Becka Mara McKay on teaching translation
Thursday, March 29th, 2012Over at the Words Without Borders blog, Becka McKay (translator of Blue Has No South and Lunar Savings Time) guest-posts about teaching graduate translation workshops:
I was hired in 2009 to teach translation in Florida Atlantic University’s MFA program—something that had never been offered in the MFA curriculum. To encourage as many students as possible to register for the translation workshop, I decided that I would not require that they know a second language. Working from the premise that proficiency and flexibility in English were the most important requirements for students in this particular workshop—and that together we would find resources to assist their understanding the various source languages—the translation workshop has, over the last three years, produced some remarkable projects. These include:
- A translation/stage adaptation of The Tale of Genji set in a postapocalyptic Japan
- A hybrid form that I am still searching for a way to name that consists of a translation of a Strindberg short story woven together with a lyric essay about the translator’s process
- Translations of Hawaiian petroglyphs
- A plan for a scratch-and-sniff, pop-up book translation of the Song of Songs
- A graphic version of Don Quixote
- An adaptation of a feminist Senegalese novel as a series of blog entries written by an African-American woman from Alabama





