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How to Be or Not Be a Translator: Workshop Series by Deepa Bhasthi
Attend four online writing workshops curated and tutored by our inaugural International Translator in Residence, the International Booker Prize winning writer-translator, Deepa Bhasthi. Discuss how to choose a book or a text for translation, the politics of choice, and why the job of a translator is more than translation.
Writing is translating is writing. While the practice of translation is often perceived – by many readers and bafflingly, also by many writers – as a job secondary to the creative practice of writing, translators recognise their labour as much an act of creative expression as writing something from scratch. It needs to be repeated here that translation is not simply the act of replacing a set of words in one language with a set of words in another language. One could go so far as to argue that the act of typing the text in the target language is the least important part of this practice.
What a good translation does is go beyond the grammar and syntax and rules of a language pair to look at the larger culture that is communicated through language. It considers music, popular culture, history, food, and cultural memory — in other words, what the translator Daisy Rockwell calls ‘invisible forcefields’.
Over the course of the online writing workshops, Deepa will share some how-tos that will help you expand your understanding of what a translator does, what a translator should ideally do beyond just having excellent knowledge of the languages they are working in, and how to cultivate critical thinking around cultural productions that will make you not just a better translator, but also a better reader.
The workshops are best suited for early career translators and those interested in understanding the art of translation. While participants need not translate into English as a practice, it is required that they have a working knowledge of and are comfortable with communicating in English.
Takeaways from each workshop will include a reading list and/or playlist and practical tips that participants can apply to their own translation projects. Each session is designed to be interactive in nature — and participants will be invited to share their experiences and opinions, so please be prepared to do so. The final 20 minutes of each workshop will be open for a Q&A with Deepa, but please note that she cannot respond to individual projects, or share personal contacts.
In the first workshop, titled ‘How to Listen like a Translator’, we will discuss the reading-adjacent skills a translator can cultivate to become a better practitioner of the art of translating.
When: Saturday, 25 October, 11am - 1pm BST
Where: Online
Tickets: £35 (Concessions available), £60 (Workshop pass to attend both autumn workshops)
Next, in ‘How to Translate Multilinguality’, we will discuss how to engage with a text that is created in a linguistic environment where there are two or more languages at play. We will talk through the importance of acknowledging these different linguistic layers in the translation, and look at how different strategies need to be applied when working with the text.
When: Saturday, 22 November, 10am - 12pm GMT
Where: Online
Tickets: £35 (Concessions available), £60 (Workshop pass to attend both autumn workshops)
In the first workshop of the spring, ‘How to Translate with an Accent’, we will discuss the many Englishes that are spoken and written in around the world, and why it is important to be mindful of locating both the source and the target languages in the geo-political and cultural landscapes they come from. The idea for this workshop comes from an essay I wrote for PEN Transmissions.
When: Saturday, 28 February, 10am - 12pm GMT
Where: Online
Tickets: £35 (Concessions available), £60 (Workshop pass to attend both spring workshops)
In the final workshop, ‘How to Write like a Translator’, we will discuss how to choose a book or a text for translation, the politics of choice, and why the job of a translator should not be limited to only translating a text. We will explore how thinking, speaking, and writing outside the act of translation can help cultivate the skill set needed to be better writer-translators.
When: Saturday, 28 March, 10am - 12pm GMT
Where: Online
Tickets: £35 (Concessions available), £60 (Workshop pass to attend both spring workshops)
Deepa Bhasthi is a writer and International Booker Prize winning writer-translator based in Kodagu, South India. Her essays, cultural criticism, and columns have been published extensively in India and internationally in anthologies and in various other publications. Her published translations from Kannada include two collections of short stories and one novel. She is currently working on her debut nonfiction book.