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Literary Translation Clinics

What Are the Strategies of 'Deviant' or Queer Translation?

June 17, 2021 via Zoom

A monthly series of knowledge-sharing open sessions for literary translators and appreciators of translated works from all backgrounds and experience levels.

Poet and translator Rajiv Mohabir posed questions that think on translation as a trialogue. What happens when the translation resists stability and when the speech community uses at least three different languages that have their own approaches to meaning making, vocabularies of humor, and social power? Can a queer method of translation practice change or inflect the violences of moving a language from periphery to core? How can a practice of translation account for slippage of meaning, resistance to fixity, and social/power distance? Translator of Polish literature, Sean Gasper Bye, joined Mohabir in conversation.