Athens, Ga. – Several internationally known translators will visit the University of Georgia campus on Oct. 2-3 for a Symposium on Literary Translation. The two-day event, held at the UGA Chapel and Fanning Institute, is free and open to the public.
Invited speakers include recipients of the PEN Translation Award, the Lannan Translation Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship and a MacArthur Fellowship-working from nearly a dozen languages. Among them are Peter Cole, Forrest Gander, Michael Henry Heim, David Hinton, Pierre Joris, Susanna Nied, Richard Sieburth and Cole Swensen.
UGA faculty members participating include Coleman Barks, Doris Kadish and Jonathan Krell. Among authors translated by symposium participants are Milan Kundera, Anton Chekhov, Li Po, Paul Celan, Friedrich Hölderlin, Inger Christensen, Taha Muhammad Ali, Jaime Saenz, Pascalle Monnier and Walter Benjamin.
The schedule of events includes an opening session on Thursday, Oct. 2 from 2:30 to 4 p.m. in the UGA Chapel followed by a public reading from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. On Friday, Oct. 3, the symposium will be held at the Fanning Institute and will feature panels on “Translating Poetry, Translating Prose” from 9:30 to 10:45 a.m., “Working with an Author, Translating the Past” from 11:15 to 12:30 p.m. and translation workshops on fundamentals of translating a given text from 2 to 4 p.m.
Cole Swensen is the author of 12 volumes of poetry and translator of poetry and prose from French, including the work of Jean Frémon, Pierre Alferi and Pascalle Monnier.
David Hinton is the translator of 10 volumes of classical Chinese poets, including Li Po, Wang Wei and Tu Fu; of ancient Chinese philosophy, including the Tao Te Ching and Analects; and of the contemporary Chinese poet Bei Dao.
Poet Forrest Gander’s books of poetry translated from Spanish include No Shelter: Selected Poems of Pura Lopez-Colome and Firefly Under the Tongue: Selected Poems of Coral Bracho. He is the author of 10 books of his own poetry.
Michael Henry Heim translates from Russian, Czech, Serbian, German, French, Hungarian and Croatian. He is well known for his translations of the Czech novelist Milan Kundera.
Peter Cole is a poet and translator from Hebrew and Arabic. He has translated Aharon Shabtai, Taha Muhammad Ali and Yoel Hoffmann.
Pierre Joris is the author of more than 40 books of poetry, essays and translations. He translates from French and German into English, and from English into French, and is particularly well known for his translations of Paul Celan.
Richard Sieburth translates from French and German. He has translated Friedrich Hölderlin, Walter Benjamin, Pierre Leiris, Gérard de Nerval, Maurice Scève, Gershom Scholem and Georg Büchner.
Susanna Nied is the translator of several volumes of Danish poet Inger Christensen’s work into English.
Coleman Barks is the author of numerous Rumi translations and has been a student of Sufism since 1977.
Jonathan F. Krell has translated two books by French writer Michel Tournier.
Doris Y. Kadish’s research interests include 19th- and 20th-century Francophone literature, slavery studies, literary and feminist theory and gender and race studies.
This symposium is sponsored by the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts and the UGA Department of English Lanier Speakers Series.
