Tag Archives: New York University

L’altérité incluse, imagination, et hospitalité or The imagination, hospitality, and the otherness within by Marielle Macé

Posted in Colloquiums/Conferences/Lectures by

Dr. Marielle Macé is a visiting professor at NYU this semester. Elly and I are taking her class entitled “Techniques du Vertige” for our elective.

At her lecture at La Maison Française, she was introduced with a quote taken from an interview. She was interviewed by Jean Birnbaum of Le Monde in 2011. If you google Macé’s name, the following quote appears: “n’ayez pas peur de vous laisser dominer par la littérature”. Don’t be afraid to let yourself be dominated by literature. This describes her enthusiasm about her work and her fearlessness to take on literary challenges. Continue reading →

First class of our Workshop in Translation

Posted in Class by

To set the scene, our class is held in a room where each of the walls shows you something intriguing. On the left side, there’s floor to ceiling shelving full of books in a few different languages but mainly French. On the right, there are posters from previous colloquiums and lectures and conferences with famous authors, translators, and theorists that have come to New York City in the past few years. Inspiration on both sides!

Dr. Ertel introduced herself and we did the same, and then we got down to business. She handed us an extract of a translated work to look at (only the English version). She gave us time to read it, and then asked the question, “So do you think this is well translated?” We were all rather nervous because this was our first day, and responded with “It’s not bad”, “I don’t know… I’d like to see the French version, though”, and “The last line is a bit awkward grammatically, but the rest is okay”. Then she smiled and handed us the French version, and by this point I think we could all see where she was headed with her question. We read the French version, and there was a lot that the translator had missed. Meanings of idiomatic phrases, metaphors that were used, and certain meanings that the author was trying to convey. And get this: the book had been published.

That day’s lesson was an example of where a translator’s loyalty should lie: to the author.  As a translator, you want to express to new readers what the author can’t because of language barriers. In doing this, you want to put the original work into a new language- but you want to keep the same ideas. It’s hard to reconcile the music with the meaning of the piece, but the loyalty to the author is always important.