This course will introduce students to the
craft of literary translation and the many ways it can help them become better
writers. Students will work individually and together to choose authors not yet
known in English whose work strikes the students as exciting and innovative.
We’ll discuss how the process of choosing an author and bringing that author’s
work into English is a way to explore what makes a piece of writing
distinctive. We'll look at aspects such as tone, humor and innovative plotting
techniques and explore how students might experiment in similar ways with these
aspects in their own work. Over the course of the semester, we’ll workshop
translations together with original writing and also look at the work of
various leading writer – translators and discuss the connections between the
authors these writers have translated and the innovations in their own poetry
and prose.