Across Languages and Cultures or The Challenge of Literary Translation. The case of S. Mayne, S. Cisneros and Stevie Smith

MARÍA LAURA SPOTURNO

Nueva York

Congreso; Creativity, Play, and the Imagination across the Disciplines; 2011

Teachers College, Columbia University

This interdisciplinary workshop aims at exploring the work of three poets and writers, whose literary production poses interesting challenges for literary translation: Seymour Mayne (1944-), a Jewish Canadian poet, Chicana writer Sandra Cisneros (1954-), and the British poet and novelist Stevie Smith (1902-71). Workshop objectives include: 1. The analysis of different aspects involved in the production and translation (English-Spanish) of a set of texts whose nature might be described as hybrid and heterogeneous; 2. The study of the configuration of the discursive image (ethos) which appears as the entity responsible for the global enunciation of the texts; 3. The examination of the aesthetic effect and reading dynamics enacted in both source and target texts. More specifically, workshop activities will be designed to approach the following question: How is meaning built in a set of texts which seem to define their nature in the combination of multilingual, interlingual, visual, and iconic elements? And consequently, how is meaning to be recreated and rendered in the target text and culture? It will be argued that the creative process evident in the source text should be a key factor in the design of relevant translation strategies.