Author: russellv

AI in Translation

As noted previously in these pages here and here, I’ve run a half-dozen experiments using ChatGPT for translation purposes, entering text passages of both prose and poetry from languages I know and trying different prompts. I’ve also introduced the software into my teaching, allowing student translators to use it for their translation projects provided that… Continue reading AI in Translation

Two Islands

A colleague in Dalmatia, whom I have written about before here, mentioned a pair of islands in the Kvarner Gulf, the idea of which has fascinated me since last summer. A couple of weeks ago I finally got there. The islands are paired in a distinctive sense: one, which is called Sveti Petar has the… Continue reading Two Islands

Prospero in the Adriatic

I’ve been reading “around” the Adriatic as a way of imagining it, or rather seeing how it has been imagined. In this spirit, I picked up Lawrence Durrell’s 1945 book Prospero’s Cell. Durrell does not refer much to the Adriatic in his account. His Corfu, or rather Corcyra — he begins using the Latin name… Continue reading Prospero in the Adriatic

M-Dash Spring 2023

This long-delayed 13th issue of M-Dash is finally live. This issue, which is devoted to Ukraine, features work by Alex Averbuch, Mariya Deykute, Olga Livshin, Oksana Maksymchuk, and Max Rosochinsky, and an interview by Nataliya Shpylova-Saeed with Lyuba Yakimchuk, Svetlana Lavochkina, and Grace Mahoney. Sincere thanks to all the contributors for their patience and care.

Chat GPT Translation Test No. 2

Since a reader questioned whether Chat GPT had perhaps filched my own translation of the Jergović text I tried out in my previous test, I am trying it with a text that hasn’t been translated into English yet to my knowledge (if anyone knows otherwise, please send word!). This time I just prompted it to… Continue reading Chat GPT Translation Test No. 2

Olga

The final film in our Slavic series came on the day after we completed the 4th annual Taras Shevchenko Ukrainian Studies Conference, so while I was able to attend and take some notes, I was too wiped out to write anything about it, hence the delay in this final review. It was a wonderful series,… Continue reading Olga

Chat GPT for Literary Translation: Test No. 1

I’ve been following Tom Gally’s YouTube videos on various aspects of Chat GPT and foreign languages, including his several videos on the software’s potential use in translation. It’s surprisingly good, the software, I mean. I thought why not try it on a text I had already translated to see what it could do. So I… Continue reading Chat GPT for Literary Translation: Test No. 1

Loving Russia

The Massachusetts Review will publish my essay “Loving Russia” in its summer 2023 issue. The title comes from a 2001 New Yorker essay by Susan Sontag called “Loving Dostoyevsky” and is an attempt to address — this does not feel like the right word — my own conflicted feelings regarding a subject to which I… Continue reading Loving Russia

Petrov’s Flu

I make a point of not reading anything about the films we’re showing as part of our Slavic film series before I watch them. The series has been organized by the Indiana Slavic department in collaboration with the Ryder Magazine and Film Series, in collaboration with the Byrnes Russian and East European Institute. Mostly this… Continue reading Petrov’s Flu

Meat Breathing Through Plastic Wrap

I wasn’t properly prepared for the fourth film in our Slavic and East European series with the Ryder and REEI. (I wrote about the first three, Murina, EO, and The Other Side of Everything here, here, and here.) There’s a good reason for this, which I’ll get to shortly. The slices of meat squirming across… Continue reading Meat Breathing Through Plastic Wrap