Traveling Theory

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Brief Description

This roundtable addresses experimental translation practices informed by the linguistic and historical experiences of Central and Eastern Europe, focusing on the difficulties of translating texts from this region. Benjamin Paloff will discuss the translation method he calls "reading over the text's shoulder" on the basis of his translations of Krzysztof Michalski, Yuri Lotman, and Marek Bieńczyk. Daria Smirnova will address Andrei Fedorov’s linguistic approach to translation and its influence on contemporary debates in literary translation. Irina Denischenko, Ilya Kliger and Alexander Spektor will explore different aspects of translating Mikhail Bakhtin into English--from Bakhtin's (in)famous "untranslatables" to his channeling of foreignness and scenarios of selfhood. The roundtable discussion is meant to generate new ideas about how to navigate the complex textual memory of this region in translation.

Sub Unit

• Anthropology, Cultural Studies

Chair

• Jacob Emery, Indiana U Bloomington

Roundtable Speakers

• Irina Denischenko, Georgetown U

• Ilya Kliger, New York U

• Benjamin Paloff, U of Michigan

• Daria Smirnova, Independent Scholar

• Alex Spektor, U of Georgia