Please join us for an evening with Professor Elizabeth Harris on November 10 at 5:30 PM on the Bridge (third floor of Wiekamp).
Elizabeth Harris’s presentation is entitled “Translating Voice in Fiction: How an Italian Character Travels Into English.”
Elizabeth Harris is Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of North Dakota where she teaches English literature, literary translation, and creative writing. Her English translations of Giulio Mozzi and Marco Candida have been featured in the Dalkey Archive Press’s Best European Fiction 2011 and Best European Fiction 2010, The Chicago Review, Words Without Borders, AGNI, The Literary Review, and The Kenyon Review, among others. Her English translation of Mario Rigoni Stern’s Giacomo’s Seasons will be published by Autumn Hill Books in 2012 and her translation of Giulio Mozzi’s collection This is the Garden will be published by Open Letter Books in 2013.
“Suzanne Jill Levine, in The Subversive Scribe, states that a commonly held belief is that translators of poetry must be poets themselves but that any relatively bilingual person with a decent dictionary can translate prose: the “traditional virtue of…prose translators…has been their invisibility as humble scribes, scribbling transparent texts in the cellar of the castle of Literature” (xii). This view of prose translation may be changing, but not fast enough—the discussion of the intricacies and artistry of prose translation still lags behind the discussion of poetry translation.I will not go so far as to say that a fiction translator must write fiction herself—but it doesn’t hurt, either. Again and again, I’ve found that my own background in writing short stories has helped me immensely in my translations, in my search for the right voice and style to render an author’s plot and characters in English. For this presentation, I’d like to discuss the nuances of translating fiction by Giulio Mozzi, and especially, how I develop characters in English as tied to translating voice and style in his work.”
If you would like to read one of Elizabeth Harris’s pieces on translation, please consider the following short essay in Words Without Borders: http://wordswithoutborders.
Professor Harris’s presentation will be followed by refreshments.
This Literary Translation Series event is a Campus Theme event: "At Home and Abroad: Global Awareness, Learning, and Experience."
This event is sponsored by: the Campus Theme, The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Department of English, the Office of Academic Affairs, the Office of International Programs, and World Language Studies.