This module helps you to situate and heighten awareness of your own work in relation to your own practice and to practitioners from other languages. You are not expected to know any other language! Instead, you will use cribs, literal translations, commentaries and transliterations, among other tools, to inspire and guide you in creating your own versions, as is common practice amongst translators. Seminars will focus on your work in creating new poems in English, using contemporary or classic poetry in a language of your choice. The work will be contextualised through the study of translation theories and practices.
Total Contact Hours: 20
Private Study Hours: 280
Total Study Hours: 300
Main assessment methods:
Essay (3,000 words) – 35%
Portfolio (5-7 Poems/ Short Prose) – 65%
Reassessment methods:
Like-for-like
Indicative Reading List:
ATKINS, TIM. (2016) Collected Petrarch. London: Crater Press.
GASS, WILLIAM H. (2015). Reading Rilke: Reflections on the Problems of Translation. London: Dalkey Archive Press.
GROSSMAN, EDITH. (2011). Why Translation Matters. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press
HARDWICK, LORNA. (2013). Translating Words, Translating Culture. London: Bloomsbury
LOWELL, ROBERT (1962). Imitations. London: Faber and Faber
WEISSBORT, DANIEL & EYSTEINSSON, ASTRADUR (ed.). (2006). Translation: Theory and Practice, a Historical Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
The intended subject specific learning outcomes.
On successfully completing the module students will be able to:
1 Demonstrate their capacity for close reading and critical analysis and applied these skills to their practice;
2 Identify, critically evaluate and interrogate particular literary techniques and translation strategies found in modern and contemporary poetry and short prose and translation theories (for example, literal, literary, imitation, paraphrase techniques in translation) and make use of them in their practice;
3 Reflect on the wide range of stylistic practices open to the contemporary writer/translator and demonstrate an understanding of how these relate to their own practice;
4 Confidently applied advanced translation techniques within their work;
5 Understand, through practice, the value of versioning, drafting and editing;
6 Plan and undertake a portfolio of translations which demonstrates a developed sense of their relationship between their work and its audience.
The intended generic learning outcomes.
On successfully completing the module students will be able to:
1 Demonstrate a critical language;
2 Apply that language to their own work, through collective- and self-criticism;
3 Demonstrate sympathy with traditions other than those in which they themselves are working;
4 Demonstrate a substantial capacity for independent imaginative projects and research;
5 Gather and evaluate a range of materials from diverse contexts.
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