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: writing
Lip-Syncing @ ALTA
This year’s ALTA keynote, which was delivered by Jadine Pluecker, took the ALTA49 (2026) conference attendees in at least one new direction: lip-syncing! ALTA keynote addresses have often broached new ground, crossing borders — into deafness, humor, singing below your range, friendling, broken bodies, broken countries, belletrism. Jadine did a bit of some of this… Continue reading Lip-Syncing @ ALTA
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
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
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
Where You Say, I Don’t Know
Having now written thousands of pages of Sea of Intimacy — I’m trying to make it shorter, I really am — I have to come clean about something. There’s a kind of posing expertise that rubs me the wrong way. The outsider comes in having studied a bit, makes some sententious pronouncements, and then leaves… Continue reading Where You Say, I Don’t Know
