Translation and Translatability

Translation at Bard

Broadly defined, translation is a mode of critical thought, a means of communication, an art form with a rich history, a transnational sociopolitical phenomenon, and a practice undertaken at the horizon of the impossible. The Bard Translation and Translatability Initiative (BTTI) brings together scholars, practitioners, and students to explore translation and its discontents. Translation at Bard is read in both the narrower interlinguistic sense of moving meaning between two languages, as well as through an interrogation of the broad hermeneutic conditions at stake in questions of translatability. This interdisciplinary approach aims to elicit new collaborative insights, develop curricular initiatives, and stimulate experimentation and debate across the Bard network and the community at large.

Our Mission

The goal of the BTTI is to facilitate the recognition of translation as a supralinguistic experience that permeates and shapes modern-day language and thinking. Our aim is to implement translation in a variety of cross-disciplinary approaches to teaching as a mode of reflection that emphasizes interactions between different fields of knowledge.

Photo by China Jorrin '86

What We Do

The BTTI encourages curricular initiatives that promote translation, particularly from a multicultural or multidisciplinary perspective, and aims to bring together scholars, teachers, writers, and artists from the United States and other countries. The BTTI also works with Bard faculty members to elicit new interdisciplinary insights, develop new curricula, strengthen communication, and stimulate experimentation among the College’s four divisions and across its network of international liberal arts and graduate studies programs.

Contact

For information about events and activities contact:

Susan Gillespie, BTTI Fellow
914-388-3506
[email protected]
[email protected]

Upcoming Events

4/07

Monday

Monday, April 7, 2025
Olin Humanities, Room 102 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4
In 1963, a year after Algerian independence, Anna Greki, an Algerian poet of French descent living in exile in Tunisia, published Algeria, Capital: Algiers, her first poetry collection, in French and Arabic. Greki, 32 at the time, had participated in the Algerian revolution and was arrested, incarcerated and tortured by the French military for her activism. Algeria, Capital: Algiers, translated by Marine Cornuet, and introduced by Ammiel Alcalay, includes poems Greki wrote while in prison and is available in English for the first time. Please join us for a reading and discussion of Greki’s life and work, and of the translation itself.

Marine Cornuet is a Brooklyn-based translator, poet, and editor. Recent publications include Cloche Pèlerine (Le Castor Astral, 2024), a French translation of Kaveh Akbar’s poetry collection Pilgrim Bell, and Algeria, capital: Algiers (Pinsapo Press and Lost & Found, 2024), an English translation of Anna Gréki’s poetry collection Algérie, capitale Algers. She holds an MFA from Queens College, CUNY, and is the co-founder of the literary journal Clotheslines. She is a member of the working collective and an editor at Ugly Duckling Presse.

Poet, novelist, translator, essayist, critic, and scholar Ammiel Alcalay’s latest books are CONTROLLED DEMOLITION: a work in four books, his co-translation of Nasser Rabah’s Gaza: The Poem Said Its Piece, and the forthcoming Follow the Person: Archival Encounters. In 2017, he received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for his work as founder and General Editor of Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative; he is a Distinguished Professor at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center.

5:30 pm – 7:00 pm EDT/GMT-4 Olin Humanities, Room 102
4/14

Monday

The cover of Joe Luzzi's book, Vita Nuova, featuring art of a woman with a passionflowerMonday, April 14, 2025
by Joe Luzzi (Bard College)
Olin Humanities, Room 102 6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4
The Italians have a saying traduttore, traditore – that is, the “translator" of a book can often be a “traitor” to it if he fails to capture both its letter and its spirit! In this event, Professor Joseph Luzzi will discuss his new translation of Dante’s Vita Nuova (Liveright/Norton, December 2024), which was Dante’s first book and a moving account of his youthful love for his muse, Beatrice, and his discovery of his passion for poetry. Professor Luzzi will show how his understanding of translation as a “way of thinking” also helped him complete his recent Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Biography (Princeton University Press, November 2024). Overall, he will share his experiences in trying to remain faithful to Dante’s original language, while at the same time bringing his own personal understanding and interpretation of the Vita Nuova, an early masterpiece by Italy’s so-called sommo poeta, supreme poet.

6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4 Olin Humanities, Room 102

Sui Generis

Sui Generis was first published in 1997 as an initiative of the Foreign Languages, Cultures, and Literatures faculty at Bard. It has been published once every spring since and has grown to include new languages that entered our curriculum, such as Arabic and Japanese. The primary goal of this publication is to encourage students to produce original creative work in a foreign language, or to translate the work of other authors. Sui Generis also offers language students new opportunities to work closely with our faculty and Foreign Language Exchange Tutors.