Words Without Borders: Literature and Translation Across Cultures

With Support from the UNC School of Education

April 4-5, 2008

Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Translation is important both to politics and expressive culture. Taking the form of scholarly monographs as well as fresh renditions of classics such as War and Peace and The Brothers Karamazov, translation aspires to the highest standards of literary artistry and historical accuracy. It also engages many challenging aspects of language as it embraces and unites a variety of cultural vocabularies. In doing so, the work of translation is indispensable in our search for reliable expressions and characterizations of people, places, and experiences that are unfamiliar.

This seminar will explore a number of issues. How should we best understand the aims of translation? Is it fair to expect that artistic and historical works, faithfully rendered in translation, can serve unifying, even universal, cultural and political aims? How do we know that a translated work is accurate and reliable? What are the obstacles, both artistic and practical, that translators must confront as they help readers to traverse changing borders among and between cultures? The seminar will also take up translation as a means of moving from one artistic medium to another (language to film, for example), questions about the ever-present influence of economics (the intersection of readership and publishers’ expectations of financial return on their investments, for example), and questions about the often-vexing but porous boundaries between art and politics. Finally, as a “medium of discovery,” the seminar will explore the ways translation provides insights not only into other cultures and nationalities but, as well, into ourselves.

Topics and Speakers

Literature, Politics, and Translation
Alane Mason, Senior Editor, W. W. Norton and Co., and Founding Editor, Words Without Borders

Found in Translation: The Prose of Czeslaw Milosz and Lesser-Known Polish Writers
Madeline Levine, Kenan Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures

Lessons in Looking: Krzysztof Kieslowski’s A Short Film About Love
C. D. C. Reeve, Delta Kappa Epsilon Distinguished Professor of Philosophy

Bridging Culture Gaps: Translating Germany to Americans and America to Germans
Konrad Jarausch, Lurcy Professor of History and European Civilization

Words (and Images) Without Borders
Ms. Mason and Professors Levine, Reeve, and Jarausch

Time and Cost

3:30 p.m., Friday, April 4, through 12:00 p.m., Saturday, April 5, 2008. The tuition is $120 ($105 by January 24). The optional dinner on Friday evening is $20. Tuition for teachers is $60 ($52.50 by January 24). 10 contact hours for 1 unit of renewal credit.

For information about lodging click here.

Co-Sponsored by the General Alumni Association.
For information about GAA discounts and other scholarships available to Humanities Program participants, click here.

Register for this seminar.