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2012 Conference Abstracts
The Serendipity of Translation Vivien Bosley
My presentation is about two books I've translated and how I came to do the translations. I will also touch on my current work and my process.
Ecopoetry from Brazil—Some Translation Issues Odile Cisneros
This paper will focus on translation issues related to the translation of ecopoetry on Brazil. I will base my discussion on one modernist text I translated, Cobra Norato by Raúl Bopp and two contemporary eco-centered poets translated by others, namely Vegetal Sex by Sérgio Medeiros, translated by Raymond L. Bianchi, and Cage by Astrid Cabral, translated by Alexis Levitin. I will comment on translating poetry that focuses on the specifics of the Brazilian landscape and biosphere, and the eco-critical discourse enacted in those texts.
A Translation Exercise: Translating a Poet/Translator as he Himself Would Sandra Gaviria-Buck
Rafael Pombo, 'poeta nacional de Colombia', was a prolific poet of Romanticism known for his versatility, mastery of Spanish meter, and thematic breadth. The notoriety of his work transcended the Colombian territory and he was recognized as one of the major figures of Romanticism in Spanish language. But he was not only a poet; his famous children's poems that appeared published throughout the Spanish-speaking world in the late 1800s were actually the result of a translation commission to adapt fables and children stories from English nursery rhymes such as The Mother Goose's Melodies. As a translator Rafael Pombo presented a breakthrough in translation practices of the time: instead of presenting either a literal rendition of the original or the more common renditions of poetry in prose, he opted for re-creation of the original or even a form of co-creation, in which the original author was present in his theme and vision, and sometimes even in form, but definitely not in lexical choice or final say on the word. His translations add up to 250 compositions from English, French, Latin, Italian, Portuguese, German, and Greek that develop themes already present in his original work. His originality and vast knowledge of the target language were his best tools as a translator, but they constituted as well a double-edged sword, as he introduced a conflict of authorship in his translations. My presentation will focus on the key aspects of Pombo's translation 'principles' based on my analysis of his translation into Spanish of three poems –Byron's When We Two Parted, Shakespeare's Sonnet LXXIII, and Longfellow's The Arrow and the Song– and the subsequent application of the same principles to my translation into English of three of his poems –El globo y la gallina, Lo desconocido, and El Niño y la Mariposa.
“The Translator’s Power Play: Rendering Puns in Postmodernist Fiction” Roman Ivashkiv
Given the freedom to choose an aspect in my translation research that I find to be challenging (as well as simultaneously “rewarding and frustrating”), I propose to examine the approaches to translating wordplay in the three early novels by the Ukrainian writer Yuri Andrukhovych: Recreations (trans. by Marko Pavlyshyn), The Moscoviad (trans. by Vitaly Chernetsky), and Perverzion (trans. by Michael Naydan). Written in the 1990s, shortly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Andrukhovych’s prose brilliantly showcases the liberating postmodern playfulness but at the same time exposes the political forces, shaping the Ukrainian national identity and defining Ukraine’s complex geopolitical role at the juncture between East and West. My argument is that when dealing with puns translators find themselves in a “power play” situation. While the author is metaphorically “out of play,” the translator on the one hand is empowered by the possibility of experimenting with new meanings without being bound to the original but on the other one inevitably faces the responsibility (and consequently a “PUNishment”) for participating in the power struggle of translation, which, as Bassnett and Trivedi famously remind us, “is not an innocent, transparent activity but is highly charged with significance at every stage, [rarely involving] a relationship of equality between texts, authors or systems” (Post-Colonial Translation 15). Bassnett, Susan, and Harish Trivedi. Post-colonial Translation: Theory and Practice. London: Routledge, 1999. Print.
The City That Shouldn’t Be: New Orleans in Translation Anne Malena
New Orleans is a colonial city that has had to justify its existence ever since its foundation in 1718. Built on a precarious site and in a hostile environment it was born with an already tarnished reputation and nothing that its administrators, be they French, Spanish or Americans, have done over the last three centuries has managed to change it. Criticisms abound in the archives, describing a wild city where one is supposedly hard pressed to find libraries, bookstores or serious literature of any kind and where music, dancing, gambling and worse prevail. This is a city that has had to project itself into performance, to rely on the exterior value of its own spectacle in order to survive and to draw a segregated map of itself in order to function. In reality, however, the confined space in which the city was built meant that traffic, negotiations and exchanges of all kinds had to take place between the denizens of its various neighbourhoods. This paper will focus on the inextricable ties binding people to the cityscape and explore the linguistic polyphony, the cultural rich diversity and the complex networks of representations animating the city and conferring upon it a fascinating array of signs.
Before the Tribulations of Translation Studies in MLCS Nicole Mallet
This talk will be about the grand old times of translation in the department, which coincide with the speaker’s career.
Starting Out as a Translator
“Bilingualism and Cultural Resistance: The Translation of Xavier Villaurrutia’s El ausente.” Stefano Muneroni
In this paper I explore whether the adoption of bilingualism in the staging of foreign plays can prevent cultural and linguistic domestication and provide a viable answer to the ongoing debate over the “things” one loses in translation. Given the fact that theatre draws on both textual and audio-visual devices to make meaning, it has the advantage of many diverse ways to communicate: the set design, the lights and sounds, the physicality of the actors, and the immediate connection with a live audience who must relate to the translated text in the here and now of the performance. Can these staging frames shape the kind of translation one hears on stage? Can they determine how much of the original language one experiences during the performance? Using my own translation of Xavier Villaurrutia’s El ausente which was staged at the 2012 StageLAB Festival, I intend to probe the various linguistic and performative strategies a translator of plays can engage to bring to life the culture and language of the source text. I also want to explore how incorporating some of the language of the source text can defuse the risks of domestication implicit in translation as well as increase cultural understanding in the target audience, even when the audience cannot speak or understand the language of the original play.
Translators of the World, Unite! An SOS from Writers No One Reads Lynn Penrod
Self-Translation: Ingeniously Invisible For 2000 Years Alexandra Popescu
For many years now, scholars have made opposing declarations in regards to self-translation. Some claim it has not been practiced until recent times, others, that it has been practiced but ignored. Thus, self-translation—“the translation of an original work into another language by the author himself” (Santoyo 858)—seems to be a puzzling subject in Translation Studies. Furthermore, it is not only its existence that is overwhelming; theoreticians and practitioners oppose in terms of its status as well. The practice of self-translation is controversial—superior or unfaithful? This is a question yet to be answered. A trace of this answer can be found by looking at the concept of authorship as applied to self-translation and the motivation behind this practice. This essay investigates existing responses to self-translation and self-translators, while attempting to put together some of the pieces of this puzzle.
Either Rhyme or Reason? Both Rhyme and Reason? Tom Priestly (tomsp777@gmail.com)
As I have recounted in past St. Jerome’s Day conferences, I have wandered in the world of translation like a stranger in a strange land, bemused among those who, when they translate works from one literature to another, understand the topography of that literature. Wandering through this alien landscape I have wondered whether my mask will slip and I will be exposed as a fraudulent interloper; especially, because I have found myself translating poetry. This paper will begin with a description of this fogbound voyage: how and why I began with poetic translation in the first place and why I was encouraged to continue with it. The paper’s title shows the overriding problem, which I will address briefly. Does a facility with the translation of rhyming poetry recompense for deficiencies in rendering its meaning? Does apparent competence in mimicking rhymes and rhythm seduce the translator into a belief that the result is a reasonable and reason-filled one, worth showing to other people? Can the linguist translator reasonably hope to be no longer fraudulent without achieving a balance between form and content, between rhyme and reason?
Wear Sunscreen Video: New York Vs Moscow Elena Siemens and Olga Leshcheva
This co-authored presentation discusses the music single “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen),” originally released by the film director Baz Luhrmann in 1999. This wildly successful single has since been translated into many languages around the world. In our paper, we compare Luhrmann's verison and its Russian-language adaptation dating from 2008, which differs from the original both in language and the use of images. Our comparative talk addresses issues of linguistic translation, visual translation, as well as discussing important differences between the two cultures.
The Ranch in Spring: Personal Observations, Georgic Translations Karen Simons
This project may not suit the purposes of this year's celebration, but, just in case, here is a description of what I'm working on, and what I would like to present. Last May (2011), during yet another week long visit with my family on their ranch in the backwoods of B.C., I wrote some detailed notes in my journal about their lives there. Recently, I have begun to revisit Virgil's Eclogues and Georgics, which I read (some of ) in a master's level Latin course many years ago. In these works, Virgil wrote about “country” life, as I am doing as I now edit my journal entries. Life in both rustic situations is often hard and heart-breaking, but also rich in the beauty of the natural world and the meaningful relationships that shared hardship and celebration can foster. For the Translation Day conference, I would like to weave together my writing about spring at the ranch and my translations of poignant passages of Virgil's Georgics (as well as a few bits and pieces of other pastoral poetry—Robert Frost, for example), alternating passages in a way that will shed light on rural experience and the poetic language used to evoke/describe it. For the performance of the piece, I and at least one other reader will alternate, making the shifts in voice, persective, etc., between Virgil and me more evident and dramatic.
French Translation and Female Powerlessness in Carol Shields’s Unless Nora Foster Stovel
Unless (2002) was a finalist for the Canada Reads contest in 2011 for the best Canadian novel of the first decade of the 20th century. And it should have won, not only because it is a brilliant novel, but also because it is distinctively Canadian in combining the English and French languages. Protagonist Reta Winters, daughter of a Québécoise Francophone mother and an Anglophone father, combines Canada’s two official languages. She is not only a writer of fiction, like Shields, but she is also a translator of French texts. Reta translates the work of Danielle Westerman, French "feminist pioneer, Holocaust survivor, cynic, and genius"—a reflection of Simone de Beauvoir perhaps. Although Reta hesitates to consider her translations as her own writing, Westerman insists, “translation, especially of poetry, is a creative act.” So Reta is persuaded to consider “translation as an act of originality,” especially as “the act of shuffling elegant French into readable and stable English is an aesthetic performance.” Reta then translates Westerman’s memoirs: the first volume, Pour Vivre, she translates as Alive, and the second, Les femmes et le pouvoir, as Women Waiting because the thesis is that “Women possess power, but it is power that has yet to be seized, ignited, released.” So Westerman introduces the major theme of the novel. But ultimately, Reta becomes her own translator, translating her Anglophone version of her Russian Icons book into French. “Unless” is the pivotal concept of the novel: “Unless you’re lucky . . . you go down in the darkness, down to despair. Unless provides you with a trapdoor, a tunnel into the light.” Reta emphasizes the concept by noting, "Ironically, unless, the lever that finally shifts reality into a new perspective, cannot be expressed in French." She adds, "Unless is a miracle of language and perception." Indeed, whenever Reta, or Shields, wants to emphasize a point, such as Norah's realization of the powerlessness of women, she includes a French translation. I propose to explore Shields’s use of French language and the practice of translation to convey women’s powerlessness at the millennium.
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