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Post-Undergraduate Literary Translation Studies Programs in the US and Abroad

We, the wide-eyed and over-eager interns at Archipelago, are about to enter our senior years of college, and inevitably the question arises: when you’re interested in translation, where do you go from here? We wanted to look at literary translation studies options, but couldn’t manage to find a single comprehensive list on the Internet. So we made one ourselves.

US programs for literary translation studies (loosely listed in order of commitment to literary translation as opposed to business translation or interpretation programs)

Queens College CUNY MFA in Creative Writing and TranslationHere’s an article written by Susan Bernofsky (who was a visiting faculty member at Queens College in 2010) on why it’s important that a translation program be an MFA and not a track of Comparative Literature, and why it’s good to be in NYC.

University of Rochester Master of Arts in Literary Translation or Graduate Certificate in Literary Translation. These programs also give students a taste of the professional side of translation publishing through working with partnering organizations Open Letter and Three Percent.

University of Texas, Dallas Master of Arts in the Humanities or Doctor of Philosophy. To get a better idea they also provide a general degree plan. There also happen to be three different translation-related publications on campus.

University of Arkansas MFA in Translation. Like the Queens College program, this program is closely aligned with creative writing, as opposed to comp lit, and thus Susan Bernofsky is a fan! The website gives painfully little information about the program except that it’s 3 years long. University of Arkansas Press seems to publish a lot of their students’ stuff.

UMass Amherst Masters in Translation Studies. A separate track of the Masters in Comp Lit,  you choose to specialize in either literature, business, or technical translation. Most students take more than a year to finish it.

Indiana University Bloomington Certificate in Literary Translation or a graduate specialization under the Comp Lit track. Plus our beloved translator Bill Johnston teaches there.

University of California Irvine Comparative Literature PhD Emphasis in Translation Studies. Opportunity to work with the International Center for Writing and Translation which is located at UCI.

Washington University in St. Louis Graduate Certificate in Translation Studies. Part of the comp lit department and for PhD candidates only.  You can also look at course offerings here.

University of Illinois Online Certificate in Applied Literary Translation, which entails intensive literary translation tutoring via e-mail, ending with Dalkey Archive publishing the student’s first book, “designed to help translators at any point in their early careers.” There’s also the Certificate in Translation Studies, which is not online, and seems to be a mix of literary and business translation studies, maybe with an emphasis on business translation but with literary translation courses offered.

University of Massachusetts Amherst Master of Arts in Translation Studies, which is a separate track of the MA in comp lit. Students choose one of the following specialties: literature, business, or technical translation.

Binghamton University State University of New York Doctoral Program or Graduate Certificate in Translation or Master of Arts in Translation Studies. All three are a part of the comp lit program, but seem to have some non-literary translation requirements thrown in. The MA also has a teaching requirement, which is “normally fulfilled by teaching an undergraduate comparative literature course or a series of such courses.”

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Graduate Certificate in Translation or Master of Arts degree in Language, Literature, and Translation: Translation Concentration, both of which seem to include some non-literary translation requirements.

Columbia University LTAC’s joint concentration program, “which offers MFA students the opportunity to pursue a joint course of study in both writing and translation, and to complete a thesis that includes both original writing and translations. The evolving curriculum for the joint concentration includes translation workshops, seminars, and master classes that explore the creative act of literary translation and its connection to creative writing.” Circumference is based out of the Center for Literary Translation at Columbia.

NYU Master of Arts in Literary Translation. This program is French to English only, one year with six weeks spent abroad in the summer at the NYU Paris center “to meet with contemporary French writers, publishers, and foreign rights managers.”

Non-US programs for literary translation studies

Trinity College Dublin Master of Philosophy. Students work closely with Dalkey Archive Press, and one lucky student gets chosen for an internship with them that leads to a publication.

University of East Anglia (in Norwich, UK) MA in Literary Translation (MALT). Based in the School of Literature, which is home to the British Centre for Literary Translation (BCLT) and the international John Dryden Translation Competition. Opportunity to intern with BCLT, other perks like reduced rates for language classes and summer programs.

The University of Edinburgh- 1 year MSc/Dip in Literary Translation as Creative Practice

The American University of Paris Master of Arts in Cultural Translation. This program includes literary translation and can be mostly that if you want it to, but also expands the definition of translation to be so much more. Students work with the Center for Writers and Translators.

Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Master in Translation Studies. Spanish or Catalan only, has a slight business-y feel to it.

Oxford Brookes University MA in Publishing and Language. Not so much literary translation based, but I wanted to add this to the list because of its focus on translation within the publishing world, which might be worthwhile to anyone interested in literary translation but also trying to make money (weird).

We hope to keep improving this list so if we left somewhere out, made a mistake, etc, please let us know! E-mail emma@archipelagobooks.org.

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Famous Last Lines, as Told by Online Translators

We all know that the robot takeover is imminent. As a test of our future job security under the cold rule of machine, we here at Archipelago Books decided to test the abilities of our robot counterpart: the online translator. Using the programs, we translated from language to language and eventually back to English. The results, we must say, look promising. HAL 9000, I want a corner office and benefits.

We start with Gatsby. (All terrible translations facilitated by the endlessly amusing Bad Translator!)

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Original text:

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

…8 translations later, Bing gives us

“Thus we have won against current around the back of the private ship. Responsibility.”

From poignant meditation on the impossibility of recreating the past to syntactically vague military report, with an unadorned, “Responsibility” tacked on the end, like a reminder from a stern father. Bing Translator, ya nailed it.

We thought this one would be a layup.

1984, by George Orwell

Original text:

“He loved Big Brother.”

…35 translations later, Bing gives us

“The love brothers.”

We admit that 35 may have been a bit much, but has there ever been a more straightforward sentence? Pronoun, verb, proper noun. Easy. Instead, we get the name of a Canadian Wrestling Hall of Fame Tag Team? Tisk, tisk.

With Nabokov, it almost felt like cheating. This time, courtesy of freetranslation.com.

Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov

Original text:

“I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita. 

…18 translations later, freetranslation.com gives us

“Long-term overseas art asylum of angels, prophets and calm. If you want to share your Lolita.”

Nope, nope, pretty sure Humbert was not interested in sharing Lolita.

Hey. We see you over there in the corner, TransPerfect translator. You think it’s so funny, why don’t you show us what you can do with Mr. Dickens?

A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens

Original text:

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known. 

9 translations later, TransPerfect gives us:

 Odlega holanr fao I j robiem Naprawd odlege Wute iin mn. 

That’s what I thought. “Odlege Wute iin mn,” indeed.

Fellow translators and publishers thereof, I’m happy to say that the state of our union is strong.

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A translator is…

A translator is a professional schizophrenic, continuously wandering on the edge, risking his sanity in the crashing zone of two languages and two cultures. He is operating in an elevated state of mind, as if in trance––indeed, it is a creative trance, a state of bipolarity, of being at two places simultaneously, moving parallel in two worlds. In this sense, he is an exotic stranger, an itinerant of the ever-growing literary world. Invisibly, condemned to solitude, he enters this atypical state of awareness, becomes a trance-later.

Zoltán Pék
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Least Appropriate Summer Reads from Archipelago

For those who hate gossip and sex and crime and intrigue and dogs as central characters…

For those who can’t stand page-turning plots and to-the-point sentences…

For those who’d rather appreciate a well-bound hardcover than sop up tipsy spills of pre-noon drinks with their airport paperback-cum-cocktail napkin…

We, the ARCH INTERNS, have compiled a list of Archipelago Books titles that will keep your summer full of literary brilliance, along with a wildly inappropriate amount of misery for this fine weather.


1. Chukchi Bible by Yuri Rythkeu

In our least imaginative effort, Chukchi Bible is set somewhere cold. Very cold. Lucky for us, Rythkeu picks up the slack in the imagination department (it’s a day of limited mental productivity from your Arch Interns). Shamans, half-whales, and mothers of the human race included.

2. A Dream in Polar Fog by Yuri Rythkeu

Also Rytkheu. Also cold. Less mysticism, more Dances with Wolves/Pocahontas/Avatar, but better, because we here at Archipelago do not support the essentialization of native cultures. Noble savage, no sir. 

3. Georg Letham: Physician and Murderer by Ernst Weiss

Treatise from a sociopathic murderer-physician, and we decided to put a rat on the cover. 

4. Tranquility by Attila Bartis

Some snippets from the inside cover: “Oedipal nightmare”; “suffocating totalitarian embrace”; “maniacal tyranny”; “a Sartrian hell of hatred, lies and appeasement”; “unrepentantly neurotic.” Best read with multiple umbrella-garnished cocktails whilst lolling on some equatorial beach, a metaphorical counterweight to the 292 pages of misery held between your newly tanned hands. (Michael, Intern 2 of 2, can’t in good conscience actually recommend you read this book this summer). Also, incest.

5. Yalo by Elias Khoury

Decidedly different in themes, tone, and featured artists than that annoying Drake song, “YOLO,” (cringe) Yalo is one tragedy after another until you get to the end, where another tragedy happens, but in a sort of sad-yet-uplifting way, so at least there’s that.

6. My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Masculinity and self-loathing and alcoholism in the classic John Cheever/Raymond Carver style, except with a writer who isn’t too insecure to actually use a metaphor. And he’s pretty good at it, too. And did we mention he’s handsome

7. Lenz by Georg Buchner

The author died at 23,  and the subject matter is a playwright’s tragic descent into madness. Any questions?

8. Poems (1945-1971) by Miltos Sachtouris

Emma (Arch Intern 1 of 2) likes these poems a lot, which means they are probably well-written but also grotesque and sad and meander along with no semblance of narrative, because these are the sorts of things she reads.

So there you have it. Did I mention we sell these books? And a few others. Buy them here.

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Four titles from Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector now available from New Directions

newdirectionspublishing:

These Lispectors, as well as The Hour of the Star, are now available as eBooks. We’ve got you covered on the off-chance, hypothetically, you might want some Clarice on your phone and your iPad and your Nook and your computer, as well as your bookshelf. Hypothetically.

Buying options on our website.

Cover design, of course, by Paul Sahre.