Translation Today Spring 2024

 Alexander Pfau  Amelia Glaser Readings Response Mr. Vincent 1/28/2024     Amelia Glaser was a joy to watch, though her presentation was not what I was expecting. Rather than take a deep dive on how she translated certain poems or stories from Ukrainian, she gave more of a background and wholistic view of her work in the past year. One of her major themes was how empathy can connect a community, as demonstrated multiple times in the short stories she presented. Although the theme was wartime poems - which is not a happy topic - her presentation created a sense of nationality between the Ukrainian people, and the unbroken spirit they possess within this time of war. She conducted much of her research through careful combing of online messaging services like Facebook, and, as a computer scientist, her analysis of data not only intrigued me, but contributed to the general theme above. As the war progressed, the percent of Ukrainian language use in posts from Eastern Eur...

Amelia Glaser: War Changes Language Maria Sandoval The concept of war changing language, a theme that emerged from the initial readings and was further illuminated in Glaser’s talk, captured my interest. This was particularly resonant when paired with Sylvynsky's reading of 'War Vocabulary'. Glaser's poetry archive offers insightful revelations into the linguistic shifts from 2014 to 2022, a period that saw more than changes in lexicon but witnessed an evolution in identity, culture, and political orientation. Particularly notable was the change from Russian to Ukrainian language usage, which, if memory serves, altered significantly from 70% to 40% (?). This linguistic transition reflected an emerging nationalistic sentiment and a move toward cultural independence, with the increasing prevalence of Ukrainian symbolizing both autonomy and resistance. Moreover, the project highlighted a significant transformation in the languages used for translating poetry, indicative o...

Lia Galván  I found the texts that we read in preparation for this week's lecture absolutely moving. Vocabulary of War and the poem “Our Newsfeed is a Gallery of Loss” especially stuck with me since they show how war affects absolutely every aspect of life including our relationship with language. In Vocabulary of War, the juxtaposition of simple and mundane words such as "apple", "bathtub", and "star" with the heartbreaking stories that follow creates a powerful emotional effect that makes evident how language reflects and constructs our reality. The texts also made me question what is the role of beauty, poetry, literature, and, of course, translation in contexts such as this one since as Iya Kiva states: “no metaphors work against an armed soldier.” Glaser’s lecture and project on digital humanities were extremely valuable for me to shed light on how to approach the role of literature and translation in such violent contexts. I thought it was very...

Ruoyi.zhang T his week, I had the pleasure of listening to Amelia Glaser's translation of war poetry. Despite her American background, she has executed her task admirably, translating all the poems about war that she believes are worth sharing. Not everyone can relate to poetry upon reading it, so understanding the context of the subject and the thoughts behind it is crucial because poets willingly share their work, eliminating any sense of intrusion. Previously, I've always acknowledged the authenticity, rationality, and effectiveness of literature published online, particularly on US-led social platforms like Facebook. On platforms like these, there's no IP address to verify the source, no introductions by acquaintances, and no knowledge of the position or identity of the other party. Thus, it becomes easy for individuals to manipulate the text to fit their desired narrative or direct the words and thoughts of others. Even after the introduction of a "certification a...

     Amelia Glaser's lecture last Friday served as an excellent supplement to the assigned readings for the week. I was particularly interested in her description of her poetry collection project centered around Facebook. Collecting poems written between 2013 and 2022 allowed Glaser to demonstrate how Ukrainian poetry has changed thematically due to the outbreak of war. She took note of linguistic unification as an important development in the types of poetry being shared by Ukrainian poets; prior to the outbreak of war, there was often a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian comments on poems published on Facebook, but the bulk of these comments shifted to almost exclusively Ukrainian once the war began. This seemed like a natural development to me in response to war, as linguistic unification serves to create a sense of Ukrainian camaraderie. Additionally, Glaser noted that many Ukrainian poems began addressing the outside world in response to the war. Poetry became an outle...

Amelia Glaser: Translating Contemporary World Poetry Dina Famin In the interest of looking at how translators approach their work, below is a summary of what Glaser said about translation, untranslatability (a beloved cliché), and metaphors of the craft. On the irony of trends of which works get translated: “the least translated things are the things that teach us the most” On untranslatability and the process of translation: “the beauty of translation is that we have a limit” What translation is: “an approximation of understanding” The role of translators in contemporary literature: “by posing [questions about translation in her poetry, Iya Kiva] is allowing translators to be part of this phenomenon of war poetry” The relationship between poetry and metaphoric language: “to allow gaps [in understanding and experience] to remain, but to try to understand [anyway]” Glaser’s introductions to Iya Kiva, Halyna Kruk, and the poets she translated on LitHub aimed to contextualize...

 Armaan Arif Amelia Glaser's Translation Professor Vincent 1/29/2023        Amelia Glaser's empathetic values and understanding of the war in Ukraine definitely helped her captivate the audience during her seminar. Her constant call-backs to the war when describing the poems showed me that this wasn't just some word-to-word translation from Ukrainian to English and rather it was a genuine affinity to the poet and their poetry, with a complete understanding of the situation the poet was in. I think her translation still enabled me to engage in, understand, and empathize with poems in a language I had zero knowledge about. With the war in Ukraine still looming, I urge people to read her translation of these poems, especially to attempt to get a deeper understanding of what some people may be feeling in some of the harshest conditions in modern history. 

Dear Students, I look forward to working with you all this semester in Translation Today!  We have a very full roster of speakers in the Friday series. You can see the full lineup here: https://www.bu.edu/ translation/translation- seminar/ As I mentioned in a previous email, our first class will be on Monday, January 22. We will not be meeting Friday of this week since there is no lecture. Next week, on Friday Jan. 26th,  Amelia Glaser  will speak about her recent work translating Ukrainian poetry. Glaser is a scholar-translator, working on politics and aesthetics, and on transnational and diasporic writing. She also translates and writes about Russian and Yiddish. For our first class on Monday, I'll take you through how the class works and then we will have a discussion about Glaser's work to prepare for her talk on Friday.  Please read the attached pieces before coming to our first class on Monday:  1. "A War Vocabulary": by Ostap Slyvinsky: a series of short ...