Announcements and Highlights (Translation)

A great review of Edgar Garbelotto's translation of a novel called "Lord," by the celebrated Brazilian writer João Gilberto Noll, has just appeared in the New York Times. 

Tim Gregory, a CTS graduate, is featured in the newsletter of the School of Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics. 

Our MA student, Edgar Garbelotto, is off on his book tour! Starting in San Francisco (Feb 28) and then stopping in Chicago (March 4) Edgar will speak at prominent literary venues about his newly-published translation of Lord, by João Gilberto Noll, “one of Brazil’s true literary icons” (Literary Hub). Congratulations Edgar! If you are near Chicago on that date, show him your support and drop in to the event!

The second volume of the monograph series Handbook of Terminology, about terminology in the Arab world, has just been published, with our faculty member Kara Warburton participating as the linguistic editor. This book represents "a revival of Arabic translation and terminology studies". For full details and a peek into the content, see the announcement on the John Benjamin's site.

An English edition of the famous 19th century Czech forgery manuscripts, translated and edited by our very own Prof. David Cooper, has just been published. Entitled The Queen's Court and Green Mountain Manuscripts, this volume provides annotated translations of the Czech literary forgeries -- one of the more remarkable episodes of Romantic forgery -- which had considerable cultural and political impact.

We have just learned that a poem translation by Dr. Poucel, our Affiliate Professor of French and Italian, placed First Up for the National Translation Awards for Poetry in 2016. Such a high placement for this award, which is issued by the American Literary Translators Association, is recognition of extraordinary calibre in what is a most challenging genre. The poem in question is Minute-Operas by Frédéric Forte, and it was translated to English by Dr. Poucel and fellow poet-translators Daniel Levin Becker, Ian Monk, and Michelle Noteboom. We wish to express our (albeit belated) congratulations to Dr. Poucel!

Did you know that there are 37 French translations of Alice in Wonderland, maybe even more? Well our own Prof. Kibbee has studied all of them, and has observed remarkable differences even in the use of simple words like "and" and "but". Prof. Kibbee gave a plenary talk devoted entirely to "and" at the Université de Mons (Belgium) several years ago, and his next talks will concentrate on negation. We are all passionate about language, but a whole talk about "and" just shows how complex it really is.

Our second year students are very busy with their extremely interesting Capstone projects in Translation, Interpreting, or Terminology. The Center is impressed with the calibre and range of these practice- and research-oriented projects. This year the projects include translating and publishing a book, translating a historical manuscript written in 1789 about Puerto Rico, on-site interpreting, translating and critically comparing Chinese and Western news media, and building terminology databases for airports and schools, among others. Other students are focussing on topics of current relevance including refugees and mental health. Bravo students!