Henson is Assistant Professor of Translation at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. The translator of eight books, he is Contributing Editor for World Literature Today and Editor-at-Large for Latin American Literature Today. He was recently named a Tulsa Artist Fellow for 2022 and 2023. Layla Benitez-James’s recent work has appeared in Black Femme Collective, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Latino Book Review. God Suspected My Heart Was a Geode But He Had to Make Sure was selected by Major Jackson for the 2017 Toi Derricotte & Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize and published by Jai-Alai Books. Pablo Brescia has published three books of short stories (The Defeat of the Real, Out of Place, and The Appearance of Things) and a book of hybrid texts (No Time for Poetry) under the pen name Harry Bimer. He is Professor of Latin American Literature at the University of South Florida.

Participants

Michelle Kyoko Crowson is a Japanese American writer and translator based out of the Pacific Northwest. She was awarded the 2019 Kyoko Selden Memorial Prize for her manuscript translation of Akiko Akazome’s Akutagawa Award-winning novel, The Maiden’s Betrayal. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Oregon. Corine Tachtiris is Translation Editor at The Massachusetts Review, specializing in prose. She is Assistant Professor of Translation Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and an at-large member of the ALTA Board. She translates prose primarily by contemporary Francophone African, Caribbean, and Canadian, as well as Czech, women authors. Born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Cristina Pinto-Bailey is a writer, scholar, translator, and college professor, interested in issues of gender and race in works by modern and contemporary Latin American women writers. She has published extensively in scholarly journals, as well as her own creative works, and translations of Brazilian fiction and poetry into English. Patrick Ploschnitzki holds a dual-degree PhD in Transcultural German Studies from the Universities of Arizona and Leipzig. His research investigates discourses around dubbing and dubbese related to US-American television broadcast in Germany and the use of online translation tools in the classroom. Patrick translates contemporary German, Swiss, and Austrian literature into English. Michelle Mirabella’s translations appear in World Literature Today, Latin American Literature Today, Your Impossible Voice, and Exchanges. She is a graduate of the Translation and Interpretation MA program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and an alumna of the Banff Literary Translation Centre. Mercedes Guhl started translating books while completing her degree in Literature in 1990. Armed with an MA in Translation Studies, she went into teaching in Colombia and Mexico. After 90 published translations ranging from academic essay to graphic novel, she has been able to explore many of the challenges posed by book translation. Keith Cohen has taught English and Comparative Literature in France and the US. He has published a novel (Natural Settings) as well as stories (The Paris Review and The Iowa Review). He translated Hélène Cixous’s The Laugh of the Medusa and The Third Body, and also the collective A History of Virility.