[See this newsletter formatted in a separate browser window.].

The events in this week and next in our Translation Mondays series at North Quad encourage students to explore literary translation. On October 1st, Canon Translation Review hosted a party celebrating the release of its second issue. Next Monday, October 8th, we will feature a panel on “how to become a literary translator.”

This is the last week to view the special collections exhibit at Hatcher Library on “Translating Homer: From Papyri to Alexander Pope” (through October 7). A highlight is the discovery by curator Pablo Alvarez of an 1862 letter by a UM student fighting in the Civil War who rescued a translation of Homer from the flames in New Orleans and sent the book as a gift with this letter to his Greek Professor.

On our blog, read accounts by current UM students who visited the exhibit and went on their own odyssey into the library to find other translations of Homer.

Last Monday, in response to the library exhibit, UM faculty members participated in a panel discussion moderated by Professor Yopie Prins about the long and varied history of translating Homer. Professor Richard Janko (Classics) showed images of recently discovered examples of early Greek writing, Karla Mallette (Near Eastern Studies and Romance Languages and Literatures) related the dramatic story of the translation into Latin in the time of Petrarch, Pablo Alvarez (MLibrary Special Collections) highlighted some of the most exciting items shown in the library’s exhibit, Sean Silver (English) analyzed the history of Homer translations into English over the past five centuries, and Ruth Scodel (Classics) wrapped up the presentations by drawing our collective attention to the impact of the choice of translation in the classroom.

In conjunction with these theme semester events on Homer, Contexts for Classics at the University of Michigan is pleased to announce a creative contest in Translating Homer. For information about other contests in conjunction with the translation theme semester, click here.

Upcoming Events, October 1-8

North Quad Translation Mondays: Release Party for the 2nd Issue of Canon Translation Review, an online journal of translation by UofM students. Join us for a reading featuring this issue’s contributing writers.
Monday, October 1st, 7pm, 2435 North Quad

New Ways to Engage Students in Interdisciplinary Learning: Pedagogies of Translation – This session explores various disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts for teaching the concept of translation. To register for this program (and lunch), click here.
Tuesday, October 2nd, 12:15-2pm, CRLT Seminar Room: First Floor, Palmer Commons Building

Buddhist Medicine in China: Disease, Healing, and the Body in Cross-cultural Translation – A lecture by C. Pierce Salguero, Assistant Professor of History at the Abington College of Pennsylvania State University.
Thursday, October 4th, 12pm, Room 1022, South Thayer Building (202 S. Thayer, at Washington)

Translation at the Origins of Italian – A lecture by Alison Cornish (UofM RLL). Part of La settimana della lingua 2012: How Italy Speaks Itself, sponsored by the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures.
Thursday, October 4th, 4pm, 2175 North Quad

Translating Echoes from the Past: Music-Making and the Politics of Listening and Relatedness in Turkey – A combined lecture and musical performance exploring the centrality of music in historical and contemporary practices of assimilation and cultural revival in Turkey by Nikolaos Michailides, Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology at Princeton.
Monday, October 8th, 4pm, Kalamazoo Room, Michigan League

North Quad Translation Mondays: Panel discussion about becoming a literary translator, with Luise von Flotow (Director, Univ of Ottawa Center for Translators and Interpreters), Dwayne Hayes (Managing Editor, Absinthe: New European Writing), Ben Paloff (Assistant Professor, UM Slavic Languages and Literature), Christi Merrill (Associate Professor, Asian Languages and Culture), Meg Berkobien (Intern, Words Without Borders). You’ve dabbled in translation. You’ve worked and reworked the poem that has haunted you since the day you first read it in a foreign tongue. But what comes next? How does translation work outside of the classroom? We’ve brought together a panel of translators, scholars, and publishers to help shed some light on how translating for publication operates both within and outside of the academic sphere, and how to take the next step in entering the world of literary translation.
Monday, October 8th, 7pm, 2435 North Quad