In Frayn's translation note, it initially stood out to me how resistant Chekov was to his works being translated, and to that end I appreciated Frayn's qualifications. He was familiar with both the language and format of the work, unlike some other translators whose works we have interacted with. Pavis' faithfulness article was an interesting read for me: I never considered that adapting text to performance is essentially a form of translation, and can follow a similar process to literary translation. I am not an avid play-watcher, so most of my experience with this form of translation comes from watching movies adapted from books I've read, leading to the classic debate of which one is better (it is almost always the book). Senelick's lecture reinforced the importance of maintaining the original author's style; this means not just translating from one language to another, but conveying the author's version and experience of that language. Tiang provided a multitude of examples from The Seagull to emphasize his points, which I appreciated. He was easier to follow because of this, and yet again reinforced how laborious translation can be; if just a few lines can be translated so many ways, imagine working on entire plays and novels.
Wednesday, February 25, 2026
24/02 Reading Response - Sanjana Thakur
Frayn, "A Note on the Translation"
- Puts forth the idea that a good translator must know the language he is translating from, but also the form - so knowing playwriting and theatre to translate a play; knowing poetry to translate a poem?
- I thought "There are no footnotes in theatre" was a really striking statement, given that we've seen how useful footnotes are in prose and poetry translations (Jeffrey Angles talked about them, for example). So perhaps this is an additional challenge in translating plays.
- Meredith, Kevin, and I just watched MIT's production of Natasha and Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, which is an adaptation of Tolstoy's War and Peace, and the entire opening number is just a repetition of each characters various names and nicknames, so as to introduce the audience to all the various names the characters go by, because of how confusing it is. I was thinking about that reading Frayn's section on how names and naming can be a problem when translating from Russian.
- "This changes the feel of some relationships, particularly between servants and their masters" - the role of language in shifting power and class dynamics.
- I loved: "Rigidity can in any case produce nonsense."
- I really enjoyed reading about his challenges with translation on page 359, with tears and knocking - it reminded me of the question, in the tanka, of if the ringing was a doorbell or a phone. You don't know what you don't know.
- The section of translating allusion was fascinating - even in creative writing, you frequently receive the advice to not 'date' your work with pop culture references, and I suppose the challenges of translating allusions is in support of that argument, though I am on the side that each work comes from a specific context and should reference things from that context. Perhaps the trick is that the allusion should function like an inside joke - there, for people who recognise it, and not obtrusive for people who don't.
- The idea of theatre itself as an act of translation! I loved all the questions and found them very well articulated. Particularly: Is the text "received as a source of meaning to be meditated upon by a spectator or listener, or is it to be treated as musical material, more audible than understandable?"
- I learnt a new word today! "Univocal".
- I did feel like I got lost in the weeds as we kept reading. In theory, I didn't disagree with any of the points being made, but would have appreciated them being linked to some concrete examples.
- I really really enjoyed this lecture. Tiang provided so many examples of the opening lines of The Seagull, and it really helped make his point.
- Again the old idea that translators should be invisible, like a ninja - it sounds like this is even more embedded in theatre than in prose and poetry. It feels, again, almost deceptive to me to laud the playwright and pretend like his work could exist at all without the literal translation that's being hidden.
- I'm not sure I totally followed his meaning of "putting the text in a state of crisis".
- I did appreciate his focus on translation being a translation not only of the language, but of the language as wielded by that particular author.
2.25---Yide Cai
This week’s readings feel very close to my own practice as a playwright and translator. I share many of the concerns raised in the lectures and essays, especially around authority, authorship, and the tension between text and performance.
Theater, unlike most other literary arts, is built on ongoing power struggles. Every production is a series of negotiations, sometimes subtle, sometimes explicit, between playwright, translator, director, actors, designers, producers. Even Chekhov had to wrestle with Stanislavski. Everyone involved wants to project their will. Everyone wants to “run the show,” to leave a creative imprint. In that sense, theater is made out of battles after battles. Authority must be asserted, sometimes gently, sometimes strategically disguised as collaboration, simply to keep the work coherent.
As a translator of plays, I’ve translated four English-language plays into Chinese that were later produced in China. I am acutely aware of the vulnerability Jeremy Tiang describes. The translator can easily be sidelined once the rights are secured and the rehearsal process begins. Because of this, I’ve always made sure to take initiative in negotiations and to remain the primary contact with the American playwrights and rights holders. In practical terms, this means the production cannot move forward without me. Many Chinese theaters lack the direct relationships and fluency in the American theater industry that I have; if they were to approach rights holders independently, they would not be perceived as equally trustworthy or engaged. Maintaining that structural position gives me leverage and protects my artistic stake in the project.
Interestingly, I do not sense the same anxiety in China about translated plays that some English-language discussions suggest. Chinese audiences generally welcome Western plays in translation, and many are perfectly comfortable watching performances with subtitles. If a theater in China can produce translated works or host touring Western companies, it is seen as a mark of prestige rather than a threat to local culture. Translation there feels less defensive and more aspirational.
Michael Frayn’s notes fascinated me in a different way, especially the idea that Chekhov incorporated quotations from other texts and plays into his own work. That had never occurred to me. The tradition of reference seems largely diminished in contemporary American theater, even frowned upon. Playwrights today often seem afraid that their plays will “look like plays.” Explicit references or quotations risk exposing theatricality too directly. I find that anxiety ironic and limiting.
Patrice Pavis’s writing on the relationship between text and performance also leaves me with complicated feelings. In the American context, the development process has in some ways stagnated. As a playwright, I benefit from the high value placed on text. But I also feel constrained by it. Many American plays exist in endless cycles of workshops and readings, as if problems can only be solved through further rewriting. Yet some of these “problems” could be resolved in a single day of rehearsal. The reluctance to let performance generate meaning feels limiting.
There is also a suspicion in the U.S. toward playwrights directing their own work. That separation reinforces the hierarchy between text and staging. Personally, I want to learn how to write in the room, to create through rehearsal rather than in isolation. I agree with the idea that writing and staging should merge more fluidly. But that model requires something the American system often lacks: a stable company of artists who can develop a shared language over time and perform the same work repeatedly. Text-based theater, by contrast, allows for temporary ensembles to assemble and disband. It is more portable, but perhaps less communal.
Val Galitskiy on Frayn's "A Note on the Translation”
What does a translator do when translating allusions? In his text, Michael Frayn does what any unhappy translator would do: he explains the allusions he had to cut, adjust, or clarify. I hear his voice full of regret: "I trimmed this because the cultural connection would be lost, cut that because it would not register at all with a modern English audience"and so on. And yet, I also see how much pleasure he takes in unpacking these references and sometimes even over-explaining. My favorite part where he says that there are “no footnotes in the theatre" and references must be immediately comprehensible.
Comparing the translator-editor to a surgeon, Frayn reminds me of a doctor who does not simply say, “I removed your appendix — you no longer need it,” but instead lingers over what has been cut away: “I removed this an amazing living part of you — you did not even know it was there, but now that I have named it, you will miss it forever.”
Reading this, I could not help but think how little a translator’s preface differs from a well-written introduction for native speakers of the same language. Would most contemporary Russian audiences automatically catch all these Chekhov's allusions? I would not. Yet, at moments, I feel the author goes a bit too far: example, he worries that Aivazovsky's name would not be meaningful to a modern English audience. But Aivazovsky remains widely exhibited and is far from being obscure in the English-speaking world.
And here I hear Professor Ricks: an allusion is a bonus; it should work on its own when the reader does not know it. Mr. Ricks was speaking about poetry but I think the point stands for the theatre as well. The line must carry its weight even if the audience misses the layers of meaning.
And this is, in my view, the hardest part of translation: how can a translator un-learn what he or she knows? How does translator look at an allusion with fresh eyes and hear it not as packed with layered meaning, but as a simple phrase that works? Take me and Aivazovsky: have I made an effort to un-learn what I know when I said that Frayn goes too far?
Tuesday, February 24, 2026
2/25 Readings - Kevin Hauger
The Translator as Performer
Tiang's lecture was revelatory to me, a theatre geek who had not given enough thought to who's been translating works like Chekhov's into English. Monetary and marketing challenges determine so much about the American theatre scene, so it does not surprise me that translators have been relegated to the background in order to put forward sleek/uncomplicated posters, programs, and marketing material. Tiang's argument is highly relevant and necessary; I, like him, want the current norm to shift so that the visible presence of translators does not feel like a deterrent to theatre audiences, and so that international works are embraced openly rather than brought to the American stage by subterfuge.
Selling Chekhov Whole/Frayn's Translation Note
I really appreciate the many specific, deeply researched and understood examples that Senelick talks about in his lecture. Paradoxically, the more attention he pays to details, the more exposed the limits of translation become; his research can only be fully appreciated in the context of a lecture or a footnoted text.
Frayn's principles while translating Chekhov admit those limits and attend more directly to the needs of live performance. As he writes, "every line must be as immediately comprehensible as it was in the original; there are no footnotes in the theatre, and no turning back to a previous page." The same kind of research was involved in Frayn's search for the source of Konstantin's possibly Talmudic reference, but Frayn ultimately "had to lightly expanded the reference, to make it comprehensible while leaving it oblique."
On Faithfulness
In describing the catalytic effect of "reactivating" things from the past by visions of the present, Pavis has also described the ultimate futility of his essay:
"This conviction remains at the heart of the creative act, an act that tends to escape any control and any theoretical pretension. This conclusion might sound very worrying. But it must be admitted that it is not the task of the theoretician to clarify the intimate and unconscious choices of artists."
Those intimate and unconscious choices are interesting regardless of what "couples" are conceived of to describe/locate them, and arguing for one couple or another (or one half of a couple over the other) seems to me less generative than it is descriptive of developments that are already latent in theatre.
2/25 Readings - Lane
All of these perspectives on the translation of Chekhov's plays have helped to elucidate my perception of play and drama translation. Translation of plays now seems to me as though it is a theatrical perfomance in itself---Frayn notes the necessity to "inhabit" the character to know what they would say in that moment and how it would read on stage. Senelick saw the plays in Russian to feel the laughter and emotional responses that a Russian audience would, and paid close attention to tics of repetition that defined the characters' themes and relationships with each other and the world, themes that served to create an "illusion of reality" on stage. However, Senelick and Frayn both speak from the perspective of Russian speakers, ones who can immerse themselves in the play and its characters in the source language and inhabit them by absorbing their Russian self. Many translations of Chekhov's The Seagull, as discussed by Tiang and Pavis, were written by famous playwrights who worked from a literal English translation; they were essentially translating English into English. Pavis even notes that these playwrights often approach a play translation with the perspective of: "I am going to try to tell you what I want to tell you, by exploiting in the best way possible what he wanted to say." In doing this, certainly these playwrights act not as translators but as writers, and this, too, is a sort of embodiment or inhabitation of the characters and the world. Still, there are downsides to this approach---playwrights may end up "de-Russifying" the text by localizing cultural details or character names, smoothing over humor or adding it in other places, and so on.
In any case, to return to the idea of drama translation as a type of theatrical performance: as Tiang notes, we as translators all give a text our own voice when translating, even though we may try to suppress it. But we function like actors, in this way---every actor gives their own unique take on a role; fans of drama will lord one actor over another, or discuss how wonderful an actor's take was on a given role. As translators, we too are playing roles; we are acting as though we are the author, the characters, the world of the text when we translate. Senelick notes that translating Chekhov's plays means translating Chekhov's Russian, not Russian---and as we inhabit the role of translator, we translate into our English. Perhaps, given that plays are so embedded in performance, acting, and unique voices making their way into the legacy of the play through different performances, it is more acceptable to make the text say what you want to say?
2/24 Readings - Olsson
In listening to Laurence Senelick’s lecture on the translations of Chekov, I was surprised by his insistence on limiting the amount of interpretation by the translators of the play, especially given his experience as an actor and director. In my time in theater, it was very common in English plays for directors to make choices (such as stage directions, scenery, costuming, and props) that would significantly influence an audience member’s view on the play. I don’t find literary translation to be all too different from those sorts of choices. In Jeremy Tiang’s lecture, he provides a plethora of examples of the opening lines to Chekov’s play The Seagull, from the deeply literal to the hyper-modern Stupid Fucking Bird. In each example, the playwright/translator team (because I agree that they should be considered a team) seek to pinpoint the essence of Chekov’s meaning while still appealing to their intended audience—mainly, English speakers. I find the idea of the playwright “leaving a mark” on the text to not be a betrayal of Chekov’s intent, but an attempt to convey that intent to a variety of possible audience members. Especially in theater, this tinkering with the original is crucial—Frayn sums it up best when they say “every line must be immediately comprehensible…there are no footnotes in theater.”
Leah Smolin - 2.25 Readings
The Translator as Performer: Theater in Translation by Jeremy Tiang
This is a great talk!
I get the idea of a playwright asking for a literal translation to base their adaptation on, but it’s disgraceful to pretend like the translator doesn’t exist. I imagine some translators aren’t interested in the art or creativity of translation and are happy to render a literal text without much recognition (or, as is also pointed out, responsibility), and to calibrate their translation to what the playwright is looking for. Even in that scenario, though, the translator deserves credit and respect. What’s wrong with these people!
‘Translation is like acting–Meryl Streep can dramatically transform her voice but she is still recognizably Meryl Streep.’ So you could say these “literal” translators are being asked to be a body double? There are probably countless comparisons to be drawn across industries.
“Lack of imagination and curiosity that has led to this state of affairs.” Yes! The theatre world seems especially restrictive and stifling.
Lawrence Senelick - Selling Chekhov Whole - On Translating the complete plays of Anton Chekhov
Is “false” so different from “fake” or “phony”? This is a game I notice translators playing (and I’m not exempt from) where one finds a clue that the author intended something slightly different than we may think, and goes “aha! the true meaning!” But often these seem insignificant.
Hingley didn’t follow Chekhov’s syntax or word order, and “relied on English cliches and catchphrases when confronted with particularly flavorsome Russian idioms”—oh no.
I love ‘I wrap it around my mustache’ for ‘make a mental note.’
Michael Frayn, A Note on the Translation
“Ivasha, Isha, Ishuta, Iva, Vanyukha, Vanyusha, Vanyura, Vanyuta, to name but a few allotropes of this same single name” Oh my!!! In a play, maybe it can be made clear that these are nicknames. I wonder if it’s possible to preserve some of the chaotic name system and somehow make up for the unfamiliarity through the acting or stage direction?
“Leonard from Vinci” haha.
The part about “The Wise Gudgeon” makes me curious how a translator could incorporate the allusion. Later Frayn mentions “expanding” a character’s reference to “reconstruct the classical saying to which it alludes.” So that’s one obvious way. I wonder about other approaches.
[About songs Chekhov originally had characters singing] “...Rayfield makes it clear that they all ironically underline and counterpoint the text, but there is no way I can see of giving this practical effect in production.” I don’t get this note. Why not translate the song? Humming sounds lame.
Strange that Freyn doesn’t explain his decision to not restore one of the lines cut by the censor.
On Faithfulness: The Difficulties Experienced by the Text/Performance Couple by Patrice Pavis
I wish Pavis would reference more concrete examples to support his points, like “We have seen in fact that many experiments do not take any certainty as a starting point, but that they invent a framework of enunciation, and a tuning and adjustment which will bring out unexpected solutions from the text, which only acting and staging can invent…” I would find it helpful if he described one of these experiments.
Theory on theory on theory. Kind of a snoozer.
“A simple and helpful measure might be to historicize and localize this debate…and not to continue to treat it as an atemporal logical problem” Yes please.
“Germany in the 1960s, with its rebellious youth discovering the ill effects of blind obedience, brutally rejected daddy’s Regietheater, and before you knew it put its great classics through the mincing machine, to a degree that would have worried even Brecht.” This is so much more interesting! The essay should have started here.
Thinking about all the debates around the Wuthering Heights adaptation while reading this.
If the readings were pared down (which would be great) I would cut this one.
2/25 Readings – Cheryl
There were so many things to unpack here but are the ones that stood out most to me: "translating from someone else's literal (or trot) and not knowing the language feels like performing brain surgery in thick rubber gloves." In the past few weeks having to translate from languages I don't know or barely know has felt exactly like this. I can't feel the pulse of the text and it makes me feel like I'm putting together a puzzle in the dark. I'm sure there's something to be gleaned from these exercises but in the meantime, I am grappling with this discomfort.
"Why are celebrity playwrights the ones being given leeway to be creative, whereas the rest of us are so often expected to be invisible?"
This was another line from Jeremy Tiang's talk that struck a chord—I've never thought about translation and accuracy in terms of power imbalances and hierarchies but it does feel like there's something there. Does it all boil down to star power and marketing value? Your name will be on the book cover or the playbill not if you deserve the credit, but if it will help it sell.
Selling Chekhov Whole – On Translating The Complete Plays of Anton Chekhov by Lawrence Senelick
Senelick makes an astute point when he says to consider that as literary translators we translate a person, not necessarily a language. This could be a reference to particular quirks of the writer, or even the odd word in a different language as used by that writer unexpected and unannounced. While I don't think translators need necessarily bind themselves to a single writer for their whole careers, I can see the argument and the benefits for doing so—if translation is listening to voices, it can only help to have one voice that your ear has been trained on intensively.
Compared to a novel or a poem where the text in its printed and bound form is a completed work, it makes sense to me that there could be more room for interpretation in the translation of plays since by nature plays are open to the interpretation of directors, casting directors, set designers and actors, all before the performance itself, arguably the "finished product" is delivered to its audience. It seems that it would not be unreasonable, therefore, to have a different set of standards or expectations for translations of plays than in other genres.
Thoughts on the Class Materials 02/25 - Maria Antonia Blandon
For Frayn, I noticed the same kind
of bet for domestication as Bly with poetry, since he really emphasized that in
his translation the characters in the play must become native English-speakers,
and in doing so, all traces of foreignness must be eliminated, even with names.
That I don’t really agree with, but what I could support was that initial
principle of ‘what would that character say if he had been a native speaker’, because
here the translator engages his imagination without losing the source reference.
For Pavis, I was reminded of George
Steiner by the use of the word ‘interpretation/interpreter’ to talk about translation/translator; even
though he uses it regarding music in his book, in this article the similarities
between theatre and translation are evident in their relationship with the
concept of the ‘original’. In this way, when a performance aims to either project
reading or restitute meaning, the same can be said of translation in the faithful-unfaithful
duo, because both practices struggle between a division that restricts plurality.
For Senelick, I admired his thorough
understanding of Chekhov’s style as a crucial aspect for translating his plays,
since I noticed that in theater there seems to be a misconception about
translation as a literal practice (the initial, mechanical aspect before
adaptation). He truly gives a master lecture about translating Chekhov’s use of
language instead of just the Russian language, putting emphasis on his sentence
structures, word order, repetitions and rhythm, since in many cases they represent
motifs in his plays. One memorable quote: “[Translation] puts the text into a
state of crisis, which is stimulating and provocative”.
For Jiang, his lecture really put
into perspective the dire image translation has in the playwriting scene, isolating
so many famous instances where there’s not even recognition of who put forward
the literal translation before a notorious playwright could adapt it. I liked
the distinction he makes of both these agents in the translation process, the
celebrity translator and the literal translator, who seem to not coexist in fear
of contamination in the creative process for the first. There seems to be a
power dynamic of subordinate and master that is also being promoted by
marketing strategies and publishing.
Lauren M Blog Post 2-24
I really enjoyed both of the translation lectures. I loved hearing Tiang’s reflections on a translation truism; “that as a translator you have to be invisible. If you’ve done your job right, people won’t even know you’ve been there, like a ninja. But if that’s the case, then how will we ever make a claim for our profession?” He later brings in the quotation from Kretzmer’s 2013 New Yorker interview, “‘Translation’— the very word I rebut and resent, because it minimizes the genuine creativity that I bring to the task.” These questions of invisibility and humility (and at times, borderline servitude) were ones I contemplated a lot in my social work career.
Senelick offered another layer when thinking of translated, “What is being translated is not Russian per se, but Chekhov’s wielding of Russian.” I tried to hold this idea while doing my Lorca translation this week along with his other idea of putting “the text into a state of crisis” (although I’m not sure I totally understood what he meant by this, would love if we discussed this concept further). From Frayn’s reading I reflected most on how censorship can impact our experience of a text in translation, and the importance of being an expert in language and medium when approaching a translation (I’ve really been feeling my lack of poetry training in this class). As for the Pavis, I got a little lost, but I liked the proposed epistemological break joining mise-en-scene and psychoanalysis against the possibility of being faithful.
Feb. 25 post Ellie Wells
I enjoyed the Senelick lecture we listened to for this week's assignments. The part in the beginning was very interesting, about that one translator who translated multiple works from different authors in the same style, without preserving any of the author's original style. This goes back to our discussion about foreignization of a translation, whether we want to keep the author's original style, even if it is less appealing to an English audience, or colloquialize the text to an American readership. In my opinion, I remain strongly on the side of foreignization, and staying true to the original text, since translators are not creators of new text, so much as they are transcribers of another text and author. I think that the belief that translators have free reign to interpret the stories in new ways is fundamentally wrong, and if this were the case, then the translator should not have become a translator, but an author. It shows hubris, to show no care for the original style and format of the work, but to instead make up your own.
On that same note, I thought that Tiang offered a very interesting perspective about the role of a literal translator compared to a transformative playwright. I agree with the points he made about literal translators not getting credit for their work. They should definitely be credited and thanked for their work, because without them, many of the plays would not have made it out of the beginning stages. They are the heavy lifters in terms of these works, and it is disheartening and demeaning to be left out of a credit because their work was only the foundation for the show. However, he and I disagree on his point about a translator having to transform the work. To some extent, I get where this perspective comes into play, because literal translations of texts are not interesting, and a lot of the time they are illegible. However, like I stated before, transforming a work through a translation in essence just makes a completely new work. It is of almost no use to read a translation in this style, because the if original intentions of the original work are transformed and changed by a translator, then the audience does not really receive the message of what the author was trying to say. Translators' jobs should be to make the work legible and interesting, and still stay true to the original author's message and meaning.
2/25 Reading Response -- Lachlan Bowden
On Faithfulness: The Difficulties Experienced by the Text/Performance Couple
Patrice Pavis’s article presented some interesting thoughts. While a great deal of it read as slightly verbose, stringing together a series of unanswerable questions, I enjoyed his ruminatations on mise-en-scene being the “compromise between…an immanent structural analysis and a hermeneutical relationship built with a new audience” (120). Moreover, his thoughts on the placement of emphasis, whether it should be focused on the text or on the construction of stage presence, acting, blocking, etc, were compelling. Maybe I’m being naive, but striking some balance where emphasis is distributed across both of these elements seems to be a good place to start. Pavis notes that by allowing a contemporary reading of a classic text, the filters of our existence can’t be done away with. But of course they can’t. Anyone attending a rendition of Hamlet, thinking they will experience the most pure and distilled reading of the text, as if William was pulling the strings back stage, is deluded. I know this is not entirely Pavis’s point, but a lot of this content seemed to circling around the point, rather than going for its heart. The clearest and most concise argument of the article, for me, was when Pavis quotes Bruno Tackels— that the director can try and tell you what the author thinks, or most so tell you what they think, “by exploiting in the best way possible.”
Anton Chekhov Plays by Michael Frayn
I quite enjoyed this translation note. Any introduction that regards the success of predecessors starts off the tone in a humble, and learning-centric manner. Further, I appreciated how Frayn noted Chekhov’s resistance to being translated in the first instance. I found this a rather funny and playful note to include. Considering translation for the stage is a fascinating thought; Frayn states that “there are no footnotes in theatre, and no turning back to a previous page.” The importance of clarifying allusions and nuances for the live audience becomes clear. I liked how Frayn laid out the specifics of his hurdles. For instance, the translation issue with Russian names, and how he found the best approach was to simplify ruthlessly. It makes me think about how understanding the degrees of allusion Chekhov intended is so vital when undergoing the process. This is because, in order to be successfully gleaned by an English audience, they may have to be notably hammed up. After all, the translator owes the reader/ audience a sense of access.
"Translator as Performer." a 2022 lecture by Jeremy Tiang
Jeremy Tiang quotes Derrida in saying that the process of translation is “productive writing called forth by the original text.” I find the sentiment of “productive” interesting. The thought of synthesizing a new piece of work seems to lend itself more to adaptation. I found Tiang’s discussion of “I am a seagull”, against the possible, “I am the seagull”, when discussing Chekhov’s The Seagull, fascinating. When discussing the opening lines of Chekhov’s play, Tiang notes that often translators feel a desire to stamp their own adaptation on such canonical texts, as they have been dealt with so many times, that there is a desire to subvert. It seems to me that the bandwidth in which a translator (or adaptor according to Tiang) can take liberties of interpretation widens in correlation with the saturation or frequency of a text's previous translations. I also really liked Tiang’s notes on the translator's voice within a project, and that this is something that shouldn’t be shied away from, because it is impossible to avoid.
Selling Chekhov Whole - On Translating The Complete Plays of Anton Chekhov
Lawrence Senelick’s lecture was incredibly illuminating. The specificity and descriptions of certain cultural references provided a lot of context. The line, “Chekhov’s dramatic output continues to reflect back on itself”, makes me think that in the pursuit of translating such a canonical author, knowing and understanding the oeuvre of their work becomes quite important. Senelick’s statement that a translation puts a text into a state of crisis is very evocative, and makes a lot of sense. There is a sense that the dead, or resting, is being surged with energy once again. Something of a mad scientist sending electroshocks through a body. Something else to think about when translating Chekhov for next week's exercise is his propensity for colloquial language and echo.
2/25 Reading Responses- Claire Kapitan
In Jeremy Tiang’s lecture, I liked how they explored translation as writing, or as a creative response to a source text. The purpose of translation should not be to override or dominate, but rather using one’s own artistic sensibilities to harmonize with the original author. Translators and their labor should not be invisible, because then we wouldn’t be making a claim for the profession. Rather, both artists and writers should have space in the work, and a translator’s unique perspectives and subjectivity should be embraced.
Tiang also talked about how the theatre is not just concerned with what is said, but how it is said. Each line affects other people on stage and in the audience, and a translator must consider what this affects with every choice they make when bringing them into English. It opens up a new world of choices that require new sensibilities.
I also loved Michael Frayn’s comparison about how translating from someone else’s literal translation is like performing brain surgery while wearing thick gloves. I thought that this beautifully described the physical labor and process of translation, the sensitivity needed to be successful, and the proper preparation or tools to achieve that success. Frayn talked about how he both writes plays and knows Russian, which made him more qualified than other translators of Chekov to understand choices that were made regarding characters and how each line has to be what a character would have said in that moment if they were a native English speaker, and must be immediately comprehensible on stage, as there are no footnotes in the theater.
In Lawrence Senelick’s lecture about translating Chekhov, he explored the difference or importance of translating a writer’s entire body of work to better understand the nuances of their lives and writing. He also argued that many translators of Chekhov ignore the linguistic aspect of his work, because they believe his writing is universal. One cannot ignore origin and its nuances, and when you translate from another literal translation, it is like playing the piano with mittens on (a play on Frayn’s comparison).
The process of translation that Senelick described also reminded me of Bly’s first step of setting down a literal version. The first version is “flat, deliberately unspeakable English," and then another version is made for the stage. It was interesting to hear both Senelick and Tiang explore translation and theatre in their lectures—how different things have to be considered in translation when a work is made for the stage. You might consider tone in a different way, the balances between characters, repetitions for stage effect, and stage economy.
Lastly, I liked how Patrice Pavis’ article explored the relationship of text to performance and hierarchies that exist within these structures. What are the distinctions between theatre as text and theatre as material? We can grasp the logic of the director, based on the choices they made for a performance; directing a play requires choosing a direction, an interpretation, an orientation, and thus reduces the range of possibilities. I don’t think that the most important thing in theatre is to identify the status of the text within the performance. It is a new medium, and will therefore yield different results. I don’t think this is infidelity. Of course, original intent/meaning should be considered, and a director should seek to transfer this meaning onto their stage, but as a mediator, changing over a text into another medium, things are always lost and/or gained.
Wednesday, February 18, 2026
2/18 Readings Kelly Haddad
As I read about Bly’s stages of translation, I was shocked at the accuracy with which he describes this process. Many of my own translations have followed this process almost exactly, even though I was completely unfamiliar with it. The first part is given to us by you, the professors. This literal translation is the foundation of everything that comes after it, and I have felt my translations evolve from choppy words to more melodic and harmonious lines after considering grammar, meaning, and tone. Perhaps the only steps that are different are the last two: I tend to look at other translations earlier in the process to gauge the meaning of certain lines, and I don’t typically involve native speakers in my translation. In the final project, this will likely be a useful step. I liked that Bly took us through the process with a complete and detailed example of a poem that he was not very familiar with. Seeing the process in action solidified the purpose of each step, and the entire process resonated with me. Both texts seem to be centered around the idea that translation is an all-encompassing process. It requires considerable time and complete immersion in the world of whatever work is being translated.
17/02 Reading Response - Sanjana Thakur
Bly, "The Eight Stages of Translation"
I had the really odd experience, as I was reading this, of finding Bly's approach to translation really thoughtful, but really not enjoying his translation of Rilke he provided as an example at all. His step-by-step process was so practical and nitty-gritty that I'm sure I'll come back to that as I work on my semester project, but I was really unconvinced by Bly's final product. It seems unfair to critique Al Poulin's translations for not being joyful enough, when I think in Bly's translation, the exclamation points are doing the heavy lifting for joy. His translation has six exclamation points––five more than the original German. Without them, I'm not sure I'd call his poem joyful either. I think I actually liked his literal translation better than any of its successive versions.
Other thoughts:
- The issue of pronouns comes up again on page 69! It's interesting how often this seems to come up, like with Jeffrey Angles and now again here.
- For stage 2, Bly asks, "What does the poem mean?" That's a difficult question to answer even just as a reader. A poem can mean many things to many people. What can/should a translator do with this multiplicity? Or is Bly asking, "What did the poet intend the poem to mean?" Because that seems like a different question.
- I thought his attention to the difference in cultural attitudes towards creativity and the idea of 'raw talent' was very interesting, as was his belief that if the translator cannot believe in the work/the writer, they should not translate it. It made me think of Schwartz's lecture, and how he had such a hard time translating Jolles because of Jolles' views.
- The Catullus reference on page 79 was a fun throwback to our first translation!
- I was curious about his idea that in the American language only lower language is alive. I wonder how inclusive his conception of an American language is, and how dialects fit into the upper-lower scale in general.
- His disdain for JB Leishman was very funny to read.
- I really liked: "We know that we haven't captured the original: the best translation resembles a Persian rug seen from the back––the pattern is apparent, but not much more" (89) and I wonder how that fits into modern discourse about the quality of a translation or how people view translations versus 'originals'.
- 89 - I was interested in Levine's attention to gender, especially as pertaining to our discussions about Deborah Smith and why she might be judged more harshly than Scott Moncrieff.
- 90 - The Balzac story sounds fascinating. Mothers and daughters and hunger and consumption are some of my obsessions as a writer so I am very intrigued by the description of that scene.
- 94 - I'm interested in her conclusion, which is contrary to Robert Bly's belief in not translating something if you can't believe in the work. I wonder if that rule is easier to follow as a man, and as a white man.
- I did not enjoy her translation at all. If ever someone asks the question, "Can you play with language too much?" I now think the answer might be yes. Surely Infante didn't write "Vegetal filaments that float, vaguely"??
- I didn't really know anything about Lorca, so it was nice to get an introduction! I was interested in his relationship with Dali and surrealism, and the questioning of the role of metaphor in poetry.
- The description of Chinese words as "comprehensible only in the context of the phrase", "always based on relation rather than substance" is interesting, as is the explanation of Chinese prosody and how that doesn't translate to English.
- I thought this was a really exciting exercise, to look at so many little translations side-by-side. I appreciated Weinberger's note that attempts to "improve" the original poem "are the product of a kind of unspoken contempt for the foreign poet".
- 20 - "In its way a spiritual exercise, translation is dependent on the dissolution of the translator's ego: an absolute humility toward the text. A bad translation is the insistent voice of the translator––that is, when one sees no poet and hears only the translator speaking."
- I do think my favourite of the translations is Gary Snyder's. I also liked Paz's third translation in the Afterword and Vikram Seth's and David Hinton's 2006 version. I liked Arthur Sze's "Bamboo Grove".
- The Boodberg translation on page 56 is fascinating! Earminded? Countertones, antistrophic, glowlight... Where is any of this coming from?
- The 2016 postscript is so funny.
Tuesday, February 17, 2026
2/18 Readings - Lane
Both of these readings reminded me that translation is, in fact, the closest of close reads. Bly’s approach to translating poetry in eight stages seems to be concerned initially with only the poetic, what with emphasis on sound and the translator’s poetic ability, but I believe it can be just as easily applied to prose translation. Both poetic and prose translation warrant a human hand and a translator with the ability to be a writer—the note about “‘translatorese,’ a language never spoken but a language translators know and laugh about’” rang true even in my experience as a prose translator. In my translation process, the first stage is always a literal rendition (though it typically occurs mentally and is not written down). I appreciated that Bly’s second stage is immediately considering “what does the poem mean,” but I thought it was too late—I always consider “what does it mean?” in the original language before I translate it, either literally or definitively. I think that a close read prior to any meaningful translation is beneficial in that it allows you to absorb the text fully within the context of the original language. Levine’s description of the protagonist being absorbed into the womb and reborn as a writer in Infante’s Inferno seemed to oddly resonate with this perspective on translation to me—if translation is a “passage” that we as translators make, it requires us to be surrounded by the text, by something external, to make it through to the other end and allow the text to be reborn.
2/18 Reading Response - Meredith
In reading Robert Bly’s Eight Stages of Translation, I was very interested in his assertion on page 71: “If we don’t [believe the poem’s claims], we should let the poem alone and not translate it; we’ll only ruin it if we go ahead.”
My initial reaction to this is to refute this idea. If I am interested enough in, and impressed enough by, a text so that I want to translate it, then surely I won’t give up just because I don’t completely agree with the ideas that the text is putting forward. In her essay, Levine discusses the ability to be “unfaithful” to the translation and still add to the deeper meaning that the author intended. If I can sidestep a contextual issue that I come across when translating and add my own spin or belief to it, then I am in conversation with the author, not ruining their work.
However, after continuing to think about the reading, Bly’s insistence on being in alignment with the author interested me when paired with his description of the second step of translating, which is moving beyond the literal meaning and delving into a deeper exploration of the text. To be able to forgo your own cultural associations as a translator, and fully explore the contrary ideas expressed in a text, allows for a delivery of fresh and exciting concepts to the (in our case) English canon. A translator who, as Bly says, believes that “the most sorrowful or repentant will catch the earth” would have trouble realizing the full English potential of a non-native cultural idea of joy being the winning trait.
On another note, I just genuinely enjoyed reading Bly’s essay, and I think the eight steps will be very helpful when thinking about our own final translation projects for this semester. Levine, on the other hand, was difficult to get through—while I understood the point she was trying to make about language and playfulness, it is most definitely not for me. Her writing seemed simultaneously saccharine, clownish, and overly dense, which I believe detracted from the interesting points that lay buried beneath a mountain of puns.
On Disliking Levine (and other responses to 2/17) - Mary
This week, I loved the Robert Bly article in The Kenyon Review, and I was thoroughly confused how the Suzanne Jill Levine article got published anywhere, and it made me seriously question the quality of SubStance in the 1980s.
First, Levine: This made me never want to read Infante’s work. The article was so full of irrelevant name-dropping and puns and strange understandings of what feminism is that it read more like a chaotic commentary on why gibberish is allowed and even commendable than it said anything interesting to me about Infante’s work. IF it is an accurate reflection of Infante’s work, then it fits into Bly’s first round of cuts for me—this would be a work so full of puns that it would be impossible for me to enjoy it, to see it as actual humor or wit, and I would have to refuse translating it. If this is more a reflection of Levine’s own “faithfully unfaithful” or “exaggeration of the periodical elements” than I think is, honestly, embarrassing and even shameful. I think the word shame is warranted here—I do NOT think of translation as “another form of parody,” nor do I think of poetry as just language wanting to be music, or just feelings, or…. The list goes on. Mostly, parody is a very difficult and precarious art, and it’s probably further from “play” than more faithful translations. It risks harm and irony where they do not belong. And good God does the article make women look bad…. Some of the commentary on the role of women in Infante’s work could be interesting, if it wasn’t for the narrator shoving her own ego into the article: “Where does this leave a woman as translator of such a book?” Honestly: Who cares?!! When I draw on the great works of literature from the past, I don’t see my role as a “betrayor” and I don’t see history as Freudian or Nietzschian (see how annoying that name dropping can be?). I see myself as taking part in a serious, developing conversation about what it means to be human—flawed, but not some great deceptive irony. “Crafty craft” …. I digress.
Now I’m running out of space. Let me just say that, in contrast, Bly’s piece was articulate, clear, nuanced, intelligent, and I learned quite a bit from it. The stages were helpful, and I especially appreciated how he noted all along the way the things that might turn us away from continuing on the journey of translation. In great contrast to the quite masculine (!!!) energy of Levine’s barralling through a text one has serious disagreements with using subversion, irony, craft, and betrayal, Bly approaches translation with a certain humility: the time is never wasted, but all along the way we have to keep asking ourselves if we can accept the foreign idea, the foreign concept, the foreign feeling. “During this stage, then, we test how far we are willing to go . . . If we don’t [believe], we should let the poem alone and not translate it; we’ll only ruin it if we go ahead.” And again, in the context of drawing on a Western or Puritan understanding over the Greek (/German, though that is kind of complicated) understanding of discipline and joy: if we cannot see joy as the drive over repentance, we “should not translate this poem—something will go wrong.” And, one more example, “At the end of this stage, the translate should ask himself whether the feelings as well as the concepts are within his world. If they are not, he should stop.” Other things I loved in Bly’s essay was the emphasis on drawing on the genius of the English language and paying close attention to making something work in English rather than writing a “translatorese,” and I especially appreciate his note about the dangers of “a pious trust in ambiguity which amounts to a refusal to think the question through or risk an answer.”
This reminds me of our conversation last week. Sometimes, you have to add a word or rearrange the sentence for the sake of saving the image, and the feeling, and the meaning, and ultimately for the sake of clarity. But nothing should come (in my opinion) above clarity. That doesn’t mean that you eliminate all multiplicities of meanings in interpretations of the poem—a clear image or metaphor is exactly what opens up those meanings—but it does mean that when something reads as ambiguous, you don’t give it an automatic pass. You struggle with it, and ask yourself if it is because you are still in an early stage speaking “translatorese,” or because there is a deeper impasse in your ability to carry the meaning forward into English, because you really don’t believe in the poem. I think of my own revulsion with Catullus…. It was fun for an exercise, but I could never truly translate his work. There’s probably more to be said about that.
On the Translation Strategies Used by Levine and Bly - Maria Antonia Blandon
Through a mix of translation theory,
practical examples, feminist criticism and even psychoanalysis, Suzanne Levine threads
an overview of her translation of the novel Infante’s Inferno (1979) in
order to illustrate how translation can create a subversion of the original when
engaged in a parody game proposed by the author. This comes from the liberation
she felt when translating authors like Manuel Puig, Severo Sarduy and Guillermo
Cabrera Infante, since the original has been considered as another translation,
“Memory is a text translated into another text” (92); considering what is lost
and what is gained after crossing the language barrier, and the implications of
rereading in trespassing from one context into another, subversion is the strategy
of translation. I would agree, then, that her case makes for a very compelling
argument in that translation involves constantly seeking fragments that can be
reconciled in the resulting text, where the only clue in this task is to find
the similar in the dissimilar.
Where Levine’s strategies are more
diffusely described in her piece, Robert Bly takes it upon himself to structure
the stages for translating a poem, which made me think about the stages of
grief; maybe translation involves a little bit of grief, when the idea of easy
transference is killed as Bly takes the reader through the intricate path of
literal translation, semantic meaning, rewriting, spoken language, mood, sound,
naturality and final draft. Following a close example of him translating a
random Rilke sonnet, we come across considerations that range from linguistics
to semantics, from fluency to sound, which engage different levels of literary
appreciation that a reader uses to understand what the poem is saying. Even
though I don’t usually translate poetry, I found that his breakdown of
translation is most insightful, and, as with Lydia Davis’ article for last
week, most useful since there’s not that many accounts of such a thorough
exercise as Bly proposes. I quite liked his honest way of approaching this
task, because it made the text so relatable in seeing translation as a process
that constantly shifts, changes, mutates in front of our eyes, and in that
there’s many opportunities for finding the most appropriate choice we feel for
the text we are translating.
2.18 Readings__Yide Cai
I have very conflicted feelings about Robert Bly’s close examination of his own translation. On one hand, I find his methodology deeply admirable. His willingness to produce multiple drafts, to move patiently downward into meaning, and to be transparent about his own cultural bias as an American translator are all genuinely illuminating. His reflection on “spring,” for instance how in an American context it suggests freedom and spontaneity, while in German it carries the sense of something earned through discipline and labor was especially revealing to me. That kind of self-awareness feels rare and valuable.
I was also struck by his comment that every language has two ends, and that the “high end” of English is essentially dead, while German still allows a writer like Rilke to access both extremes. This resonated strongly with me as a writer, particularly as a playwright. Theater may be the art form where this loss is most acutely felt: contemporary English drama often feels trapped in a narrow band of register.
Yet, despite how compelling Bly’s process and insights are the final translated poem he arrives at reads terribly to me. Phrases like “wholly glad,” along with his use of ellipses (“…”) feel stiff, and strangely inhuman. They don’t sound like spoken English, or even written English. Ironically, I much prefer the Al Poulin translation that Bly criticizes. Even Bly’s own third version (on page 9) reads far better to me; from that point onward, each subsequent version seems to deteriorate. This gap between method and outcome is unsettling. His interpretation of the poem feels sound and intelligent, but the translation itself fails to carry that intelligence into language.
I’m also uncomfortable with Bly’s recurring obsession with “pagan” versus “Christian” worldviews, and his digressions into Nordic and Celtic mythologies. These tangents feel oddly fetishistic and largely ungrounded in Rilke’s actual life or intellectual formation. At moments, they verge on something uncomfortably close to white supremacist romanticism. Rilke, in my understanding, is about as far from a “Nordic” writer as possible. He lived extensively in France, was shaped by pan-European traditions, and, like most major writers, freely drew on Greek and Roman concepts alongside Christian imagery. Bly’s insistence on this binary feels more reflective of his own preoccupations than of Rilke’s poetic world.
My experience reading Suzanne Jill Levine was almost the opposite problem. As someone who knows very little about Cuban literature and only has limited familiarity with Spanish or Latin American cultural contexts, I found her essay regrettably inaccessible. The language feels heavily coded and self-referential, as if it assumes an intimate familiarity with Infante’s work and with Spanish-language literary play. Without already speaking Spanish or having read Infante myself, I struggled to grasp what was at stake. Rather than opening the text up, the essay seemed to close in on itself.
And unrelated to the readings, I have also been developing a broader thought about translation as a practice in different cultural contexts. In English-speaking countries, especially in the U.S., translation often feels like a luxury rather than a necessity. There is no real urgency to translate other languages into English; the world already comes to English. In China, by contrast, translation is a necessity. One simply lives with it. People don’t ask as many theoretical questions about whether translation is “possible” or “faithful enough”. It must happen. That difference in urgency fundamentally shapes attitudes toward translation, the demographics of who becomes a translator, and the kinds of risks translators are willing to take.
02/18 Reading Response - Lachlan Bowden
THE EIGHT STAGES OF TRANSLATION Robert Bly
In Robert Bly’s eight stages of translation essay, I found the third stage to particularly resonate with how I am currently thinking about the translation process. He writes, “we return to our literal version and see where it lost the meanings just found. We redo the original and try to get it into English this time.” This notion of meaning being understood through an iterative process is comforting in lessening the weight of having to instantly understand a piece when translating. I think this is something I’ve struggled with in regard to some of our earlier translation exercises. Feeling as though I must wholly comprehend the purpose and intention of a piece before approaching it is potentially stifling. Therefore, reading Bly’s breakdown of stages, and the meaning that surfaces through this process, was illuminating. I also found stage five particularly interesting in tone. This is something I find myself scrutinising over during the exercises. So when Bly said, “The younger we are, the easier it is to make mistakes in tone”, I felt a lot better. Bly closes this section with talking about recognising the balance of the original, training the eye to notice the slight variations between “high and low, dark and light”. I really like this sentiment.
Translation As (Sub) Version: On Translating Infante's Inferno by Levine
In a section where Suzanne Jill Levine speaks about alliteration, I found myself particularly struck by the line: “In poetry, feeling is the meaning.” Levine continues to note how Infante’s Inferno is about such alliteration and the sensual ability it holds to make the reader “conscious of an unconscious tendency to use language as music”, it seems clear that this must be an aspect that the translator must maintain in their approach. Again, this got me thinking about how important it is for a translator to be able to recognise or feel what makes a poem/text unique or special. There must be a hierarchy of prioritisations, which is dynamic and malleable to what the translation requires. Though I appreciated the academic approach, I will note that a fair portion of Levine’s essay I found rather hard to follow.
19 ways of Looking at Wang Wei
I thoroughly enjoyed this read. It was such an informative and fun piece. While Eliot Weinberger has the habit of being excessively critical (and maybe, at times, a bit cruel), the discernment in which he conducts his reviews is earnest, passionate, and backed by extensive knowledge. There is a section where Weinberger talks about the ego of a translator, and the tendency to feel the need to “improve” a poem. I found this very compelling. However, I can sympathise with the translator / writer here. Moreover, when some translators make the statement that the best translation of a poem is by a poet, it is understandable that the poet feels the urge to insert themselves. It is a natural desire to bring oneself to the table, to enter into the conversation. However, I do agree with Weinberger in his sentiment that the ego of a translator should be as hidden as possible. I particularly enjoyed his note on translation number eight, by Chang Yin-Nan, where he said that “it never occurs to Chang and Walmsley that Wang could have written the equivalent of cast motley patterns on the jade-green mosses had he wanted to. He didn’t.” This was such a great line, which also acted as somewhat of a revelation for me. Of course the poet had considered my alterations!
2/18 Readings – Cheryl
As someone who has never really translated in more than two stages (maybe I should?) it was both fascinating and intimidating to be given a peep under the hood into Bly’s very intensive and systematic process of translation. I could see the logic in the way he progressed from one stage to another and concurred with most of it except for stage 4, “translating into [the local contemporary language of your intended readership].” Mainly my objection is: is there no room for writing in the style of a different era or place in the interest of conveying a text’s cultural or historical or linguistic context? (Or even for the pleasure of it?)
One thing that did stand out to me and that I’ve not yet come across in other papers on translation theory/practice is the counter-cultural wisdom that sometimes I translator should exercise restraint: “If we don't, we should let the poem alone and not translate it; we'll only ruin it if we go ahead.” We’re not often told to not translate something, in fact, as a student in a Literary Translation MFA programme we’re very often made to translate things that I don’t feel even slightly qualified or sometimes particularly compelled to translate. A cliche: we’re so busy asking if we could, that we forget to ask if we should. It takes some arrogance to be a translator—this I know—but maybe there is a time and place for humility too.
The section in Suzanne Levine’s paper, “Marginality” reminded me of Emma Ramadan’s talk a few weeks ago in which she also mentioned works that present translators with opportunities for “play,” in the way they challenge the pliability of the language they were written in—in this framework, writer and translator are partners in the crime of linguistic subversion.
Reading Response 2/18- Claire Kapitan
In Robert Bly’s “The Eight Stages of Translation,” I liked how he described the first translation as a “thrust.” You are merely getting the literal version down and ignoring all nuances until later iterations when he brings meaning and clarity back to the piece. Bly then broke down how to consider meaning, spoken language, the poem's tone or mood, and the perspectives of native speakers, which I found very helpful in understanding translation processes.
I also liked how Bly compared plants and the earth to poems and human beings; how a poem cannot blossom without human touch, mind, feeling, voice, and body. He argues that it is not enough to know a poem, but it also has to be “sung” or carried by the body into music or sound.
This reminded me of how Chloe Garcia Roberts talked about making a translator’s work more visible in the age of AI, and how precious human touch and work are becoming. AI can only copy between languages (often sloppily or terribly) or produce translations based on what it has ingested or learned from. Only human minds and labor are capable of the important nuances and sensibilities that are required for translation, or creative writing in general. I liked how Roberts claimed that AI will always be at our heels, consuming what we feed it.
This is a small note, but I also loved how Bly talked about a Vallejo translation he remembered reading when he was young—how he knew the emotional range was something he did not understand and therefore could not enter into—these feelings of grief could not be faked, and Bly could not follow him there. I thought this was a nice reflection on encountering emotion that you know is not accessible or understood by you, yet.
In Levine’s essay, I liked how she talked about how translators can be most creative, inventive, or subversive on the level of language—playing with language, exposing its infidelity to itself, creating new literature by parodying the old. I also liked her interrogation of how Infante’s Inferno makes a distinction between speaking anf talking—of how women’s weapon is in their word in philosophical texts because they talk endlessly, chatter, overflow with sound, but they don’t actually speak in the book, as if they have nothing important to say. As a female translator of this “oppressively male” work, she had to decide how to either change or transfer these ideas, all while knowing it would never be a literal expression of herself. I liked how she defined it as “an activity caught between the scholarly and the creative, between the rational and the irrational” that is a route or passage through which fragments of language, texts, and oneself might be reconciled (94).