A Translation Seminar with Katherine Silver

By looking at brief passages from my translations of The Cardboard House, by Martín Adán (New Directions, 2013), and One Out of Two, by Daniel Sada (Graywolf Press, forthcoming), we will try to explore the nature of the complexities in each text. For example: What is hovering behind and between the words—even somewhere far away from the text—that the translator needs to wrestle with? In the process, we may veer into questions of what literary translation can be expected to do better or less well, and what that might mean for the translator, the reader, and the practice of the art of translation.

Katherine Silver has published more than twenty-five books of literary fiction, poetry, and assorted nonfiction in translation from Spanish, mostly to critical acclaim. Her recent translations include works by Daniel Sada, Jorge Luis Borges, Horacio Castellanos Moya, César Aira, and Marcos Giralt Torrente. She is currently the director of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre (BILTC) in Canada.

Please feel free to contact Bill Johnston (billj@indiana.edu) if you have any questions. We look forward to seeing you!