Unending Translation: Creative Critical Experiments in Translation and Life Writing
Deadline for abstract proposals: April 15th, 2022
Publisher: UCL Press (tbc)
The aim of this collected edition is to explore different approaches to translation criticism through the medium of life writing. Traditionally assigned to the paratextual, the translator’s point of view rarely occupies the narrative centre of creative writing and essays. In recent years, however, contemporary translators have taken on a more prominent role in translation criticism, exploring their practice through the medium of memoirs and experimental essays allowing for fragmentation, doubt and openness to be expressed in subjective modes of writing. The translational turn to life writing and the essay can be interpreted as a challenge to the separation between practice and theory which traditionally exists in translation studies. On the one hand, the meeting between translation and life writing can be seen as an attempt to rethink autobiographical forms, reinventing the terms within which we create, shape and think the category of the subject through literature. On the other, creative-critical experiments in essay writing and translation have allowed for a more embodied and situated critical engagement with translation, an opportunity to explore translation as a practice-led thinking of texts and writing in their own right. The meeting between translation and life writing thus shifts our literary focus from thinking about the essence of individual works to thinking about translation as a space of subjective and material entanglement, a practice capable of re-imagining relations not only between cultures but between the traditionally opposed practices of reading and writing, thinking and doing.
In this collected monograph, we ask and call for translators, writers, teachers and critics to approach translation practice from such an embodied, situated position. What happens when translation meets life writing? But also, what happens when translation shapes the essay as a form, and when the essay in its turn continues translation? What happens, in other words, when translation practice becomes the subject rather than the object of literary introspection? How can life writing accounts of translation make us rethink our understanding of the relationship between translation and politics, translation and life?
We welcome experimental essays and life writing experiments, for example:
- Stories of a translator’s personal experience that narrate the interpretive experience as a writerly one.
- Experimental approaches to translation that rewrite a text through the translator’s engagement with it, or perhaps weave together different types of text, playing with form.
- Reflections on the subject position and voice of the translator, both as a lived experience but also as a politically situated one that is enjoined to tackle on the one hand the appropriative gesture of translation and on the other, the marginalised, secondary position that translation takes in traditional binaries of original/translation.
- Writings that play on the form of the translator’s commentary, responding to the traditional forms of translator prefaces, footnotes etc.
- Essays that multiply translational variants through a collection of hybrid approaches.
- Translations where the figure of the author is translated into the figure of the translator
- Stories of translation that give unique openings onto texts, for example through the interweaving of translation and commentary in the translation of genetic material (manuscripts, authorial marginalia, intertexts etc.)
- Writings that explore translation as fiction, in the sense given by Kate Briggs as an invitation to suspend one’s disbelief, to enter the foreign as though it is familiar, but also that tell a story of the time and place of the translating figure.
- Writings that visibilise the translator's voice but their process and technique, challenging the injunction to produce a unitary, sole text as a finished product to be sellable.
- Translator writings that reflect upon political and identity dynamics such as feminist translation or decolonial practices. Reflections on the specificity of translating minority, regional, non-standardized or non-national languages are also welcome here.
- Heterolingual experiences that mix languages, texts, translations and originals and deterritorialize the attachment of languages to nation states.
Bibliography
C. Bergvall (2016) Drift. Brooklyn, Nightboat.
K. Briggs (2018) This Little Art . London, Fitzcarraldo Editions.
B. Brown (2011) The Poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus . San Francisco, CA, Krupskaya.
– (2012) Flowering Mall . Berkeley, Roof.
J. Butler. (2019) ‘Gender in Translation: Beyond Monolingualism’, Philosophia . Albany, N.Y. Vol.9 (1), pp.1-25.
A. Carson (2009) Nox . NYC, New Directions.
S. Collins (2016) Currently & Emotion .Londres, Test Centre.
M. Gansel (2017) Translation as Transhumance , trans. by Ros Schwartz. London, Les Fugitives
D. Grass (2021) ‘Translating the Archives: An Autotheoretical Experiment’, in Thinking Through Relation: Encounters in Creative Critical Writing . ed. by Florian Mussgnug, Mathelinda Nabugodi and Thea Petrou. London, Peter Lang.
T. Hermans (1996) ‘The Translator’s Voice in Translated Narrative’, in Target. International Journal of Translation Studies . Vol.8 (1), pp. 23-48.
C. Gepner (2019) Traduire ou perdre pied . Paris, Contre-allée.
N. Grunwald (2021) Sur les bouts de la langue: traduire en féministe/s . Paris: Contre-allée.
S. Kadiu (2019) Reflexive Translation Studies: Translation as Critical Reflection . London, UCL Press.
J. Lahiri (2016) In Other Words . New York, Knopf.
S. De Lotbinière-Harwood (1991) Re-belle et infidèle, la traduction comme réecriture au féminin; the Body Bilingual, translation as rewriting in the feminine . Québec, Les Editions du remue-ménage/Women’s Press.
E. Mouré (2004) Sheep’s Vigil by a Fervent Person: A transelation of Alberto Caeiro/Fernando Pessoa’s Oguardador de rebanhos . Toronto,House of Anansi Press.
– (2014) Secession with Incession . Montréal, Book Thug.
J. Osman & J. Spahr (eds.) (2003) Chain 10: Translucinación. Philadelphia, PA, Temple University Press.
N. Ramayya (2019) States of the Body Produced by Love , Ignota Books.
L. Robert-Foley (2013) m . Luxembourg, Corrupt Press.
C. Rossi (2018) ‘Translation as a Creative Force', The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Culture , ed. by Sue Ann Harding. London, Routledge.
M. de la Torre (2020) Repetition Nineteen . New York, Nightboat Books.
C. Wright (2013) Yoko Tawada’s Portrait of a Tongue . Ottawa, University of Ottowa Press.
Response to proposals: May 15th, 2022
Completed articles due: October 15th
Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts
This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.
Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.
In your research, you might find that certain key concepts important to your work do not have a direct English equivalent. In this case, keep the term in the foreign language and italicize it:
After introducing the key term, you can explain to your audience the meaning of the term and how it might compare and contrast with similar terms they know. Using the word without explanation (e.g. anguish instead of toska ) can be seen as misrepresenting the key term, because it does not invoke the other layers of meaning.
There are a number of commonly used foreign words, abbreviations and phrases that are part of American English: ad hoc, cliché, concerto, genre, sic, versus. Such popular words can be found in a dictionary and are considered a part of the English language. There is no need to translate them, unless they are used by the author in an innovative and unusual ways. In such case, you can provide more context for them.
If you are quoting a whole sentence, you do not have to italicize the non-English words.
Keeping the whole sentence untranslated is a strategy that you could use when you are expecting your readers to know the language to some degree, or if you decide that the readers would benefit from reading and appreciating the original text. This is also the case, when the sentence might not be recognizable as an English translation, but is very well known in the original version.
Some texts that you are using might already contain specific formatting in a non-English language. In the example below, part of the quotation was written in italics. Preserve that original formatting in your quotation.
In this quotation, Anzaldúa provides a direct translation of the saying she heard as a child. Note that the saying she heard in Spanish is kept in original (just as she heard it and as she wrote it – in italics ). She also provided a translation of the saying to make it understandable for the readers who might not understand it otherwise.
Although they remain controversial, machine translation (MT) tools such as Google Translate have become much more accurate and popular in recent years. The switch from “phrase-based” translation systems to “neural” algorithms was a milestone in quality improvements for Google Translate (Le & Schuster, 2016; Caswell & Liang, 2020). A major difference between phrase-based and neural systems is explained by Google research scientists:
Whereas Phrase-Based Machine Translation (PBMT) breaks an input sentence into words and phrases to be translated largely independently, Neural Machine Translation (NMT) considers the entire input sentence as a unit for translation (Le & Schuster, 2016).
Compared to the previous phrase-based systems, Google asserts that neural machine systems produce translations that are immensely improved, reducing translation errors by more than 55%–85% on some major language pairs (Le & Schuster, 2016). Similarly, a recent independent reevaluation study looking at 51 of the 103 languages available reported an increase in accuracy of 34% over an original evaluation study carried out eight years earlier (Aiken, 2019). Even in some languages (such as Japanese and Korean) which are known to be notoriously difficult to translate, there have been discernible improvements.
The controversy is that MT tools might allow students to complete assigned writing tasks without thinking about the language and producing it themselves (and therefore unlikely to learn much or improve their writing skills in the process). However, some university teachers have begun to see the benefits of MT and are seeking ways to encourage students to make positive use of it while avoiding its pitfalls (Lee, 2020; Oda, 2020). The purpose of the present article is twofold: First, to summarize the benefits and drawbacks of MT, and second, to introduce some guiding principles and an awareness-raising activity that will help university students make positive use of MT when researching and writing essays.
Benefits and Drawbacks of MT
Research suggests that MT can help improve EFL students’ writing by raising awareness of their lexical and grammatical errors and assisting students in developing positive writing strategies (Lee, 2020). It can be satisfying for EFL students to use Google Translate in their English writing, especially in finding vocabulary items and in helping complete assigned writing tasks (Tsai, 2019). Oda (2020) found that when it comes to writing speeches in English, MT offers other advantages such as subject-verb agreement, verb and object combination, and translating numbers, making MT more useful than dictionaries for novice and intermediate students.
Students learning English in Japanese universities are often asked to submit essays and speeches. These types of assignments require background research and expressing one’s ideas in the form of sentences or paragraphs. MT is arguably an invaluable tool when students research an essay or speech topic, especially when reading source materials in their first language. Students can use it to translate sentences or paragraphs, or entire web pages in real-time. If they use the Google Translate Chrome Extension tool, they can hover their mouse over a chunk of selected text, click a pop-up button, and the translation results will appear in real-time.
One main drawback of MT is that the translation results are often far from perfect, depending on various factors (e.g., similarity of language pairs and complexity of sentences inputted). One crucial problem is that students may be tempted to copy large chunks of machine-translated text and simply paste it into their essay with barely any effort to paraphrase it. Students might think that, since the translation came from Google Translate, they can just use it as is (without paraphrasing it) while citing the source. They also might think that, since the original text was written in a different language, the teacher might not take the time to check the original source. My experience checking students’ references (and reading the original texts in their first language) revealed this problem existed in several of my intermediate-level students’ essays, so it seems possible that this use of Google Translate is a writing strategy employed by some students. This problem seems to stem from the difficulty of paraphrasing in general and in a second language in particular.
Tips and Rules for Making Positive Use of MT
Oda (2020) offered some tips and rules to help university students in Japan use MT to write speech drafts in English effectively. In short, her Golden Rules for students using MT when writing speeches are: Adopt a translation result only if:
Students who follow these rules while using MT to aid in their speech-writing activities will be more likely to choose English suitable for their proficiency level and create a speech draft that they can deliver successfully. Although these rules are beneficial for writing speeches, they leave much to be desired when it comes to using MT for other purposes such as researching and writing essays in English.
Thus, when introducing MT as a possible tool for researching and writing essays, it is essential to establish a few ground rules to help students steer clear of pitfalls. I suggest that teachers encourage students to follow what are herein called the Guiding Principles for using MT in researching and writing essays.
The Guiding Principles for Using MT in Researching and Writing Essays
If you use MT to translate someone else’s writing, you will need to paraphrase and cite the translated output. In other words, if you did not write the sentences that you inputted into Google Translate, then you will need to paraphrase the translation results before you can use them (with a citation) in your essay. If you do not paraphrase the translation results, you could be at risk of committing plagiarism.
If you use machine translation to translate your own writing, it might not be necessary to paraphrase the translation results, depending on the accuracy of the translation results. In other words, if you wrote the sentences that you inputted into Google Translate, then you might not have to do any paraphrasing of the translation results because the input was your original writing. The output will be a translation of your original sentences. However, the translation results will likely need editing to make it read accurately and smoothly, especially if you wrote and translated long sentences. Do use a good dictionary to check the accuracy of individual words or expressions from the translated output.
You bear responsibility for what you write. You are responsible for choosing carefully what you write in your essay. This means that, if you are careless about the use of MT in your writing, you will bear the consequences (e.g., you may get a low or zero score on your essay or course, depending on how serious the misuse is and how strict your teacher is).
Students will benefit from learning how to paraphrase the translation results. Paraphrasing means rewriting someone else’s ideas or sentences using your own words without changing the original text’s meaning. In academic writing, paraphrasing is an alternative to quoting. It is usually considered better than quoting because when students can rewrite the ideas in their own words, it shows that they understand the concepts and makes their writing more original. According to Gahan (2018), five easy steps to paraphrasing are:
These steps can be tricky for EFL learners, so teachers need to give them support and tips on paraphrasing effectively. Here are four clever ways that can help students to paraphrase effectively (adapted from Gahan, 2018):
In order to raise awareness of the above steps, I suggest trying an activity that will (hopefully) appeal to students as digital natives: Ask students to watch a video on YouTube, read an online article and do a quiz (via Google Forms) that is designed to give them immediate feedback in a self-study manner. Here is a link to a copy of such a quiz I created containing an embedded YouTube video and a link to an online article titled “How to paraphrase sources” (Gahan, 2018) that students can read before answering some questions to self-check their understanding: https://forms.gle/fj9VnJr7oskjozxU6
This awareness-raising approach and the affixed materials can be implemented face-to-face or via remote learning.
It is essential that students are also taught how to check their paraphrasing using good dictionaries so that MT does not appear to be a complete replacement for dictionaries. No matter how useful MT becomes, dictionaries still have an essential role in checking for accuracy.
This article has summarized some advantages and drawbacks of using MT to research and write essays. It has suggested some guiding principles that students can follow to avoid the pitfalls of MT. It has also shared an awareness-raising activity with digital materials that can be used face-to-face and via distance learning.
As the use of MT becomes more widespread and inevitable, teachers have an essential role in guiding students and training them in the responsible use of MT, online dictionaries and other resources for second language writing.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank my colleagues George Higginbotham and Robert Dormer for their invaluable comments on an earlier draft of this article. I also wish to express my thanks to the copy editor Alexandra Terashima for her constructive suggestions.
Aiken, M. (2019). An updated evaluation of Google Translate accuracy. Studies in Linguistics and Literature, 3 (3), 253–260. https://doi.org/10.22158/sll.v3n3p253
Caswell, I., & Liang, B. (2020). Recent advances in Google Translate . Google AI blog. https://ai.googleblog.com/2020/06/recent-advances-in-google-translate.html
Gahan, C. (2018). How to paraphrase sources . Scribbr. https://www.scribbr.com/citing-sources/how-to-paraphrase/
Le, Q. V., & Schuster, M. (2016). A neural network for machine translation, at production scale . Google AI blog. https://ai.googleblog.com/2016/09/a-neural-network-for-machine.html
Lee, S.-M. (2020). The impact of using machine translation on EFL students’ writing, Computer Assisted Language Learning , 33 (3), 157-175, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2018.1553186
Oda, T. (2020). How to make positive use of machine translation. The Language Teacher , 44 (2), 30–32. https://doi.org/10.37546/JALTTLT44.2
Tsai, S.-C. (2019). Using google translate in EFL drafts: a preliminary investigation. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 32 (5-6), 510–526. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09588221.2018.1527361
ParagraphAI's AI translation writer simplifies multilingual content creation and translation, enhancing communication across languages with focus on clarity and cultural relevance, available as a mobile app and Chrome extension.
Communicating with friends, family, and coworkers around the world has never been easier. Endless social media platforms and international messaging services allow us to connect and socialize on an entirely new level.
However, language barriers continue to limit how we interact, even online.
When it comes to international business or pursuing an education in a foreign country, being able to write clearly in the area's native language is absolutely vital.
In this article, we will explore how our multilingual, free AI writer can help you write a translation, create multilingual content, and reply to messages or emails in any language.
Native English speakers do not usually need to think twice when writing messages to friends or communicating with coworkers, but non-native English speakers and those learning English need to spend extra time drafting and proofreading every sentence they write.
A majority of international businesses operate in English and those who understand English are able to enjoy greater business and career advancement opportunities. This is also true of international universities: knowing English allows young students to explore educational pursuits anywhere in the world.
On the flip side, native English speakers may need to do business or may study in a country where English is not as prevalent. Even simple tasks like writing an email may become an incredibly daunting one.
That's why we created a multilingual AI text generator, ParagraphAI. We believe everyone deserves to feel confident when communicating, even in another language. ParagraphAI is a must when it comes to clear, concise communication, regardless of what language the final product is.
ParagraphAI is a free AI writing tool that crafts perfectly curated content for all your writing needs, from essays to press releases. It generates high quality, well-researched, and plagiarism-free content tailored to a specific topic.
Writing multilingual content through ParagraphAI saves you time, ensures your writing is consistent and grammatically flawless, and helps you focus more on formulating your ideas instead of drowning in language barriers.
Creating multilingual content of any length, from essays to text messages, in ParagraphAI is extremely easy. Just enter your topic, pick your desired language, watch as ParagraphAI transforms your content as you write a translation!
Need to create paragraphs for essays or draft the perfect resume in a language that is not your native one?
Here's how ParagraphAI's suite of writing tools can help you create incredible content then expertly translate it for you in a snap.
First, enter a prompt into any of ParagraphAI's tools under the "Write" feature. A prompt can be anything from "write me a message saying I'll be late to today's meeting" to "an essay about the origins of oil painting."
Then, click the purple globe next to the "Write" button and select the language you would like your content to be written in. You can also use the tone sliders below these buttons to customize the tone to fit your intentions as you write a translation.
ParagraphAI will instantly create high quality, informed paragraphs, essays, message, and whatever you need. No one will ever guess you used a free AI paragraph writer !
Getting started is the hardest part.
To get instant email or message replies in another language, simply paste the original message into the first text box. Below, you can add context for your reply, like a simple blurb of what you would want to say. The context is completely optional, but can help our AI create a more accurate reply that suits your needs!
After entering the prompt and any additional context, you can use the tone sliders to indicate how the finished text should sound.
Then, use the globe icon to access a dropdown menu of languages and select the language you would like your reply to be in.
As you can see, ParagraphAI is a versatile, mulilingual AI assistant . When it comes time to create multilingual content and replies in any language, you are guaranteed to write better in another language and in less time. This will allow for more productivity and confidence!
Best of all, ParagraphAI is free to use and is consistently listed as the best free AI writer tool on the market.
See how many opportunities you will discover and how many connections you will create using ParagraphAI's multilingual translation tools!
Our AI writing assistant software, AI writing app, and AI keyboard are built with love.
COMMENTS
Traditionally studied as a dichotomised theoretical issue in the field of translation studies, translation is alternatively considered, in this essay, to be a generic term which highlights its practical purposes and effects as a literary practice in creative writing. This essay extends the concept of literary translation to incorporate a range ...
Creative writing is above all a translational process. Translation therefore plays a significant role for creative writers who work with foreign language texts. No one can argue that translation is not a writing practice. Another problematic issue, linked to perceived reader expectations, and to the fraught relationship to creative writers ...
ABSTRACT Traditionally studied as a dichotomised theoretical issue in the field of translation studies, translation is alternatively considered, in this essay, to be a generic term which highlights its practical purposes and effects as a literary practice in creative writing. This essay extends the concept of literary translation to incorporate a range of rewriting practices, which range from ...
Creative writing is above all a translational process. Translation therefore plays a significant role for creative writers who work with foreign language texts. No one can argue that translation is not a writing practice. Another problematic issue, linked to perceived reader expectations, and to the fraught relationship to creative writers ...
Translation being a form of creative writing resulting from a dialog is referred to as responsive translation, implying the translator's unique sensitivity and interpretation.
This contributes to an argument that translation is an integral part of contemporary creative practice in a world characterized by mobility, multiplicity and transculturalism. See Full PDF. Download PDF. The AALITRA Review Translation Plus: On Literary Translation and Creative Writing. 2015 •.
Creative writing is above all a translational process. Translation therefore plays a significant role for creative writers who work with foreign language texts. No one can argue that translation is not a writing practice. Another problematic issue, linked to perceived reader expectations, and to the fraught relationship to creative writers ...
In this essay, I argue that the contradictory characteristic of translation being both derivative and derived is consistent with a certain aspect of creativity, making it useful for creative writing. Then, I will propose a translation-based creative pedagogy while examining works from my poetry project that incorporate the practice of translation.
Fang, Xia (2023) "Crossing the Boundaries: Integrating Poetry Writing with Translation Practice," Journal of Creative Writing Studies: Vol. 8: Iss. 1, Article 7. How is poetry translation essentially different from poetry writing? Poetry writing pertains primarily to the acquisition of a main skills set, for instance the mastery of poetic forms ...
2./. The only exception to republication is creative writing, photography or any visual art that appears as part of a volume. 3./. Author/s will be requested to complete a declaration of originality and absence of plagiarism. 4./. All articles must be original work and be free of plagiarism and/or fraudulent information.
Unending Translation: Creative Critical Experiments in Translation and Life Writing. Deadline for abstract proposals: April 15th, 2022. ... On the other, creative-critical experiments in essay writing and translation have allowed for a more embodied and situated critical engagement with translation, an opportunity to explore translation as a ...
Based on this concept, this essay delves into creative writing research in a Chinese context. The majority of my 'practice-based' research, including several translation projects and a writing project that I undertook, took place during my Ph.D. study. English-language creative writing in the Chinese context is in many ways linked with the ...
This essay examines creative writing in a foreign language as a type of translation, especially "self-translation," in which the original text is not written but exists luminal in the author's ...
Letter to Susan Bassnett: example of a creative critical translation The critical translation below is a creative commentary on the following essay: Susan Bassnett, 'Writing and Translating', in The Translator as Writer, edited by Susan Bassnett and Peter Bush (London: Continuum, 2006), pp. 173-183. À Susan Bassnett Objet : Lettre ouverte
Gloria Anzaldúa switches between two languages when she talks about her childhood: "En boca cerrada no entran moscas. 'Flies don't enter a closed mouth' is a saying I kept hearing when I was a child." (2947) In this quotation, Anzaldúa provides a direct translation of the saying she heard as a child. Note that the saying she heard ...
Tips and Rules for Making Positive Use of MT. Oda (2020) offered some tips and rules to help university students in Japan use MT to write speech drafts in English effectively. In short, her Golden Rules for students using MT when writing speeches are: Adopt a translation result only if: you bear responsibility for what you say.
In the process, the linguistic aspect of this study is informed by the concept of 'cosmopolitan English,' while the key issue in self-translation or creative writing is how to translate the culturally-loaded content of one culture into forms of expression comprehensible to audiences from other cultures and other societies.
The present paper is an attempt to trace the history of translation right from the time when writing was not introduced to the present day century where translation has become an inevitable activity. The paper further critically teases out the process of translation, establishing it as a critical, creative and cultural activity and not merely ...
DeepL Write is a tool that helps you perfect your writing. Write clearly, precisely, with ease, and without errors. Try for free now!
Writing, translation, and memory: the workshop as the space for creative collaboration. From the year 2000, when the BCLT launched its first Literary Translation Summer School at the University of East Anglia, the defining feature of the workshops has been the presence of the writer in the room.
If you are mailing in your application the essay or short story should be double-spaced on white, 8 1/2 x 11 paper, with 1 1/2-inch margins on top, bottom, and sides. Typewritten copy is preferred. All essays or short stories must be legible. A completed entry form must be used as a cover sheet and stapled to the essay or short story.
Translate . Anne Arundel County Public Schools ... 2024 When it comes to writing about investments, students - and, perhaps, adults - could learn a lot from Arnold Elementary School fifth-grader Johan Zacharia. Johan's essay was named national champion out of 959 entries in the elementary school division of the national InvestWrite ...
ParagraphAI is a free AI writing tool that crafts perfectly curated content for all your writing needs, from essays to press releases. It generates high quality, well-researched, and plagiarism-free content tailored to a specific topic. Writing multilingual content through ParagraphAI saves you time, ensures your writing is consistent and ...