Trauma in Translation: Representations, Rewritings, Adaptations
Option coordinator:
Dr Joanna Rzepa (Russian and Slavonic Studies)
Aims
The module aims to acquaint students with key theoretical concepts relating to the representation, translation and adaptation of traumatic past. It aims to explore artistic responses to historical traumas, alongside questions of memory, memorialisation, trauma, and witnessing. It helps students develop skills of close-reading, critical analysis, interpretation and argumentation. It encourages them to analyse, interpret, and critically evaluate translations and adaptations of literary texts of various genres, including theatre and film adaptations. In their essays students explore their own research interests in the field: these could include the genres of slave narratives, migrant fiction, war poetry, or refugee writing.
Module content
This module explores how trauma and traumatic past is represented, translated and rewritten in literary texts of different genres, including theatre and film adaptations. It focuses on the questions of the role and responsibility of the translator, the relationship between aesthetics and ethics, and the complex connection between literature, translation and cultural memory. Through close attention to the voices of those living with trauma, the module provides a reflection on cultural history that continues to shape our responses to different forms of prejudice, racism and violence against the other.
The module is divided into four thematic blocks:
- The module begins by examining the question of translation and rewriting in colonial and postcolonial contexts (Angela Carter’s and J.M. Coetzee’s rewritings of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, as well as two film adaptations of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness).
- In the second part of the module, translations and film adaptations of narratives addressing totalitarianism and the experience of communism and post-communist transition are considered (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Herta Müller, Zlatko Dizdarevic).
- The third part of the module focuses on the Holocaust and how it is represented in works of different genres (poetry, narrative prose, graphic novel) by first- and second-generation survivors (Tadeusz Borowski, Paul Celan, Art Spiegelman).
- The module concludes by exploring texts related to the present-day refugee and migration crisis and the issue of human rights violation. We look at translated poetry volumes that capture the experience of refugees, detainees, and people living in war-stricken areas (Maram al-Masri’s Liberty Walks Naked and Frank Smith’s Guantanamo).
Learning outcomes
Upon successful completion of the module students should be able to:
1. develop their textual competence by analysing, interpreting and evaluating key primary and secondary sources in the field of translation studies, trauma studies, and cultural memory;
2. identify culture- and history-specific elements of both source and target texts by analysing and researching conceptions of translation, rewriting and adaptation that formulated in specific historical, political and cultural contexts;
3. develop their intercultural and intertextual skills by engaging with texts and translations from different cultures, languages, and historical periods;
4. evaluate a variety of translations and adaptations produced in different historical contexts;
5. critically appraise the relationship between aesthetics and ethics of translation and the concept of translator as witness and translation as testimony.
Assessment
Students will write a research essay of between 4000 and 5000 words on an approved topic relating to the course content, and utilising a theoretical approach covered on the course.
Recommended Reading List
- COLONIALISM AND POST-COLONIAL RECKONING
Daniel Defoe, The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (London: Penguin Books, 1999) [excerpts]
Angela Carter, ‘Master’, in Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories (New York: H. Holt and Co., 1996).
J.M. Coetzee, Foe (New York: Viking, 1987).
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness - THE TRAUMAS OF TOTALITARIANISM
Aleksandr Isavevich Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, trans. from Russian by Thomas P. Whitney (New York: Harper Classics, 2007).
Bohumil Hrabal, I served the King of England, trans. from Czech by Paul Wilson (London: Vintage Classic, 2009). [excerpts]
Herta Müller, The Land of Green Plums, trans. from German by Michael Hofmann (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2010). [excerpts]
Zlatko Dizdarevic, Sarajevo: A War Journal, trans. from French by Anselm Hollo, ed. from the original Serbo-Croatian by Ammiel Alcalay (New York: Fromm International, 1993). [excerpts] - HOLOCAUST MEMORY AND REPRESENTATION
Tadeusz Borowski, This Way to the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, trans. from Polish by Barbara Vedder (New York: Penguin Books, 1992). [selected short stories]
Paul Celan, “Deathfugue”, three different translations from German by John Felstiner, Michael Hamburger, and Jerome Rothenberg.
Tadeusz Słobodzianek, Our Class, in a version by Ryan Craig, from a literal translation from Polish by Catherine Grosvenor (London: Oberon Books, 2012).
Art Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor's Tale (New York: Pantheon, 2011). [selected chapters] - THE TRAUMAS OF TODAY: HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE REFUGEE CRISIS
Frank Smith, Guantanamo, trans. from French by Vanessa Place (Los Angeles: Les Figues Press, 2014).
Maram al-Masri, Liberty Walks Naked, trans. from French by Theo Dorgan (Cork: Southword Editions, 2017)