German-English Translation Slam: One Text, Two Translators, and No Wrong Answers (Free and open to the public)

This event is a collaboration between ALTA and SAND journal, is sponsored by Wunderbar Together, and is affiliated with The Tucson Humanities Festival at the University of Arizona. Come join us for a lively, interactive event, where translators and non-translators alike get a peek inside the translation process—and the fact that different translations can be equally valid.

Two translators will arrive having independently completed an English translation of the same German poem by Keça Filankes. They’ll read their translations, and then describe their choices, as well as cultural and linguistic aspects of the original poem. Which parts of each version will you prefer? Are there other possible translations that you might suggest? During the reading and moderated conversation, you’ll be invited to offer your own suggestions in the chat, and the event will conclude with a live Q&A. SAND, a Berlin-based English literary and arts journal, was founded in 2009 and will be releasing its 23rd issue in October. Featuring work by writers, translators, and artists from around the world, SAND seeks out fresh and underrepresented perspectives—from more than 50 countries and territories so far, both English originals and translations.

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Moderator

David Gramling is a literary translator from Turkish and German. He is Professor of German Studies and Head of the Department of Central, Eastern, and Northern European Studies at the University of British Columbia. His books include The Invention of Monolingualism, The Invention of Multilingualism, and Linguistic. He is also the Translations Section Editor for Transgender Studies Quarterly.

Partcipants

Didem Uca is Assistant Professor of German Studies at Emory University. Her research focuses on post/migrant cultural production, with recent and forthcoming articles and translations in Seminar, TRANSIT, Monatshefte, and Die Unterrichtspraxis. She is Co-Editor of Jahrbuch Türkisch-Deutsche Studien and serves in leadership roles in WiG, DDGC, and the MLA. Jon Cho-Polizzi is an educator and freelance literary translator. He studied Literature, History, and Translation Studies in Santa Cruz and Heidelberg, before receiving his PhD in German and Medieval Studies at UC Berkeley with a dissertation titled “A Different (German) Village: Writing Place through Migration.” He lives and works between Northern California and Berlin.

Joined By

Jake Schneider is a translator, literary organizer, and Editorin-Chief of SAND. An NEA fellowship recipient, he has translated poetry, scholarship, and exhibitions from German, especially on Jewish and queer themes. He has also put on events around “untranslatability,” ekphrastic poetry, and collaborative text, and is now focusing on minority/non-national language literatures. He lives in Berlin.