HUMS 428, Advanced Literary Translation

Meeting Time: 
Th 3:30pm-5:20pm

Course Description:

A sequel to HUMS 427, The Practice of Literary Translation. Students apply to this workshop with a project in mind that they have been developing, either on their own or for a senior thesis, and they present this work during the class on a regular basis. Practical translation is supplemented by readings in the history of translation practice and theory, and by the reflections of practitioners on their art. These readings are selected jointly by the instructor and members of the class. Topics include the history of literary translation—Western and Eastern; comparative approaches to translating a single work; the political dimension of translation; and translation in the context of religion and theology. Class time is divided into student presentations of short passages of their own work, including related key readings; background readings in the history of the field; and close examination of relevant translations by accomplished translators. Students receive intensive scrutiny by the group and instructor. Prereq: HUMS 427

Led by:

Robyn Creswell's picture

Professor Robyn Creswell

I joined the Comparative Literature Department at Yale in 2014, after teaching two years at Brown University. I’ve taught courses on modern Arabic literature, the practice of literary translation, art and revolution, and modernist poetry (in French, English, Spanish, and Arabic). I am the author of City of Beginnings: Poetic Modernism in Beirut (PUP, 2019), a study of the modernist poetry movement in Arabic and its Cold War context.

In 2012, I was a fellow at the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, where I worked on a translation of the Egyptian novelist Sonallah Ibrahim’s early masterpiece, That Smell and Notes from Prison (New Directions, 2013). I have also translated the Moroccan critic and fabulist Abdelfattah Kilito’s The Clash of Images (New Directions, 2010) and The Tongue of Adam (New Directions, 2015), both from the French.

In addition to my scholarship, I regularly publish works of criticism in The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and elsewhere. For this work, I received the Roger Shattuck Prize for Criticism in 2013. I have been a fellow at the NYPL’s Cullman Center and the American Academy in Berlin. I was poetry editor of The Paris Review from 2011-2018.

My current project is an intellectual history of the Arab world after WWII, told through the lives and works of its poets.

Robyn Creswell's picture

Professor Robyn Creswell

I joined the Comparative Literature Department at Yale in 2014, after teaching two years at Brown University. I’ve taught courses on modern Arabic literature, the practice of literary translation, art and revolution, and modernist poetry (in French, English, Spanish, and Arabic). I am the author of City of Beginnings: Poetic Modernism in Beirut (PUP, 2019), a study of the modernist poetry movement in Arabic and its Cold War context.

In 2012, I was a fellow at the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, where I worked on a translation of the Egyptian novelist Sonallah Ibrahim’s early masterpiece, That Smell and Notes from Prison (New Directions, 2013). I have also translated the Moroccan critic and fabulist Abdelfattah Kilito’s The Clash of Images (New Directions, 2010) and The Tongue of Adam (New Directions, 2015), both from the French.

In addition to my scholarship, I regularly publish works of criticism in The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, and elsewhere. For this work, I received the Roger Shattuck Prize for Criticism in 2013. I have been a fellow at the NYPL’s Cullman Center and the American Academy in Berlin. I was poetry editor of The Paris Review from 2011-2018.

My current project is an intellectual history of the Arab world after WWII, told through the lives and works of its poets.