Practical Aspects of the Translation Workshop and Seminar

Abstract

A longer outline of Place of Translation in Comparative is available from the American Comparative Literature Association (Frederick Gerber, Secy-Treasurer, SUNY-Binghamton). Aid and counsel are also available from FIT (International Federation of Translators) and ATA (American Translators' Association) and the journal of the FIT, Babel. The University of Amsterdam Institute for General Literary Studies program in Translation offers a journal, Targum; the Columbia University Center for Translation offers a journal, Translation, and various services. Several other journals, such as Mundus Artium, make translation a major part of their work, and several other universities have centers and programs in translation. The academic side of translation occurs in courses and seminars on translation, which occupies a unique position relative to the rest of the curriculum-it proves (or disproves) literary theory, it puts critical analysis to its severest test, it demonstrates the applicability of linguistics and semantics, and it calls for intensive historicalcultural research. The problem is how to incorporate all this in one course. Like the ACLA report, I suggest grading the participants on the use of the skills they have derived from courses in literature: abilities at analysis of texts, knowledge of the grammatical structure of a language other than their own, and capacity to grasp and define contrasts between historical periods and cultural traditions. I also suggest putting these graded skills to work preparing and producing translations, which, if ungraded in themselves, are probably a deeper satisfaction to the student. (See part 2.) The seminar can be divided into four parts: readings in theory, articulation of the participant's bilingual situation (dictionaries, frequency tables, grammars, and other tools), English-to-English translation exercises, and actual translating. The theoretical materials available start with one outstanding book, Die literarische Ubersetzung by JiffLevy, and include Brower, On Translation; Arrowsmith and Shattuck, The Craft and Context of Translation; Catford, A Linguistic Theory of Translation; Nida and Taber, The Theory and Practice of Translation; and numerous essays and anthologies of essays. Equally important are books on linguistics and