| | In March, the Center for Translation & Global Literacy hosted Mark Hauber from the Center for the Art of Translation (CAT) for a weeklong residency in which he led a training workshop, visited classes, and engaged in conversations with students, faculty, and community members. Hauber is the Program Director for Poetry Inside Out, a CAT education initiative.
As part of Hauber's visit, he led several UIowa students, staff, and local Iowa City educators through an introductory Poetry Inside Out workshop; shared his experience in the nonprofit sector and how his work intersects with language and translation studies; and brainstormed with CTGL staff around a future collaboration between the CTGL and Poetry Inside Out.
Read the full recap, and be sure to check out the Poetry Inside Out spotlight in our Classroom Tools gallery with new resources available! | | | On Wednesday, April 2, Claire Frances and the Center for Language and Culture Learning at the University of Iowa hosted World Language Day, a vibrant all-day event that brought local-area high schoolers to the Iowa campus for a day of micro language lessons, fun activities, and thought-provoking conversations around language, translation, and international studies.
Among those leading micro-teaching sessions were current Literary Translation MFA students Miharu Yano and Andrea Avey. They led a 20-minute lesson that invited students to practice the skills and considerations involved in translation through crafting a single message for three different audiences. Students learned about the role and importance of context, audience, and word choice through this interactive activity.
See all the excitement of World Language Day at the CLCL website. | | | CTGL Travel Grants Awarded | | | | The CTGL recently announced the recipients of its Travel Grants for the 2025 cycle! We're thrilled to support the following students in their research and artistic pursuits in the coming year:
- Emma Murray (MFA in Literary Translation) - Emma will travel to Mexico to research and translate the poetry of Macuilxóchitl, an Aztec princess whose work she uncovered while investigating untranslated pre-sixteenth-century.
- Andrea Avey (MFA in Literary Translation) - Andrea will travel to Argentina for historical research that will foreground her translation of a novel by contemporary Argentine author Luciana Sousa.
- Judith Velasquez Santopietro (MFA in Spanish Creative Writing) - Judith will travel to Mexico to collaborate closely with Whitney DeVos as she translates ten of her poems and leads numerous translation and discussion sessions.
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- Ahmed Amoudi (BA in Translation; Linguistics Minor) - Ahmed will travel to Jordan to deepen his existing community outreach passions by undertaking professional development or translation work with Sudanese refugees in Jordan.
- Thomas Brown (BA in Translation, Asian Languages & Literatures) - Thomas will travel to Japan to research Christian caves and study at a museum dedicated to author Shusaku Endo to aid in a translation of his novel Silence.
- Marion Cline (BA in English, Creative Writing; Translation Minor) - Marion will travel to Tahiti where she will conduct generative poetry workshops by collectively exploring the existing dynamism of Tahitian oral history, songs, and national poets to produce a literary magazine.
| | | | Our In the Classroom section continues to highlight how instructors are incorporating translation effectively in the higher education classroom. In this edition, we feature insights from Janet Hendrickson, Clinical Assistant Professor at New York University, translator, scholar, and alumna of the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa.
For several semesters, I’ve put experimental translation at the heart of my first-year writing classes. This might seem counterintuitive—these classes, as a rule, prepare students for the academic writing they’ll do throughout their college careers. But I’ve found that writing in and about translation of any type helps students meet the stated academic goals of these courses, from raising big-picture questions about cross-cultural communication to editing at the sentence level. Experimental translation, moreover, helps students break through feelings of inadequacy about language and writing that many face. It also reintroduces joy to learning through the element of play. | The work in my class culminates in a long-form translation—experimental or conventional—accompanied by a research-based translator’s note. Students build up to this with short translation exercises inspired by readings from writer-translators like Eliot Weinberger, Anne Carson, Mónica de la Torre, and Gloria Anzaldúa. I invite students to consider translation broadly: projects have included musical compositions and visual art based on literature, for example. Students also connect creative work to critical questions, like one student who tried to decipher a language she didn’t know as a case study that launched her research into language acquisition.
Experimentation makes translation accessible to all students, since knowledge of another language is not required to enroll in this course. Experimentation also allows students to be open and curious about gaps in language knowledge, whether with regard to family languages or those they are learning at school.
While students may feel pressured elsewhere to perform an elusive fluency, I encourage them to view gaps as opportunities to ask questions and reflect—artistically, intellectually, even personally— on the ways they find or make home in language communities.
Students also build class community by sharing the risks they take in their writing (including translation) with each other. The open-ended nature of experimental translation allows students to let go of perfection as a static writing target, and I help them frame their work as a process of growth that will continue beyond our semester together. | | | | Get Help Launching Translation on Your Campus In summer 2024, the CTGL hosted Summer Institute, a multi-day summit for higher-education instructors to support their efforts to initiate translation-related programs of study at their respective institutions. While we don't have another Summit immediately on the horizon, we want to continue to empower and enable interested educators in bringing translation to their campuses! If you or your department are looking for guidance or tools to begin a translation certificate, program, or concentration at your university, contact CTGL Director, Aron Aji, to discuss possibilities around campus visits, pedagogical resources, and more. | | | |
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