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Translation Specialists
Three students have made their mark as translators of SpanishStudents collaborating with faculty members sometimes see their work result in the publication of a co-authored piece in an academic journal. But a trio of Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures Professor Steven White's students are becoming old hands at getting their own scholarly work published.
Tia Rabine '02, now a graduate student in Spanish at the University of Albany; Justin Bland '03, of Falmouth, Mass.; and Sylvia Mello '04, of Danvers, Mass., have had a number of works published, all as undergraduates.
In the fall of 2001, Rabine, Bland and Mello participated in a class and some workshops taught by White, on translating works of literature written in Spanish. They translated some poems written by Chilean poet Teresa Calder—n, winner of the 1992 Pablo Neruda Prize who works in the School of Journalism at the University of Chile and directs poetry workshops in Santiago. That semester, Calder—n visited campus to give a poetry reading, and the three students read their translations of her work at the same event.
Assignments for the class, Stylistics & Translation, included writing reviews of books in or about translation. The reviews written by the three students were published the following year, in Cadernos da Tradu, a journal from the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil that specializes in literary translation. Bland's review of Umberto Eco's Experiences In Translation; Rabine's review of Changing The Terms: Translation In The Post-Colonial Era, edited by Sherry Simon and Paul St-Pierre; and Mello's review of Who Translates? Translator Subjectivities Beyond Reason, by Douglas Robinson, all appeared in the volume.
Early in 2003, an article titled "An ABC of Translation," co-written by the three for one of White's workshops, was published in Issue 64 of Translation Review, from the University of Texas at Dallas. The review, according to its publishers, "is unique in the English-speaking world. While many literary journals publish translations of the works of international authors in English translation, Translation Review focuses on the theoretical and critical aspects of transplanting a literary text from one culture into another."
Also in the spring, Beacons, a publication of the American Translators Association's Literary Division showcasing translations of the works of the foremost writers from languages other than English, published five of the translations of Calderon's poems done by Mello, Bland and Rabine. Beacons is edited by Alexic Levitin, of SUNY Plattsburgh's English department. -Macreena Doyle