On my first research visit for The Translator After AI, I came upon two perfect bookend images and managed to get a picture of each. First, “AI Dread,” which I was able to snap even while behind the wheel because traffic was completely stopped. I assume the phone number and invitation is for counseling, and… Continue reading Dread and Dreams
Author: russellv
Two Jokes Walk into a Bar: AI Translating Humor
Jokes are notoriously hard to translate. Often one ends up not just translating them but also explaining why they’re funny. Which of course is not very funny. I thought I’d test out Chat GPT on this score. So here are three examples of jokes I’ve used in my Russian and Soviet culture classes in the… Continue reading Two Jokes Walk into a Bar: AI Translating Humor
Translating Basically
Look up “basically” in the dictionary or thesaurus, and you’re likely to find synonyms such as “fundamentally,” “essentially,” “intrinsically,” or even “radically.” Dig down further, and you might find “at heart” or “at bottom,” “for the most part” or “in the main.” These last ones begin to suggest something that translating the word in context… Continue reading Translating Basically
Productive Delay
I stumbled across or — maybe better — waded into the notion of productive delay while writing about the Adriatic as a translational space. I was thinking about how things tend to be when you have to move in and through water, but also how connected it makes everything. Here’s a paragraph from early in… Continue reading Productive Delay
Two Humans Talking Translation
I managed to meet up with Sophie Hughes yesterday, and we had what the Italians call a chiacchierata, a word that feels so right for the unhurried, pure-joy exchange of our talk. I suppose chiacchierare really just means “to chat,” but that English term feels terribly wanting in color and warmth. Also, we both seemed… Continue reading Two Humans Talking Translation
Nastiness, Gentlemen, and People
People, I’m still plugging away at my translation of Notes from Underground. Earlier I wrote about the word choices regarding zloi and zlost’, which lead off the book and present translators with a global interpretive question: is the U-Man spiteful? Or is he bad, evil, wicked? How about angry? These have all been tried, and… Continue reading Nastiness, Gentlemen, and People
Where You Say, I Don’t Know
Having now written thousands of pages of Sea of Intimacy — I’m trying to make it shorter, I really am — I have to come clean about something. There’s a kind of posing expertise that rubs me the wrong way. The outsider comes in having studied a bit, makes some sententious pronouncements, and then leaves… Continue reading Where You Say, I Don’t Know
From Six Parts to Five (and a pre-part)
I thought Sea of Intimacy was going to have six parts, and I was writing that fourth part for some time as a long-ish essay after George Steiner’s Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, a fine book with a smart contrast at its heart. My two points of contrast were going to be the two would-be masters of… Continue reading From Six Parts to Five (and a pre-part)
The Translator After AI
While Sea of Intimacy proceeds — I expect to have a full draft by later this summer — I seem to have another project developing. Pulling together some of the threads on this site, and looking at other pieces here and here, helped me to see it. At this point, my working title is The… Continue reading The Translator After AI
AI and Literary Translation: Key Questions and Experiments
AI has begun to reshape literary translation, not only in how texts are rendered but in how we understand language, meaning, and interpretation. Over the past several years, I’ve explored this problem through talks, teaching, and a series of experiments and reflections collected on this site. The results are not conclusive. But certain patterns—and certain… Continue reading AI and Literary Translation: Key Questions and Experiments
Russell Scott Valentino 