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
Category: translation
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
Rytkheu Panel Next Week
I’ll be participating in a roundtable next week (March 22, 1:30pm EDT; 5:30pm GMT & 6:30pm CET) devoted to the work of Chukchi author Yuri Rytkheu. The virtual event, organized by the Russian and East European Institute as part of a series on indigenous and under-represented writers from Russian-speaking spaces, will be hosted by my… Continue reading Rytkheu Panel Next Week
Teaching Poetry Translation
Here’s an assignment I’ve adapted over the years. It takes a lot of “scaffolding,” meaning reading and discussion of different approaches, with examples. In the past, I didn’t do enough of that. This time, too, I feel like we could have done more, but the class is not just on poetry translation, it’s on translation… Continue reading Teaching Poetry Translation
A Translator’s List
I remember being impressed by a couple of lists of English words that Joanne Turnbull had compiled while working on her translations of Krzhizhanovsky’s The Letter Killers Club and Autobiography of a Corpse. In going through some of the books left by Michael Henry Heim (see my earlier posts on this here and here), I… Continue reading A Translator’s List
Teaching Undergrad Translation 2.0
Well, actually this is probably more like 5.0, since I taught a number of translation-focused undergrad courses at the University of Iowa between 2007 and 2012 or so, but this will be 2.0 for Indiana, where I taught this course, very humbly titled “How to Translate Anything,” for the first time in Spring 2022. That… Continue reading Teaching Undergrad Translation 2.0
Post-National Book Awards
I recently read for the National Book Awards in the translated literature category. It was a lot of work but also gave me the chance to read many excellent new translations, which is one of the main reasons I agreed to serve on the jury. The committee, which besides me included Nick Buzanski (our spreadsheet… Continue reading Post-National Book Awards
Menard’s Severyanin
Variaciones Borges recently published the latest installment of the Pierre Menard translations that I’ve been slowly working on. (Sincere thanks to Daniel Balderston for asking whether I had any more of those Menard pieces in the works. I did and I do.) This one re-frames a poem by a self-styled genius, ego-futurist Igor Severyanin, whose… Continue reading Menard’s Severyanin
Grand Inquisitors
Excerpting Dostoevsky’s “Legend of the Grand Inquisitor” for my Introduction to Russian Culture (lower level general education class), I find two relatively recent translations available online in a reasonable format for class. One is the Pevear and Volokhonsky version, which provides the whole chapter, the other a slightly condensed version of David McDuff’s 1993 translation… Continue reading Grand Inquisitors
Poem on Running
My friend Maya Kucherskaya recently posted a picture of a Russian airport filled with young men trying to leave the country and a poem, which she called a lullaby. This was just after Putin’s announcement regarding the conscription of more soldiers for the war in Ukraine. The poem is based on a lullaby that is… Continue reading Poem on Running
Russell Scott Valentino 