Thursdays, Feb 15 to March 21, 7-9pm Eastern

Online, 8 translators max

The Italian expression “traduttore, traditore,” or translator, traitor, gets a lot of play in discussions about translation—and I’m over it. In this six-session workshop, we will use readings, exercises, and in-class critiques to push against old translation rules and the fears that they generate, learning instead to translate in a spirit of collaboration, exploration, and play. At the same time, we will practice the skill of advocating for ourselves as translators, both in the literary world and inside our own heads.

Students should select a short text—a story, an essay, or a group of no more than five poems—to translate before the course begins. In our first two meetings, we will begin to translate in class, doing exercises and experiments to loosen our approaches to our selected texts. We will also do in-class readings, which will come from a wide variety of source languages and literary cultures. I hope that will be true of students’ selected texts, too.

Beginning with our third meeting, we will devote the bulk of our time to workshopping each other’s translations-in-progress, though we will continue to discuss short published texts as well. Every translator will get workshopped once, and can expect thorough written feedback and a one-on-one meeting with me afterward. All translators will leave the workshop with a piece ready to polish and submit, as well as an expanded toolbox for revising their own translations.

This workshop is open to translators at all levels and translators working from any source language into English.

About the Instructor

Lily Meyer is a writer, translator, and critic. Her debut novel, Short War, is forthcoming in 2024. Her full-length translations include Claudia Ulloa Donoso’s story collections Little Bird and Ice for Martians. Her essays on the craft of translation, which appear on translation syllabi at both the undergraduate and MFA levels, have appeared in Astra Quarterly, Bright Wall/Dark Room, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, Poets & Writers, and Public Books.

A Workshop for Traitors: Exploring Literary Translation, 6 sessions with Lily Meyer