Displacement, Migration, and Women in Translation: Personality and Text

Four translators of Russian literature discuss women in translation, their career trajectories, how and why it started, and how they view the craft and its wider benefits to the cultural community. What do women bring – historically and now – to the art and craft of translation? What social and economic factors affect their work? In what ways do translators’ personalities and identities affect the production and reception of their work? Migration and emigration has always been central to the history of translation and cultural exchange. How has the war in Ukraine changed the world of Russophone literary translation over the past year? In our time, with many writers, critics, and readers uprooted from their homeland, how does translation play a part for good? How do translators’ voices provide a voice for challenge and change?

Cathy McAteer is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Exeter, UK, for the ERC-funded project: The Dark Side of Translation: 20th and 21st Century Translation from Russian as a Political Phenomenon in the UK, Ireland and the USA. Her research interests are in Russian and Soviet literature in English translation during the twentieth century, using archival material to shed new light on translation commissions.

Anne O. Fisher condemns the Russian Federation’s ongoing war of aggression on Ukraine. She teaches in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Translation and Interpreting Studies program. Prize-winning translator and former president of the American Literary Translators’ Association, her translations include Ilf and Petrov’s 12 Chairs and The Little Golden Calf. Read about them and moreat https://www.anneofisher.com/.

Carol Apollonio (Slavic and Eurasian Studies Department, Duke University) has translated several novels from Russian and Japanese. She is a former contract US State Department interpreter, specializing in nuclear arms. Author, translator, and editor of many books and articles on 19^th-century Russian literature, she follows Russian writers on their travels around the world on her blog, https://sites.duke.edu/chekhovsfootprints/.

Nora Seligman Favorov is a Russian-to-English translator specializing in literature and history. She is also translations editor for Russian Life magazine and chief editor of SlavFile, newsletter of the American Translators Association Slavic Languages Division. Her translation of Sofia Khvoshchinskaya’s City Folk and Country Folk was recognized by the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and Eastern European Languages as “Best Literary Translation into English” for 2018.

To join by zoom, please use this link: https://duke.zoom.us/j/96790240257