Translation

Overview

The Translation research group investigates how translation might be understood as a process of transformation that deepens engagement with places, people, cultures, and languages.

Faculty coleaders Debra Caplan and Cheryl Smith worked closely with Digital Fellows Bess Rowen and Casey Henry as well as community partners from Words Without Borders, Ledig House Translation Lab, and Target Margin Theater to bring together translators, creative writers, teachers, scholars, students, and performers in a seminar series, public panels, readings, and performances.

The group convened the local and international translation community through a series of monthly seminars and a website maintained by Casey Henry, which included translation exercises, readings, and questions related to seminar meetings. Collaborators also developed and piloted a new platform for pedagogical innovation with Words Without Borders Campus, an education-focused website with readings in translation and related cultural, historical, literary, and personal materials designed for secondary and post-secondary classroom use.

The group has continued their work with Words Without Borders by co-sponsoring and co-editing an issue on theater in translation, guest edited by Sarah Maitland, Senior Lecturer in Translation Studies at Goldsmiths, University of Londonr. A staged reading of the published works from the issue will be directed by Caplan, who has a background in Yiddish theater. The WWB Dispatches blog has offered CUNY students a platform to write about travel, theater, and translation.

Their work culminates with Marco Millions, a theatrical production of a rarely seen Eugene O'Neill play staged and produced in collaboration with CUNY students and Target Margin Theater.