Denny M32

Instructor:

Stevan Harrell Denny M32

Office Hours: Monday and Thursday, 10:00-11:30, or by appointment

Phone 543-5240

e-mail: stevehar@u.washington.edu This seminar is an exercise in learning by doing, or perhaps more accurately, in learning from doing. More particularly, it is an exercise in learning by translating. Learning about what? Well, for one thing, about translating--how to do it and why it is so hard. But in addition about language, about the mind, about speaking and writing, about cultural differences, about symmetry, and about the minds and egos of geniuses. Every week, you will have a homework assignment, which will be due, posted on the class newsgroup at uwash.class.has350by 5:00 p.m. on the Monday preceding the class meeting. This will enable the other members of the class to read, download, print, criticize, devastate, and even delete your work before we meet on Wednesday, so that all that remains for Wednesday is to discuss it.

Two books are required for the class: Douglas R. Hofstadter's Le Ton beau de Marot and George Steiner's After Babel.

January 7:

Class time: we will compare my translations of a stanza each of well-known German and Chinese poems.

January 14:

Assignment: an annotated translation of one or two stanzas of poetry or one or two paragraphs of prose from another language to English. Pick something relatively difficult. There are two ways to organize your translation andcommentary:

1. Write the original, then write a "first-try" translation. Then discuss the problems you find with your own first try. Then give us another try, with explanations for what you changed, why you changed it, and where you are still less than satisfied.

2. Write the original, followed by your finished translation, with a footnote at every place where you had to make a choice, telling us what alternatives you considered and why you ended up with what you did.

Class time: You will come to class having looked over other people's assignments, and should be prepared to work together with the class in compiling a list of practical and philosophical issues about translation that are raised by people's annotated translations. That list will then go into the newsgroup as a reference work for the rest of the quarter.

January 21

Assignment: Read up to page 5b of Le Ton Beau de Marot. Take up Hofstadter's challenge, and without looking further into the book, come up with your own translation of "Ma Mignonne." Post it to the newsgroup, and then read chapters 1 and 2, plus chapter 3 from page 43 on (the first part of chapter 3 is rather self-indulgent; you can read it if you want, but there's no particular need to).

Class time: You will come to class ready to compare discuss the various translations of "Ma Mignonne" that you found in the book up to page 5b, that you did yourselves and read from your classmates on the newsgroup, and that you read at the ends of the first three chapters of Le Ton Beau. In addition to continuing our discussion about general issues in translation, we will also discuss (since I assume there are varying levels of French in the class, including the ø level) the issue of whether it makes any difference for translation how well you know the original language.

January 28

Assignment: a comparative critique of two English translations of the same original. Once again, two formats suggest themselves:

1. Write the original and both translations without any commentary. Then present a commentary comparing the two translations with reference to specific ways in which they differ, and of course specific examples of places where the differences show.

2. Write the original together with a short commentary on where you see problems that might arise. Then present one translation, together with your ideas on how that translator handles the problems; then do the same thing for the other translation.

Class time: You will come to class having looked over other people's assignments, and should be prepared to work together with the class in compiling a list of issues relating to the cultural, linguistic, and sociolinguistic context in which translators work, and the way this affects the content of their translations and the ways that readers react to the translations.

February 5

Assignment: Read chapters 6, [7 is optional], 8, and 9 of Le Ton Beau. You may post any comments you would like about the evaluation of Pushkin translations, but this is not required.

What is required is for you to come to class prepared to discuss styles of translation and the problem of letter vs. spirit.

February 11

Assignment: Back-translation exercise. You will divide into pairs, with both members of each pair prepared to work in the same non-English language. One member of the pair will receive form A, and the other will receive form B. Please do not post these to the newsgroup; we want to discourage peeking, which takes all the fun out of the exercise.

Member A should translate the English sentences on Form A into the target language, and e-mail them to Member B, and vice-versa. E-mail these only to your partner; not to the newsgroup. You and your partner can work out the schedule for this. Then member B should take the target-language versions of Form A, and translate them into English, and member A vice-versa. If you guess what the English original might have been, try to do the translation as if you hadn't guessed (anyway, you might have guessed wrong!).

When the translation back into English has been completed, you should mail the whole thing to the newsgroup. Don't peek at anyone else's postings on the back-translation exercise until you have sent your completed exercise in.

Then read chapter 12 of Le Ton Beau.

Class time: You will come to class having had a good guffaw over this little game of "telephone," but ready nevertheless to discuss some of its more serious implications: How does the process of translation distort meaning? How avoidable is this distortion? Or is it even desirable? What does the distortion tell you about the differences between languages?

February 18

Assignment: We will compare the same two passages from Shakespeare, translated into a series of languages. These passages will be posted on the news group, as well as passed out in hard-copy.

You should post some reactions on the newsgroup. What you post depends on how many of the languages you feel comfortable in. If you only know one, you should compare the effect of a whole passage or of chosen lines in the English original and in the target language, and evaluate whether the difference is due to the skill of the translator or to inherent differences between English and the two languages.

If you are familiar with more than one of the target languages, you may just do the comparison outlined above, or you may compare the translation into one target language with the translation into another, emphasizing the way differences between languages effect the translatability of these passages into them.

Also, read chapter 1 of After Babel.

Class time: You will come to class prepared to help synthesize a list of the ways in which languages themselves differ, and also a list of alternative strategies a translator might use to cope with these differences.

I will also hold forth on some of my own opinions about the Shakespeare translations, and how they reflect, on the one hand, the skill and style of the translators, and on the other, the transparency or opacity of the passages to translation.

If we have time, we will begin discussing the issues raised in Chapter 1 of After Babel.

February 25

Assignment: Read chapters 2 , (3 is optional) and 4 of After Babel. Post if you feel like it. Think about the question to be discussed in class, below.

Around this time, you might also start thinking about and preparing your final translation project.

Class time I: We will discuss the process of translation--how does one go from the original to the translation, and what does this tell us about the nature of the relationship between the thing being talked about, the talker, and the words the talker uses to talk about the thing.

Class time II: Janet Upton will talk about the problems of multiple translation: from Tibetan to Chinese, from Tibetan to English, and from Tibetan and its Chinese translation to English.

March 4

Assignment: Continue with your translation project.

Read chapter 14 of Le Ton Beau and chapters 5 and 6 of After Babel. Again, post if you feel like it, but come to class prepared to discuss issues:

Class time I: We will discuss the questions of translatability: are some things more or less translatable than others, and do some languages translate better into particular languages than others.

Class time II: Wesley Thomas will talk about the problems of translation between languages very distant from each other. He will illustrate with his own translations of Navajo chants and poetry into English.

March 11

Assignment: Prepare another annotated translation, perhaps somewhat longer than your first one. By now, you should be able to choose your own format for translation and annotation, including perhaps some of the following devices: interlinear glosses, successive versions, comparisons of your versions with those of other people, and extensive footnoting. Should be posted by Monday afternoon.

Class time: We might want to schedule this around a pizza dinner, as I have traditionally done with the last meeting of my seminars. You will each give a 20 minute presentation and answer questions about your final project, and then we will have dinner together. My treat.