Category: translation

AI and Literary Translation: A Global Consideration

I’m just back from the 48th annual ALTA conference, in Tucson, AZ. At the panel I participated in (thank you to co-panelists Lisa Bradford and Steve Bradbury!), Amy Stolls, formerly of the NEA, suggested that a short guide to the use of AI in literary translation might be helpful to, as she put it, “people… Continue reading AI and Literary Translation: A Global Consideration

Propp at last

This only took us a little more than a decade. The image is linked to the publisher website (click on it to see more). And here’s the publisher’s description: Nearly seven decades after the English translation of Morphology of the Folktale, one of the most influential scholarly books on folklore, its sequel is finally available in… Continue reading Propp at last

Translating Atrocity

When I told my friend Mira Rosenthal that I’d taken on a translation job for a book on Jasenovac, she didn’t miss a beat. “And how are you protecting yourself?” she asked. Naive me hadn’t even considered this, even though I know the words and the scenes always seep inside you when you’re translating them,… Continue reading Translating Atrocity

A Bit of Rudy Panko

While teaching this semester’s graduate seminar on Nikolai Gogol/Mykola Hohol, I noticed how inadequate all the existing translations of the earlier works are. The author’s distinctive style barely peeks through what often feels like basically explanatory prose in all the English versions. I also came to the conclusion that Gogol’s very first book is his… Continue reading A Bit of Rudy Panko

Translating “meanwhile”

I put that in quotes because it’s a silly idea really, for translators at least. Translating is always its own thing, you concentrate on it, do it almost for its own sake. Or rather, strike the almost. This is my experience anyway, even when one is just trying something out, it turns out to be… Continue reading Translating “meanwhile”

A Cover for Propp

It’s been a whole summer (a glorious one) and a bit of a fall (also pretty glorious) since I last posted, and there are too many things to write now, so I’ll need to pace myself. First, Propp is coming! At last the book is finished and entering the production process at Indiana University Press.… Continue reading A Cover for Propp

The Promise of Translation

I was reading Peter Brooks’ review of two new Proust translations in the NYRB for March 21, 2024 (“In Search of His Vocation”) and came across a passage quoted from Le Temps retrouvé that Brooks calls the book’s “titular claim”: ‘I slowly became aware that the essential book, the only true book, was not something… Continue reading The Promise of Translation

A Prize for Kin

My translation of Miljenko Jergović’s Kin was awarded the prize for “Best Literary/Scholarly Translation into English” by the American Association for Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages (AATSEEL) at its just completely conference in Las Vegas. They don’t seem to have updated their website yet, but here’s the link for all the long- and… Continue reading A Prize for Kin

When Dragons Show Themselves

I finally managed to formulate my thoughts on translation as a practice in a more coherent and systematic fashion. It only took about eighteen years. The first idea came out in a Poroi essay published in 2005 after a conference at the University of Iowa on empathy. It seems to have been viewed 540 times… Continue reading When Dragons Show Themselves

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