Translation Atelier
Course Description
Summary
This course for translators of all levels—from absolute beginner to seasoned translators with an ongoing practice—offers space, time, guidance and community to work on self-directed translation projects. In other words, the class operates as an atelier. It is comprised of a major workshop component to get feedback on work and to direct revisions and progress; and a rigorous reading list built in response to and around student projects to aid workshop feedback. It also includes an additional credited hour spent in small group and one-one-one feedback from the professor.
Students should arrive with a project in mind before the first day of class, though new projects are welcome, as is experimenting outside your comfort zone. Translations from any forms and genre are also welcome, especially literary fiction, poetry, drama, lyrics and libretto, screenplay and essay. Genre fiction and graphic novels are acceptable, depending on the project.
You will have an opportunity to research your translation so that you might better contextualize it literarily, historically and politically for yourself and the class. This may include presentations and/or sharing related reading and other media with the group. You will need to offer ideas for comparable and/or related texts assigned to the class as reading in preparation for your workshop.
You will work carefully and at the line level, applying the same rigor to feedback and peer-to-peer critique as to editing your own work. Pleasuring in challenges rather than succumbing to frustration is a skill, an invaluable one for any artistic endeavor. We will build this muscle.
Students need not have experience translating but at least reading knowledge of another language is required. “Reading knowledge” is defined as knowing enough grammar that you can parse challenging lines using a dictionary. Typically three to four years of high school language study suffice.
You may translate from any language, including oral languages, but only into English.
The aim of the course is to develop your skills as a translator in a dynamic, electric learning environment. You will have a chance to experiment with new texts and forms and/or to develop an existing project.
We will learn by doing. We will support and teach each other, using our collective energy, talents and ideas to empower individual projects.
Learning Outcomes
- Develop a new or existing translation project.
- Deepen your understanding of the challenges of translation.
- Develop tools for tackling those challenges.
- Learn how to contribute to and benefit from a workshop environment.
- Develop both line- and big-picture editing skills that can equally apply to translation and original writing in English, whether yours or others’.
- Learn by doing.
- Enjoy translation.
Prerequisites
Reading knowledge of a second language.
BENNINGTON STUDENT APPLICATIONS
In addition to submitting through the usual channels (via this form: https://forms.gle/scJEZtdFWBpWGjYh8) please email mariamrahmani@bennington.edu with a 300-400 word response to the below as a PDF with the following specifications:
File name: Instructor last name_Course title key word_Student last name, e.g. Rahmani_Translation_Williams
Subject line: Application Translation Atelier
Paragraph one: describe your project, including a brief introduction of your author and the historic and literary/artistic significance of the work.
Paragraph two: With what existing literature or which writers is this work in conversation? From what translators are you learning, a.k.a., what books in translation can serve as a model for translating a work in this style, from this point in history?
In list form: Cite 1 Bennington/college course you have taken that best prepares you for this class, whether in literature or outside.
*No Google Doc or Drive links.
**Note that you must including EXACTLY the above subject line as these applications are automatically filtered.