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.

Our Location

The BTTI, located in Aspinwall 302 on the Annandale campus, provides a welcoming space for meetings, workshops, and ongoing informal conversation related to translation. For information about events and activities contact:

Susan Gillespie, BTTI Fellow
914-388-3506
susan.h.gillespie@gmail.com
translation@bard.edu

Upcoming Events

4/23

Friday

Image by Ralf SkirrFriday, April 23, 2021
Prof. Ulrich Baer in Conversation
Online Event 10:30 am – 11:30 am EDT/GMT-4
Prof. Ulrich Baer of NYU will discuss via Zoom the works of Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926) with Prof. Peter Filkins and the students of LIT 2248 - Rilke in English. Following the threads of Loss, Grief, and Transformation that run throughout Rilke's poetry, fiction, and correspondence, Ulrich Baer will take up Rilke's thoughts on the role of "death in life" and how Rilke struggled to resolve its force and nemesis. Those attending from the broader Bard community will also be encouraged to participate in the conversation and pose questions of their own about Rilke's work, life, and thinking on grief and loss.

Zoom Link: https://bard.zoom.us/j/87845248204

Ulrich Baer is University Professor at New York University where he teaches literature and photography. His books include Remnants of Song: The Experience of Modernity in Charles Baudelaire and Paul Celan; Spectral Evidence: The Photography of Trauma; The Rilke Alphabet; What Snowflakes Get Right: Free Speech, Equality and Truth in the University, and, as editor and translator, The Dark Interval: Rilke’s Letters on Loss, Grief and Transformation; Rainer Maria Rilke: Letters on Life, the German edition of Rainer Maria Rilke's Prose. He hosts the ideas podcast, Think About It, and has published editions of numerous classic books with Warbler Press.

10:30 am – 11:30 am EDT/GMT-4 Online Event
10/01

Friday

Friday, October 1, 2021 – Saturday, October 2, 2021
Blithewood, Levy Institute In the one hundredth year after Paul Celan’s birth and the fiftieth year after his death — Bard College will host “Celebrating Celan at 100: Witnessing for the Witness,” a gathering of poets, scholars, writers, publishers, and translators to reflect on Celan’s work and his influence upon German and English poetry, including a performance of musical settings of Celan’s poetry and an exhibition of lithographs by his wife and collaborator Gisèle Lestrange.

Organized by a trio of translators with long ties to Bard – Peter Filkins, Susan H. Gillespie, and Pierre Joris – in partnership with the Jewish Federation of Dutchess County, the conference will mark the publication by Farrar, Straus and Giroux of Memory Rose into Threshold Speech: The Collected Earlier Poetry of Paul Celan, the final volume of the complete bilingual edition of Celan’s poetry, translated by Joris. Christine Ivanovic will deliver the keynote address, and welcoming ceremonies will include Paul Celan’s son, Éric Celan, and his literary executor Bertrand Badiou. The conference will feature six panels to be presented by poets, writers, and scholars, a concert of musical settings of Celan’s poetry presented by the Bard College Music Conservatory, and a screening of Wolfsbohne – From Czernowitz to Mychailivka, a documentary by Thierry Valletoux (in French, German and English with English subtitles) that traces Celan’s life journey.

The conference will take place at Blithewood on the Bard campus and is free and open to the public. Lunch and coffee will be provided on both days. To register for the conference, please fill out the linked Google form. Walk-ins will be welcome, but it is best to register ahead of time in order to reserve a seat and box lunch.

Blithewood, Levy Institute

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.