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Literary Translation And The BCLT Summer School
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Introduction
In this episode of Community Chest, Dominik interviews Valerie Hanitchuk about the British Center for Literary Translation (BCLT) summer school. They explore the technical and ethical challenges of translation, including the pressure to produce work rapidly and the debate between foreignizing and domesticating texts. Key moments include a discussion on literary translation as art and Dominik's reflections on cultural misunderstandings in translated texts.
Dominik interviews Valerie Hanitchuk, a Canadian resident of Norwich, regarding the British Center for Literary Translation (BCLT) summer school. They discuss the technical and ethical challenges of translation, including the pressure to produce work rapidly—as seen with the Harry Potter series—and the debate between 'foreignizing' a text versus making it read as an original. Hanitchuk describes the privilege of working with like-minded people and the 'double bind' of translation being both necessary and impossible. To conclude the theme, Dominik plays Jimmy Cliff's 'Many Rivers to Cross', likening the crossing of rivers to finding meaning across different languages.
Topics
- The relevance and ubiquity of literary translation in daily life
- The technical and ethical challenges of the translation process
- Cultural loss and gain in translation
Participants
- Dominik
- Valerie Hanitchuk
Names are taken from the archive as written and may include spelling variants.
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A translation guest loves Tom Waits — so “Come On Up to the House” is a very personal musical break.
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The real world. It's a BCLT summer school, and it's a very rare privilege to come together as a group and be with like-minded people who are fascinated by the questions of literary translation. To be able to spend a week hands-on doing.
People forget how much they do read in translation, and the impact a good translator has in your lives. And of course, one of one of the things people you know whose first language is English don't realize is that they're one of the one of the reasons, one of parts of the sort of cultural dominance of you know America and the like.
Talk about the double bind of translation. That translation is necessary and impossible, and I think that that's just a truism. But I don't. There is really no text that's impossible to translate. It's just a matter of what will be retained, what will be lost. You spoke.
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