Category: translation

Workshop Again, a Chair, and a Commons

After a decade and a half, I’ve returned to teaching a graduate-level translation workshop. The last time I did this was at the University of Iowa in 2012. So, not yesterday. Except maybe in the Beatles’ sense. This was my long-time colleague Bill Johnston’s course at Indiana University for more than twenty years, and when… Continue reading Workshop Again, a Chair, and a Commons

Computational Thinking and AI Research in the Humanities

I spent some time this summer doing an extended study on translation using AI. My basic question was whether it could help me document translation episodes that have functioned as knowledge generation. I know the phenomenon exists, as I have examples from my own work. I shared these with the AI and asked it to… Continue reading Computational Thinking and AI Research in the Humanities

Quotidian Dread and AI

It is the kind of dread that seeps. It’s not apocalyptic. Just the sort of thing that can eat up your livelihood. An example. I am aware that my own work, both translations and non-translated writings, was used in the creation of Meta’s AI, without my permission. Like many colleagues, I searched and found the… Continue reading Quotidian Dread and AI

When Fluency Outpaces Understanding

Back from my travels, I’m inspired by Tom Gally’s newer experiments with basic humanities research using AI so have started a couple of iterative experiments of my own on translation topics. Basically, this means asking a research question, setting up some parameters, and then letting the AI work on its own, with reports sent to… Continue reading When Fluency Outpaces Understanding

Dread and Dreams

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

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