Transtranslation: a workshop

Instructor: Mark Goldstein

Duration: 8 Weeks, 17 February – 7 April (Thursdays) 6:30 – 9:00

Capacity: 10 students

These are mistranslations of Catullus. Working on basically one year of high school Latin and what the poems reminded me of in English, with the proviso that the poems had to make sense. In that sense they turned into conversations with the dead. I ended up writing pieces that weren’t really me and seemed much more like Catullus. So it became a kind of very strange experience of transcription. – bpNichol

Whether one chooses to call it mistranslation, transliteration, or trans(e)lation poets such as bpNichol, Louis Zukofsky, and Erin Mouré have employed excitingly unorthodox approaches to translation to gain access to poetic works written in a foreign tongue. Readers are liberated by such efforts, freed to embark upon transtranslations of their own: old works are reinvigorated, made anew for a readership such as ourselves. But how does one begin? How to use our energy as readers/ writers for propulsion into the heart of a text?

Homolinguistic translation (from one language into the same language – e.g. English into English) is one possible method we’ll explore, along with cut up, combing, homophonic translation et cetera.

This workshop will focus on a specific work (selected by the students themselves) written in a foreign language – this workshop will facilitate authorship as we work through transtranslating a series of poems into English.

The thrust of the course will be to get the class reading/ writing through radical forms of translation – ones that challenge our very notions of what poetry can be.

By the course’s end, the writers will have created a book (a chapbook, or the foundation for a longer work).

Reading Package: [Excerpts from the following works will be provided] The Task of the Translator · Walter Benjamin; Via · Caroline Bergvall; Friendship · Maurice Blanchot; After Rilke · Mark Goldstein; Tracelanguage · Mark Goldstein; Rational Geomancy · Steve McCaffery & bpNichol; A Bernadette Mayer Reader · Bernadette Mayer; OULIPO Compendium · Edited by Harry Mathews & Alastair Brotchie; Sheep’s Vigil by a Fervent Person · Eirin Moure; Translating Translating Apollinaire · bpNichol; La Disparition (A Void) · Georges Perec; Jack Spicer · After Lorca; The Translator’s Invisibility · Lawrence Venuti; Catullus · Louis Zukofsky;

Course Work: Prior to the first class, participants will have selected a work to be transtranslated (preferably, but not necessarily, one in a language they can read but may not understand). The first class will involve a discussion of said selected works and their potentiality for transtranslation. The remainder of the workshops will be divided into i) looking at individual works (transtranslations) through roundtable discussions and; ii) in-depth study of selected materials from the reading package as possibilities for literature (tools to be used).

NOTE: participants need NOT be multilingual to participate in this course.

FEE: $300.00