2 Translation Activity

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TRANSLATION ACTIVITY

Scholarly and educational activities featuring translation by members of the community of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the nearby colleges.

Sant Jordi: A Festival in Translation

Saint Jerome may be the official patron saint of translators, but lately it is George, the patron saint of Catalonia, who has been inspiring new ways of celebrating translated literature. Each year the Catalan festival of Sant Jordi, or Saint George’s Day, which falls on April 23 and is widely known as the Day of the Book and the Rose, gives rise to events worldwide that can be located on a trilingual platform in Catalan, Spanish and English at #BooksandRoses.

This year at UMass Amherst the annual Sant Jordi celebration took place as a virtual guest visit by esteemed translator Peter Bush to the Catalan Studies Facebook page. In his video lecture, Bush commented on new work in translation, in particular on a selection of texts from Barcelona Tales (Oxford University Press, 2019). He shared how the stories he chose for the anthology show a city in transformation, and touched on choices a literary translator must make related to research, creative liberty, self-editing, and collaboration. Through this format, Bush’s talk reached over 700 visitors.

A passage might be a place to walk, or a portion of literary text, or a means of moving toward transformation. In one of the texts from Bush’s anthology, Miquel Molina’s prezviously unpublished story “The Three Steps,” a young man makes a pilgrimage to meet an author during Barcelona’s Sant Jordi festival. As the narrator walks the length of the city, he must negotiate the wonderfully phrased “to-and-fro of books and roses.” The encounter leads to a rewriting of reality and expectation, culminating in, as many translators will surely appreciate, a punctilious typographical correction.

Barcelona Tales stories translated by Peter Bush

Since a to-and-fro of books and roses was not possible in person in 2020, students in the Catalan Studies program created their own online celebration. Their creative responses included a tap dance, video booktrailer, song recordings, and even instructions on how to carve soap roses for handwashing in response to the pandemic. Beyond its traditional focus on all things literary, Sant Jordi has become an occasion for community building through the embrace of new interpretations.

Hillary Gardner

Lecturer of Catalan Studies Spanish and Portuguese Studies UMass Amherst

Inside Taifa Llibres. Carrer de Verdi, Barcelona.

Playwright José Manuel Mora works with students and faculty.

Theater and Translation at UMass Amherst

Since 2018, the Translation Center has participated in a joint collaboration with the Spanish and Portuguese Studies Program and the Cultural Office of the Embassy of Spain to promote Spanish theater and performance. In April 2018, Angélica Liddell visited our campus for the premiere in the United States of her play with texts from her poetry collection Los deseos en Amherst (Desires in Amherst). Liddell, an award-winning and internationally recognized Spanish playwright, director and performer, played her personal homage to Emily Dickinson’s poetry and aesthetics. Los deseos en Amherst was presented at UMass and the Embassy of Spain in Washington DC thanks to the collective effort of a group of students, faculty, and community members, who translated the supertitles.

In October 2019, UMass Amherst hosted José Manuel Mora, recipient of an artistic residence that will bring Spanish playwrights to campus in the next three years.

Mora worked with students in a staged reading of the translation of his play, Los nadadores nocturnos (The Night Swimmers). I commissioned the translation to Elena Igartuburu, PhD candidate in the Comparative Literature Program. Igartuburu participated in the staging of the play along with other student actors. I was able to attend some of the rehearsals. As an observer of the artistic process I experienced the negotiation of translation decisions with the playwright and the cast. This experienced reaffirmed me on the benefits of making the translator participate in the rehearsal room along with the rest of the artistic team.

David Rodríguez-Solás

Associate Professor Spanish and Portuguese Studies UMass Amherst

Translat Library

The UMass Amherst Libraries announced the launch of Translat Library, a new journal based at UMass Amherst and published through ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst in collaboration with the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in Spain. The journal is devoted to the literary culture of Europe from 1300 to 1600, with an emphasis on vernacular translations, the Romance letters, and the Latin tradition. Albert Lloret, Associate Professor and Director of Spanish and Catalan Studies at UMass Amherst, serves as general editor of the Translat Library, together with Barcelona Professor Alejandro Coroleu.

The Editorial Board is composed of a roster of scholars from the UK, Italy, Spain, and the U.S. Translat Library stems from a long-term project led by a group of researchers based at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. The project, which has received funding from the Spanish government since 2006, culminated in 2018 with the publication of a monograph as well as a database on medieval Catalan translations (Translat is the medieval Catalan word for both ‘translation’ and ‘copy’).

Inspired by the sections of notes and manuscript excerpts that were common in 19th century journals, the journal aims to offer a venue for research based on archival and documentary work. It seeks to publish short articles documenting the identification of a manuscript or incunable, the source of a text, archival information on an author or work, the paratexts of a rare edition, the complete or excerpted edition of an unpublished text, and published but neglected text, among other topics.

Albert Lloret

Associate Professor Spanish and Portuguese Studies UMass Amherst

High school students from Waltham participating in a workshop series on translation.

Waltham Partnership for Youth (WPY)

A high school on a Saturday morning is a rare sighting. Each step and noise echoes around the empty hallways and rooms, full of traces of the vibrant life of weekdays. A tall, teen boy with a head full of black hair breaks the silence. He discusses with a classmate, a girl also in her teens with bright brown eyes, which of the Spanish words for the second person “you” they should use to translate a health-related brochure. Once they reached an agreement, they started writing on their computers, looking through online dictionaries, asking each other questions, and reading aloud their impromptu translation to the other five students in the room.

This scene took place last winter, during one of three in-person sessions of a workshop series in translation created by the UMass Translation Center in association with The Waltham Partnership for Youth (WPY). The program allowed high school students that speak English and Spanish or Haitian Creole to learn about standards and procedures of translation in school and community settings through practice activities, language lessons, homework assignments, and a final project. Students presented and reflected on their work in a closing session with other classmates, family members, WPY, and Translation Center staff before receiving a certificate of completion. About her experience in the workshop, Lisset Herrera wrote: “I have learned a lot about translation. My goal has always been to help the community, and I have seen that (translation) is really one of the ways to go.”

María Camila Vera

Graduate Student Spanish and Portuguese Studies UMass Amherst

THE TRANSLATION CENTER WORKS WITH AMHERST REGIONAL PUBLIC SCHOOLS:

A Remote Workshop Series

The Translation Center provided a remote training workshop series to the employees of Amherst Regional Public Schools who serve as interpreters and translators within the school community. The workshop series provided an educational and professional setting in which participants learned more about the standards and procedures of school interpreting and translation, carried out role-playing practices, reflected on specific situations, and built a network of fellow interpreters and translators. Every Thursday, for four weeks, participants accessed a video lecture on general and specific topics of school translation and interpretation.

The first week, Nicholas Magnolia (UMass alum) presented an overview and history of interpreting and translation, as well as general roles and key vocabularies for school interpreters and translators. The second session, also led by Mr. Magnolia, featured policies and procedures, dual-role interpreting, study case scenarios, and interpreter introductions. Katherine Moonan (Isenberg ‘21) led the third session on the translator and interpreter code of ethics and gave an overview of case studies related to educational settings. The final session was imparted by Professor Regina Galasso on the translation of school documents, procedures and processes, IEPs, and glossary development.

After each lecture, participants took a quiz and each Friday, they discussed, explored, and put into practice the knowledge they learned that week. Following each practice session, participants were encouraged to continue these conversations through an online chat. The aim of this workshop series was to help schools improve the quality of their interpreting and translation services and transform the treatment of language throughout the schools.

Paulina Ochoa Figueroa

Graduate Student Spanish and Portuguese Studies UMass Amherst

Words by Professor Regina Galasso to accompany the Translation Center's workshops for interpreters and translators in education.

Captions L to R: Professor Emeritus William Moebius, former Dean of HFA Julie C. Hayes, Librarian Jim Kelly, Professor Emeritus Francisco Fagundes, and audience members. Carla Suárez Vega and Elena Igartuburu. Professor Jeremi Szaniawski.

The Translation Center at 40: A Student’s Perspective

orking in academia, we immerse ourselves in our research and our teaching, making it difficult to get out of the closed campus community. I believe that, for the past 40 years, the Translation Center has been, especially for graduate students, a door into the real world. My experience working with the Translation Center as a Spanish-English interpreter for the past four years has been truly rewarding. Working there has given me the opportunity to put into practice the knowledge and resources previously acquired in the translation courses I took at UMass Amherst. Through the different assignments that I have done throughout the years for the Translation Center, I was able to see how translation is needed on many different spheres on a daily basis. From interpreting for workers in training sessions at restaurants or at human resources meetings, to assisting in parentteacher conferences at elementary schools, these experiences have given me the opportunity to get involved professionally in the community. As an interpreter, one of the assignments was especially fulfilling. Last year, thanks to the Translation Center, I went back to high school for a whole semester, at age almost 30. My role there was to work as both an interpreter and a tutor for two siblings who just arrived in Massachusetts from El Salvador. Even though I had to be in class at 7 am, which meant getting up at hours I didn’t even know existed, being able to work with these children and helping them make the transition to the United States easier was one of the most enriching experiences I have ever had.

The Translation Center does not only make the professional world available to us, it also provides an incalculable service for the Western Mass community.

Carla Suárez Vega

Graduate Student Spanish and Portuguese Studies UMass Amherst

Seminar on TranslationS

This year (2019-2020) the Kahn Liberal Arts Institute of Smith College sponsored one of its year-long seminars on TranslationS. Co-directors, Janie Vanpée and Nalini Bhushan and thirteen Smith College faculty from such diverse disciplines as Computer Science, Data Science, Chemistry, Philosophy, East Asian Literatures, Sociology, French Studies, Italian Studies, Spanish Studies, Portuguese, Comparative World Literatures, Classics, and two members of the Five Colleges from French Studies and Translation and Interpreter Studies, along with five Smith students, met weekly to discuss the work of translation as a practice, as a way to engage with the fundamentals of their own disciplines, as a model for transforming the liberal arts to include linguistic, cultural and political difference at the very center of its mission, and as a tool for social change.

Participants presented projects that varied from translating a molecule into music; translating the prominent Indian philosopher, KC Bhattacharyya’s Subject as Freedom, into an English that acknowledged his avant-guard philosophical concepts; exploring the metaphors and examples of subversive translations that Cervantes evokes in Don Quijote to critique the dominant racist and religious ideologies of 16th century Spain; investigating translation in the creation and recreation of dance performances; questioning thethe differences between adaptation, imitation, and translation and the role of authenticity; discussing the role that ethics plays in selecting texts to translate, especially texts from indigenous cultures, and in situations of political and violent conflict; challenging the model of translation as it is appropriated in commerce and in neoliberal discourse applied to the non-Western nations; acknowledging the subjectivity involved in translation and the place of affect in the practice and dissemination of translations; challenging the political and economic forces that determine the global flow of translations; and finally, discussing how to conceive and talk about translation beyond the traditional binaries that seem so entrenched and sclerotic.

Guest lecturers joined us at intervals throughout the year to share their perspectives on translation in their work. Translator Emma Ramadan inaugurated the seminar with the discussion of her translation of Brice Mathieussent’s Revenge of the Translator, a biting satire that explores the various identities and roles that a translator takes on visà-vis the author of the original text. Professor Jill de Villers shared her research on the problem of translation in cross-linguistic work in assessment of children, specifically the Roma in Eastern Europe.

Arvind Mehrota spoke about the evolution of his approach to translating Indian poetry and then led us in a workshop where we tried our hand at translating a Hindu poem.We visited the Yiddish Book Center where Director Madeleine Cohen and Professor Justin Cammy discussed if and how the translation of Yiddish literature contributed to the preservations and survival or the demise of the language. The first semester concluded with the visit of Vittorio Parisi, Head of Learning and Research, Villa Arson, Nice. His presentation focused on street art as an intersemiotic translation of cultural texts and historical styles (Mexican muralism; Fascist aesthetics) re-contextualized in a contemporary political environment and re-purposed as an ironic comment.

Sergio Medeiros, the Argentine poet and translator of indigenous texts, launched the second semester, followed by the visit of the Brazilian

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indigenous environmetal activist and politician, Sônia Guajajara and Elena Langdon, her interpreter. Guajajara’s activism echoed Medeiros work in preserving and disseminating indigenous knowledge and culture through his literary translations and anticipated the visit of translation studies scholar, Michael Cronin. In midMarch, the pandemic scattered us to the confined spaces of our homes, but we resumed our conversations over Zoom without losing a beat. We were grateful that Michael Cronin was able to join us via Zoom for a public lecture and subsequent discussion in our seminar. His insights about translation’s growing use of technology and its effects and potential for activism in the looming environmental crisis resonated acutely with the social and cultural changes brought about by the pandemic. resonated acutely with the social and cultural changes brought about by the pandemic.

Janie Vanpée

Professor French Studies and World Literatures Smith Colllege

Emily Dickinson in Translation: Artwork and Poetry at Amherst Arts Night Plus

I was generously invited by Professor Regina Galasso to be the featured artist for the fascinating event “Emily Dickinson in Translation” at the Emily Dickinson Museum on November 7, 2019, for the Amherst Arts Night Plus organized by Brooke Steinhauser, Program Director of the Museum. For this edition of Amherst Arts Night Plus, I prepared artworks inspired by the theme of the woman at the window. I am intrigued by the representation of the window as a liminal space that, either physically or symbolically, frames and is inhabited by a wide range of trespassing bodies.

In Golden Age Spanish literature, the term “ventanera” (woman-at-the-window) referred to a woman who, according to men, was thought to enjoy exposing herself in the window as the object of the male gaze. However, from her own point of view, we might argue that the “ventanera” was a woman who dared to look and to be the subject of her own gaze. The “ventanera” is thus a powerful trope for women artists. I couldn’t think of a better example of a “woman-at-thewindow” than Emily Dickinson, a “ventanera” par excellence!

For this event, I brought together three series of interconnected works, all inspired by my “ventanera” trope. The first was six video-graphic essays that put into dialogue Emily Dickinson’s proto-modernist poetry with the imaginary of early women filmmakers and modernist painters: Elvira Giallanella from Italy, Germaine Dulac from France, and Remedios Varo, Maruja Mallo and Ángeles Santos from Spain. Early cinema granted women spectators a window to the world that gave them an unprecedented freedom. The second included the ventaneras series (oil pastels, acrylic paintings, and collages) representing a wide range of female silhouettes: lonely women who tried to break through the window barrier; or women-at-the-window that embraced other female bodies thus challenging the

Professor Barbara Zecchi with her artwork at the Emily Dickinson Museum during Amherst Arts Night Plus.

gender binary in multiple ways. The third was the rulli series (oil pastels and acrylic paintings) that represented the window itself, as I experienced it during my upbringing in Venice. Rulli are traditional Venetian windows made by filigree stained glass rondels that dramatically shape the way one sees the exterior. The glass becomes a filter that injects vivid colors to the landscape.

Similarly, as art historian Xiao Situe has recently argued, Dickinson’s vision of the exterior was mediated by the uneven texture and distortions of the 19th-century New England window glass. What a privilege it was to exhibit my artwork in Emily Dickinson’s home. What an enchantment to see “my” women at the window on display in Dickinson’s hallway, while translations of her poems were read and discussed in the parlor. Thanks to Professor Regina Galasso, video images became written words; written words became Catalan, French, Portuguese, and Spanish sounds; foreign sounds became English poems; English poems became colors. What a powerful way to experience the magic of translation! A special thanks to Director Brooke Steinhauser for allowing my ventaneras to spend a night gazing through those iconic windows, whose panes are so infused with the poet’s gaze.

Top left: Professor Barbara Zecchi's artwork and video essay on display. • Professors Barbara Zecchi and Luiz Amaral, and former Dean of HFA Julie C. Hayes. • Paulina Ochoa-Figueroa reads the poems of Emily Dickinson in Spanish translation. • Emily Dickinson's poems with Catalan translations.

Barbara Zecchi

Professor Spanish and Portuguese Studies Director of the Film Studies Program UMass Amherst

Professor Edwin Gentzler's Letter to the Translation Center

March 12, 2018

Dear friends,

Thank you for this opportunity to talk about the development of the Translation Center during my many years there. The Center, when I started, was not new, but had been around since its founding in the mid-1970s by Fred Will and Warren Anderson, both professors of Comparative Literature. Pioneering in its vision, the Center offered paid translation projects to students and faculty of the Five Colleges. It also coincided with the founding of the Five College Faculty Seminar in Literary Translation and the founding of the journal Metamorphoses, which continues to publish, partially subsidized by the income from the Translation Center. I merely inherited a visionary program with a strong tradition.

But when I arrived at UMass in the early 1990s, the Center had fallen on hard times and was only generating a couple thousand dollars each year, barely coving its expenses. Further, there was limited quality control, so some of the translations were not up to par. Lee Edwards, then Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts, consulted me, and I suggested that one could either close the Center or try to run it at a profit. Fortunately, she chose the latter, and the Center’s growth and success has been a marvel. Lee Edwards envisioned a fullservice center—offering major and minor languages, as well as small and large projects. Her model more than succeeded: not only have profits grown, but the educational benefits have proved enormous. Ironically, the educational benefits haven’t been just for students, but for faculty as well. In 1994, when I started, I thought I knew a lot about translation, having studied in both Europe (Free University of Berlin) and the United States (University of Iowa and Vanderbilt); but what I discovered immediately was the languages needed in the United States were not the languages taught by universities. In the United States, the top languages spoken include Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Chinese, all taught at UMass, but also Vietnamese, Khmer, Tagalog, and Haitian Kreyòl. I had to retool my own approach. In addition to my normal teaching duties, during evenings and weekends we also taught Vietnamese and Khmer wordprocessing, and standardized Haitian Kreyòl.

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I feel very proud at the contributions the Translation Center has made localizing certain languages to better appeal to Massachusetts immigrant communities. For example, the Kreyòl that we offered was not the Haitian spoken in Canada, which is more French inflected, but a more recent version spoken in Haiti under Aristide in the 1990s. Or the Vietnamese that we taught translators to use was a combination of North Vietnamese, where many of the top universities are located, and the South, with its infusion of French and English cultural terms. The same could be said for many languages, including Spanish, Chinese, Korean, and even French. Indeed, the importance of localization in addition to standard translation during these early years significantly contributed to the success of the Center.

Perhaps the most rewarding aspect of the job was helping Massachusetts residents in their business endeavors. I remember one of our first jobs was helping a retired local resident translate product descriptions for a microscope manufactured in the Czech Republic. Our success translated into his success: the Czech microscope was of very high quality, similar to corresponding German models, but significantly less expensive. To make a long story short, with our help translating product information and marketing materials, this gentleman was able to sell to many of the largest hospitals in Massachusetts, netting him a nice nest egg for retirement. Our work in “lesser-known” languages became more widely known, and soon many firms were seeking our expertise. In the state of Massachusetts, over 90 languages are spoken, and the Translation Center did not discriminate against minor languages. During my tenure we provided translations in over 80 languages, taking great pride every time we added a new language.

We also didn’t discriminate against larger customers. Our largest during my period was General Electric, which enjoys an annual income higher than most nations. Here we needed to compete against the largest translation companies in world, with results measured less in academic terms, i.e. accuracy, and more in what has become known as cost-to-quality, which includes a blend of accuracy, speed, technology, and management. We did very well here, too. I remember a project in the early 2000s that dealt with executive strategies for multi-tasking, to be launched January 1 simultaneously in China, Japan, and Korea. There is no Christmas in those countries, and I made myself very unpopular by forcing my team to work over the holidays in order to deliver the translation on time. And what a team it was. We had translators, including both mainland and Taiwanese translators; technicians, as we not only used Chinese, Japanese, and Korean language kits, but also had Chinese operating systems on several computers; layout specialists, who adapted the many illustrations and embedded text in the appropriate boxes; and finally a wonderful project manager keeping track of the files being received, proofed, and then shipped all over the world. Hard work, yes, but exhilarating. Afterwards I learned that one of my mainland Chinese translators from the Isenberg School of Management had proposed to our Taiwanese translator from our own Comparative Literature program.

In sum, we had a wonderful ride, and my memories are all pleasant. I remember the birthday parties, weddings, defenses, graduations, and

holidays, including lunar new year and Eid al-Fitr celebrations. I remember helping so many individuals with their problems and goals, including adopting children from abroad, deciphering mementos from ancestors, delivering babies in hospital rooms, protecting civil rights in courtrooms, offering any number of social services to immigrants, from healthcare to job programs, and, especially, helping small businesses open up new markets, whether it be the Latino districts of New York or Boston, or Canadian French sections in Montreal or Quebec.

While I have enjoyed great success in my teaching and research careers, the memories from the Translation Center, from the applied translation practices, stand out. We helped hundreds of individuals with their translation and interpreting needs, and the region, both socially and economically, is better off for it. Thanks to all the translators, interpreters, proof-readers, project managers, technicians, and, especially, staff. You know who you are. You made my time at the Center the most wonderful years of my life.

Sincerely,

Edwin Gentzler

THE TRANSLATION CENTER HOSTED TWO SCREENINGS OF DREAMING MURAKAMI,

A FILM BY NITEESH ANJAAN. The first in October 2018 with an introduction by Professor Amanda Seaman. The second in March 2019 accompanied by a workshop "Murakami into English: A Translation Workshop" by Professor Anna Zielinska-Elliot (Boston University). Students, faculty, and translators from throughout New England participated in the workshop. Niteesh Anjaan and Mette Holm Skyped in from Denmark for the post-screening discussion.

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