Translation and Human Rights in Troubled Times
Celebrating the launch of UConn’s Program in Literary Translation with an evening of award-winning translators.
At a time of international unrest and misunderstanding, the UConn Storrs campus will host an evening of talks by three distinguished translators of world literature to discuss how translation can protect and celebrate human rights across the boundaries of language.
Carles Torner – director of the worldwide literary advocacy group PEN International – will join acclaimed translators Edith Grossman and Esther Allen on Feb. 21, 6PM at the University of Connecticut’s Konover Auditorium. Their subject: the key role that translation plays in protecting human rights through the sharing and preservation of the stories and poems that form cultural identity.
In her genre-defining book Why Translation Matters, Grossman writes: “Despotic governments are willing to go to extraordinary lengths in their usually successful, tragic official efforts to control, restrict, and narrow access to the spoken and written word.” Join us as we celebrate the spoken and written word, and explore the ways a new generation of translators can contribute to this important work.
This event is co-sponsored by UConn’s Humanities Institute and Human Rights Institute.
Date: Tuesday, February 21st, 6PM (with opening reception)
Location: Konover Auditorium, Thomas J. Dodd Center, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT
Participant biographies:
Carles Torner has published several books of poetry in Catalan, the most recent being La núvia d'Europa (Europe's bride, 2009). In 1998 he was awarded the National Critic's Award for Viure després (Life afterwards). His most recent collection of fiction and nonfiction essays is L'arca de Babel (Babel's arch, 2005). He has held senior positions in PEN International (1993-2004), and is at present the Head of the Literature and the Humanities Department of the Institut Ramon Llull, which aims for the international promotion and translation of Catalan literature.
Edith Grossman is an award-winning Spanish-to-English literary translator. She has translated the works of Mario Vargas Llosa and Gabriel García Márquez, and her translation of Don Quixote has been praised by Carlos Fuentes and Harold Bloom. She has translated all of García Márquez’s books, as well as works by Mario Vargas Llosa, Mayra Montero, Alvaro Mutis, and Julián Ríos. Grossman is the author of Why Translation Matters.
Esther Allen has translated Javier Marias, Jorge Luis Borges, Felisberto Hernandez, Flaubert, Rosario Castellanos, Blaise Cendrars, Marie Darrieussecq, and Jose Marti. She is currently a professor at Baruch College (CUNY) and has directed the work of the PEN Translation Fund since its founding in 2003. Allen has received a Fulbright Grant (1989), a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship (1995), and was named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters (2006).
For more information, contact: Peter Constantine at peter.constantine@uconn.edu