Translation as Intersection VI: When Literary Studies Meets Literary Translation

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Brief Description

This international roundtable will address a variety of methodological and interdisciplinary problems at the intersection of literary research and literary translation. Our guiding questions are how our research influences our translation and vice versa; how our translation studies and practices do and don't facilitate our critical discussion of the same work. To begin, Benjamin Paloff asks what does a literary translation add to scholarship that a literal gloss cannot?; how does teaching the techniques of literary translation cultivate more insightful scholars? Katherina Kokinova upturns that: how literary scholarship favours literary translation and how it hinders it?; what makes an expert on an author/topic a good/bad translator of this author’s work? Jonathan Stone further investigates translation and interdisciplinarity: how can literary translation and our position as scholars-translators add depth and nuance to the conversations we have with specialists in other literatures?; in what ways does the act of translating a text allow for a relationship with the text/author/cultural context that gives the translator more agency in creating a more inclusive and decentered picture of the era? Finally, Stanislav Shvabrin explores translation as a source of interpretative analysis, which in turn supplies material for research. With this roundtable we hope to initiate a discussion rather than propose definitive answers on the relation between these two distinct areas and disciplines, the intersection of which may be mutually productive.

Sub Unit

• Literature: Comparative

Chair

• Maria Y. Khotimsky, MIT

Roundtable Members

• Katherina Boicheva Kokinova, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (Bulgaria)

• Benjamin Paloff, U of Michigan

• Stanislav Shvabrin, UNC at Chapel Hill

• Jonathan Craig Stone, Franklin & Marshall College

Session Manager

• Elena Zemskova, NRU Higher School of Economics (Russia)