Literary

LIT-1 (F, 10:00-11:30am) - ALL
Literary Division Annual Meeting
Clifford E. Landers, administrator, ATA Literary Division, Naples, Florida

[CANCELED] LIT-2 (F, 1:30-3:00pm) - ALL
Literary Translation: Getting it Published—A Nuts and Bolts Approach
Clifford E. Landers, administrator, ATA Literary Division, Naples, Florida; and Alexis Levitin, professor of English, State University of New York-Plattsburgh, Plattsburgh, New York

This presentation will provide practical suggestions for getting literary translations published in literary magazines and journals, as well as in book form. Topics will include: organizing your files, selecting magazines and publishers, writing cover letters, procuring translation and book publication rights, ethics of multiple submissions, dealing with living authors, seeking institutional grants and other support, and any other issues the audience would like to hear discussed. Free samples of numerous literary magazines will be available.

LIT-3 (S, 8:00-8:45am) - ALL
Assessing the Spanish Translations of Proust
Herbert E. Craig, instructor, Department of Modern Languages, University of Nebraska at Kearney, Kearney, Nebraska

The first translation of the early volumes of A la recherche du temps perdu to Spanish (which was the first in the world) is now being challenged by new translations. The version by Pedro Salinas (1920, 1922) has prevailed over that by Julio Gómez de la Serna (1981), but it now must compete with those by Carlos Manzano (1999) and Mauro Armiño (2000). Using the ideas of Katharina Reiss (Translation Criticism—The Potentials and Limitations), I will assess these translations of the early volumes, as well as the three versions (1945-1946, 1952, and 1967-1969) of the later volumes in order to determine which are the most accurate and complete.

(S, 8:45-9:30am) - ALL
What Did He Do With the Apple? Part II, More on Raymond Queneau, Translator
Madeleine Velguth, professor of French and coordinator, Graduate Certificate Program in Translation, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Novelist, poet, and essayist, 20th-century writer Raymond Queneau was also a translator, introducing the French to 20th-century American poetry and short stories and to novels by Edgar Wallace, Maurice O'Sullivan, Sinclair Lewis, George du Maurier, and Amos Tutuola. Last year's consideration of his translation of Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here showed that this was actually an adaptation, "improved" and tailored to French taste and to the French political situation in the 1930s. We now turn to novels from England and Nigeria. Did Queneau also adapt these works to his French audience? Or will we hear the voices of the individual writers and the echoes of their cultures?

LIT-4 (S, 10:00-10:45am) - ALL
Character Delineation in Opera Translations: Examples from Wagner's Ring
Ronnie Apter, professor of English, Central Michigan University, Shepherd, Michigan; and Mark Herman, literary translator, technical translator, chemical engineer, playwright, poet, lyricist, musician, and actor, Shepherd, Michigan

Good opera librettos do not fully delineate character; they leave room for the music to do so. However, good librettists have always distinguished an individual character's speech in both style and register. Unfortunately, many opera translations into English make all characters sound alike, either because the translators do not have the skill to create varied registers or because they mistakenly believe that music alone is enough to distinguish characters. Two English translations, one by Andrew Porter and the other by Frederick Jameson, of speeches by three characters in Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen serve to illustrate the problem.

(S, 10:45-11:30am) - INTERMEDIATE
Discussion of Ignazio Silone's Fontamara, Bread and Wine, and The Seed Beneath the Snow
Harvey Fergusson, translator, Falls Church, Virginia

In the light of recent discussions of Ignazio Silone's reported collaboration with the fascist police in the 1920s, when he was a member of the Italian communist party, this presentation will analyze his three "Abruzzi novels" (Fontamara, Bread and Wine, and The Seed Beneath the Snow) for the light they shed on this issue. These novels are based on his experiences in the party. Originally appearing in 1930, 1937, and 1942 respectively, they were all revised after World War II. The pre-war and post-war versions will be compared in reference to this theme.

LIT-5 (S, 10:00-10:45am) - ALL
Avoiding the Tiger Traps, Part I: The Language of Sensuality and its Political Sub-text: Translating Jacques Stephen Alexis' L'espace d'un cillement
Carrol F. Coates, professor of French and comparative literature, Binghamton University-SUNY, Binghamton, New York

Jacques Stephen Alexis' third novel, L'espace d'un cillement (1959), takes place in Port-au-Prince during Holy Week in the spring of 1948. El Caucho (a Cuban exile) has just received a message that his friend, labor organizer Jesús Menéndez, was assassinated in January. La Niña Estrellita, a young Cuban prostitute at the Sensation Bar, hovers around El Caucho, seeking his identity and the reasons for his depression. Through a gradual process of sensory recognition, El Caucho and La Niña finally realize they knew each other as children Caribbean politics hovers in the background like the aroma of a rotting tropic fruit. This presentation will consider the lexical difficulties of the rich accumulation of sensory terminology and the connections with the political machinations that constitute the framework of this piece of fiction.

(S, 10:45-11:30am) - ALL
Avoiding the Tiger Traps, Part II: Translating Multilingual Texts: Ni Je Ni Autre
Robin Orr Bodkin, translator, San Francisco, California

With an eye to France in particular and modern multicultural societies in general, Julia Kristeva in Strangers to Ourselves (1991) wonders whether the "foreigner," who was the "enemy" in primitive times, might just disappear from our modern societies. In literary translation this query often takes shape as a discussion pitting "domestication" against "foreignization." If to domesticate is to diminish or expurgate the strangeness of the source text, its alterity, what happens when the message wanders through multiple languages en route to an original form, even before it is considered for translation? What happens when languages of lesser diffusion (Guarani, Khmer, Kreyòl) stand in the text alongside those more pervasive, more historically influential means of linguistic exchange (English, French, Spanish, Vietnamese)? This presentation will try to explore such questions, playing off the Ni Je Ni Autre in the title as a point of departure.

LIT-6 (S, 1:30-3:00pm) - ALL
Beacons Readings
Alexis Levitin, professor of English, State University of New York-Plattsburgh, Plattsburgh, New York

[CANCELED] LIT-7 (S, 3:30-4:15pm) - ALL
Family Secrets: A Study in Comparative Literature
Camilla Bozzoli Rudolph, instructor, Georgetown University, and staff translator, National Geographic Society, Washington, DC

We all have family secrets and I am sure that you could find one or two among the branches and foliage of your own family tree. I am not referring to dark secrets, such as those that loom in Faulkner's novels or Tennessee Williams' plays. I merely refer to milder secrets that are part of a family's collective memory. Anyone can recall such secrets, but only the writer is capable of speaking the unspeakable. With this in mind, I searched three novels whose subjects are the history of families (Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann, Souvenirs Pieux by Marguerite Yourcenar, and Il Gattopardo by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa). As a setting, I chose the most familiar of all surroundings: a conversation at the dinner or breakfast table, taking place in a typical 19th-century atmosphere. Excerpts from these novels will be read in the original with a side translation. Participation from the audience is welcome.

(S, 4:15-5:00pm) - ALL
Literary Translation: Freedom and Responsibility
Martin A. David, literary translator, Santa Clara, California

Literary translation can give the translator levels of freedom not experienced in other forms of translation. It is an art form that requires much more than knowledge of the source and target languages. The literary translator must possess the soul, the imagination, and the creativity of a writer. The precious cargo created by the original author must be reshaped to fit a new culture while preserving the spirit of the original. The speaker will discuss one approach to this challenge.