This year’s Heim Colloquium begins on Thursday of this week. The faculty organizing committee turned things over to a dynamic group of graduate students headed by Ph.D. candidate Cynthia Shin to select this year’s theme and brainstorm an invitation list, and we ended up with a great group of five (Esther Allen, Stine An, Rachel… Continue reading Who Owns Translation?
Tag: translation
Who you are, what you wear, and where
Comparing multiple English versions of the Ryōsuke Akutagawa short story “Rashōmon” (1915) helped my class and me explore some fundamental translation questions associated with context. The nameless main character is referred to by means of two kanji that Japanese readers pronounce as genin. One means “under” or “below,” and the other means “person.” The designation… Continue reading Who you are, what you wear, and where
Ontology of Outcomes
My Iowa trip (see pic) was enlightening in all sorts of ways, and I’m still processing as I prepare for the upcoming ALTA meeting in Portland. Fall is like this. In addition to the advertised event, there was an informal gathering at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, for a group of people thinking about… Continue reading Ontology of Outcomes
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
