Is something always lost in translation—or—as Jorge Luis Borges suggests, is it “the original [that] is unfaithful to the translation”? Taking inspiration from Borges’s challenge to the paradigm of translatability, this class takes a closer look at exactly what translation attempts, why, and at what (ethical, political, cultural, psychological, aesthetic, etc.) cost. Developed as part of the course “Contemporary Poetry And/As Translation,” taught at Emory University in Spring 2017, this website interrogates questions of translation. As an instantiation of the course “Literatures Beyond the Canon,” here “translation” is meant to take on many valences, including those which subvert—or explore the driving forces behind—canonicity.
