Translation Workshops

Emerging Translators Workshops

I set up the New Books in German Emerging Translators Programme in 2011, and it now runs annually. A key element is the day-long workshop, which all six participants attend. The translators circulate approx. 1000 words of their work-in-progress translation beforehand, and the workshop then gives the opportunity for all participants, the translator Shaun Whiteside and myself to discuss the work in progress and offer advice and suggestions. Following the workshop, the participants work in pairs, remotely, to continue to offer advice and feedback on each other’s translations.

In 2019 we expanded the workshop into a two-day event. On the second day the six translators visited three publishing houses in London, meeting editors interested in translated literature and learning a great deal about the industry.

For more information about the Emerging Translators Programme, click here.

Oxford Translation Day 2016OTD poster

I ran a translation workshop for Oxford Translation Day 2016. Twenty participants – undergraduates, school pupils, teachers, postgraduates,  academics, translators – explored translation issues arising from the recent Channel 4 series Deutschland 83. From the ‘translation’ of the opening credits for a UK audience to more conventional questions surrounding subtitling, the interactive workshop gave participants the opportunity to reflect on the issues and to try their hand at translating for the screen. For more info on Oxford Translation Day, click here.

Oxford Translation Day 2014

Emil coverI co-hosted a translation workshop as part of the first ‘Oxford Translation Day’ in June 2014. The workshop, aimed in particular at undergraduates and sixth formers, focused on the classic children’s novel Emil und die Detektive, by Erich Kästner (1929). The novel provides fascinating material for discussion, largely due to the range of registers that Kästner employs.

For more information about Oxford Translation Day, click here.

 

Writer-in-Residence at Oxford: Felicitas Hoppe

Picknick der FriseureIn the winter term of 2012 I ran a translation workshop at Oxford University with the award-winning German author Felicitas Hoppe. Hoppe was then DAAD Writer in Residence at Oxford, having been awarded the prestigious Büchner Prize earlier that year. Over 50 sixth formers, undergraduates and graduates took part in the workshop, which began with an on-stage discussion with Felicitas Hoppe about her writing and her own translating work (notably Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham / Grünes Ei mit Speck). Participants then translated the opening paragraph from Hoppe’s short story ‘Die Pilger’ in small groups, before discussing the issues that arose with other groups and with Hoppe herself.

Angelika Overath – Women in German Studies

Overath COVERIn summer 2012 I ran a translation workshop at the Women in German Studies conference, held in Dublin. Groups of delegates worked together on translating short passages by the conference’s Writer in Residence, German author Angelika Overath, before presenting them to the group. The translations, from Overath’s Alle Farben des Schnees, generated lively discussion amongst the participants and with Overath herself.