Projects in Translation
Course Description
Summary
This intensive advanced translation workshop focuses on student work. Meant for those who have taken Ethical Translation and learned the nuts and bolts of translation there – or otherwise have translation and/or extensive foreign language experience – here we dig into your longer translation projects. The aim of the course is to leave with a polished translation that is worthy of publication and a general audience.
The seminar portion of our course provides a brief and inadequate introduction to translation theory before delving into two units, using multiple translations of the same text(s) as case studies. Readings will likely center on Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Inquiries can be made during course registration fall 2025 to confirm.
Reading each other’s work with care and attention is required. Revising your own with the same dedication is crucial. While we will read other translations and related material as models, and in order to think alongside practiced translators, the primary methodology of this course is that of learning by doing. The doing includes both translating yourself and productively critiquing your peers. You learn how to edit your own work by editing others. Given this policy absences will not be tolerated, unless in the most extreme circumstances.
You will walk out of this class with a complete translation of either a short story or stand-alone fiction excerpt, or a long poem or series of poems.
Learning Outcomes
- Learn how to choose the right translation project, taking into account your own strengths and weaknesses as well as the needs of the broader literary community, however defined
- Learn how to create a list of priorities and your own rubric for each translation project
- Learn how to edit your work and others’ work with utmost rigor
- Learn how to persevere through revisions, ending in a polished, publishable draft
Prerequisites
Preferably Ethical Translation or Translating from Zero as prereqs but other students will be considered.
BENNINGTON STUDENT APPLICATIONS
Please upload a single PDF to this link with your name as the document title: . Include the following:
1. What works will you be translating? Cite the author name, title, year of original publication, and original language for each of 2 works.
2. Write a 150-250 word summary of each work, including its literary significance in the original context.
3. Write a brief 200-300 words guessing at what challenges will arise in these particular translations. Commit at least a couple lines to each.
Please contact the faculty member : mariamrahmani@bennington.edu