Experiential Translation Online Seminar: Karen Bennett and Arianna Autieri

Join us for the third meeting of the Experiential Translation Online seminar with talks by Karen Bennett on “Ezra Pound and his contemporaries: Experiential translators avant la lettre” and Arianna Autieri on “Translating or performing? Joyce’s fugue in experimental translation”. 

This event is free and open to everyone. There'll be plenty of time to ask questions and join in the discussion after the talks.

More about the ETOS

Ezra Pound and his contemporaries: Experiential translators avant la lettre
Karen Bennett
Nova University Lisbon

This paper explores the connections between the type of translation currently being explored under the rubric of experiential (Vidal and Campbell, forthcoming), experimental (Lee 2022, Robert-Foley 2023, Robinson 2023) or avant-garde (Lukes 2023, Grass 2023) translation, and the translation experiments of high modernists like W.B.Yeats, T.S. Eliot, and particularly Ezra Pound.
At a time when translation was conceptualized as the transfer of information between two (verbal) languages and predicated upon a notion of ‘equivalence’ that privileged semantic invariance above adaptation or experimentation, these poets went against the grain by using it as a vehicle for their own creative output, in part to fulfil the modernist agenda of cultural renewal through engagement with the past and with non-European traditions. Practicing a foreignizing strategy designed to expand the creative possibilities of English, they produced works that consciously foregrounded the material aspects of the text, blurring the boundaries between author/translator, source/target texts and the verbal/visual/musical.
This paper begins by exploring some of the translation experiments undertaken by Ezra Pound and his contemporaries, before going on to consider their parallels and connections with the objectives of the Experiential Translation Network. Particular attention will be given to the contextual factors influencing the drive towards creative translation in each case.

Translating or performing? Joyce’s fugue in experimental translation.
Arianna Autieri
Goldsmiths, University of London

Following James Joyce’s claim that the “Sirens” episode of Ulysses imitates a fuga per canonem, scholars have variously sought to identify a fugal form in it (e.g. Zimmerman 2002, Witen 2018), or to define its other musical qualities (e.g. Shockley 2009). Where disagreement between scholars makes it unclear for the reader of “Sirens” how music and language can interact in the episode, Kathrine O’Callaghan has recently drawn scholars’ attention to the performative dimension of music, emphasising the need for a more active role on the part of the reader in bringing to life the language of “Sirens” to appreciate its musical qualities (2009; 2018, 2020).
In my forthcoming monograph, I contribute to studies in this field from the standpoint of a translator, a reader who concretely “performs” the ST’s score with the linguistic material of the target language. Specifically understanding translation as “interpretive” and “partial” rather than “faithful” and “total” (e.g. Lukes 2023; Reynolds 2019), I rely on “experimental translation” (Robert-Foley 2020) as a means to make visible my translator’s “performance” of the ST (Scott 2018), graphically foregrounding my musical reading and interpretation of the ST’s “word music” (Scher 1970), the songs embedded in the main text (Bowen 1995), and the leitmotifs of “Sirens”. This paper will introduce some of the key principles of my forthcoming study and will present some examples from my experimental musical translation of “Sirens”.