Contemporary Translation in Transition

This volume brings together an international group of scholars, poets, translators, and publishers to explore new developments in both poetry and translation and the fluid boundary between them. The unique format combines a series of conversations between leading poets whose writing is informed by the experience of translation and being translated with essays addressing theoretical, aesthetic, and cross-cultural aspects of contemporary poetry translation in English, German, and Russian.

Maria Khotimsky is Senior Lecturer in Russian in the Global Languages Department at MIT. She is the co-editor of The Poetry and Poetics of Olga Sedakova: Origins, Philosophies, Points of Contention (2019) and Olga Sedakova: stikhi, smysly, prochteniia (2017). Her research interests include literary translation, content-based language pedagogy, and translingual poetry.

Friederike Reents is Full Professor in German Literature in German Department at Eichstätt University She is the co-editor of Autor und Subjekt im Gedicht – Positionen, Perspektiven und Praktiken heute (Lyrikforschung. Neue Arbeiten zur Theorie und Geschichte der Lyrik, Bd. 1) (2021) and Lyrik und Erkenntnis (2019). Her research interests include lyricology, environmental humanities, and literary translation.

Henrieke Stahl-Schwaetzer is Professor of Slavic Literary Studies at the University of Trier and Executive Editor of the International Journal of Comparative Cultural Studies. Her research focuses on Russian symbolism, philosophy, and poetry. She is author of the monograph Sophia in the Thought of Vladimir Solov’ev: An Aesthetic Reconstruction.

William Waters teaches German & Comparative Literature and Translation at Boston University. He is the author of Poetry’s Touch: On Lyric Address and numerous essays on poetics and on Rilke. He serves on the board of the Internationale Rilke-Gesellschaft, and co-founded the International Network for the Study of Lyric (lyricology.org).

Maria Khotimsky is Senior Lecturer in Russian in the Global Languages Department at MIT. She is the co-editor of The Poetry and Poetics of Olga Sedakova: Origins, Philosophies, Points of Contention (2019) and Olga Sedakova: stikhi, smysly, prochteniia (2017). Her research interests include literary translation, content-based language pedagogy, and translingual poetry.

Friederike Reents is Full Professor in German Literature in German Department at Eichstätt University She is the co-editor of Autor und Subjekt im Gedicht – Positionen, Perspektiven und Praktiken heute (Lyrikforschung. Neue Arbeiten zur Theorie und Geschichte der Lyrik, Bd. 1) (2021) and Lyrik und Erkenntnis (2019). Her research interests include lyricology, environmental humanities, and literary translation.

Henrieke Stahl-Schwaetzer is Professor of Slavic Literary Studies at the University of Trier and Executive Editor of the International Journal of Comparative Cultural Studies. Her research focuses on Russian symbolism, philosophy, and poetry. She is author of the monograph Sophia in the Thought of Vladimir Solov’ev: An Aesthetic Reconstruction.

William Waters teaches German & Comparative Literature and Translation at Boston University. He is the author of Poetry’s Touch: On Lyric Address and numerous essays on poetics and on Rilke. He serves on the board of the Internationale Rilke-Gesellschaft, and co-founded the International Network for the Study of Lyric (lyricology.org).

“Combining conversations between authors and translators, translator reflections, and scholarly investigations of poetic translations, often capitalizing on the hybrid "identities" of many of the contributors, as poets, translators and scholars, this volume offers a refreshing diversity of approaches and writing styles while also underscoring the close, even vital, connection between translation theory and practice. The volume will appeal to students and scholars in a number of academic fields, general readers interested in poetry, and, of course, to working translators.”

—Brian James Baer, author of Translation and the Making of Modern Russian Literature

“What does a literary translator do? Ventriloquize? Overhear? Productively forget? In this inspired new collection of essays and intellectual dialogues, Khotymsky, Reents, Stahl-Schwaetzer, and Waters have bought together scholars, poets, translators, and editors to discuss the differences, likenesses, and coincidences that make language into art. This collection takes as its subject a handful of writers who push the boundaries of language, as told by those translators and scholars who are their closest interlocutors. The Central-East European focus creates the possibility of cross-border conversations, but the linguistic issues will ring true for translators of any language. To read this book is to listen in at the edges of language and poetics.”

—Amelia Glaser, Professor of Literature, University of California, San Diego, author of Jews and Ukrainians in Russia’s Literary Borderlands and Songs in Dark Times: Yiddish Poetry of Struggle from Scottsboro to Palestine

“A collective feat of vision. Contemporary Translation in Transition is a genre-bending work of scholarship and creativity that permits translation to dwell ‘in transit,’ undomesticated, with no fixed residence. The volume emerges, pointedly, from in-person happenings and virtual explorations, from transnational networks and from the never-really-solitary experiences of translators at work. Situating their volume as ongoing dialogue, the editors and contributors perform the vertiginous art of letting poetry speak across the gaps. Their productive dislocations challenge us to become new readers.”

— Martha Kelly, Vice President of Scholarly Programs, National Humanities Center

“Translation is an art, a practice, and a vocation. Contemporary Translation in Transition treats all of these dimensions of translation in an innovative format that includes scholarly investigations as well as conversations involving eminent translators, poet-translators, publishers, and scholars. Although contemporary Russian poetry constitutes a shared point of reference in almost all of the materials presented here, attention wanders productively across linguistic and historical barriers, as is only appropriate for a volume on translation. What is more, contemporary translation is shown in all of its border-crossing instability—as a practice in transformation in a post-monolingual, globalized yet belatedly renationalizing world. This is a volume that reflects in cardinal fashion on our own moment: on the urgency, the ubiquity, the need for, and the difficulty of translation.”

—Professor Kevin M. F. Platt, Professor of Russian and East European Studies, the University of Pennsylvania, author of Border Conditions: Russian-Speaking Latvians between World Orders.

“This substantial volume brings together an international cast of creative personalities—poets, scholars, and translators, sometimes all three in one person. Intellectually exciting and aesthetically satisfying, the collection of articles and conversations has a great deal to offer anyone interested in poetry or translation, especially those compelled by both. The essays shift among Chinese, English, German, Russian, Ukrainian, and other languages, addressing a wide variety of topics, including machine translation, the position of small and marginal languages, and the evolution of translation theories and practices. Some of the authors are well-known poets, translators, poet/translators, as well as important scholars. The 2020 conference from which it sprang must have been one hell of a conversation; now readers can reap the insights.”

— Sibelan Forrester, Susan W. Lippincott Professor of Modern and Classical Languages and Russian, Swarthmore College