Translations Times

Translation Times Newsletter of the Translation Center | 2018 - Spring 2020

Newsletter of the Translation Center | 2018 - Spring 2020

Table of Contents

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Director’s Note A letter from Prof. Regina Galasso.................... Page 3

Translation Activity.................... Page 6

Books contributed by the Translation Center for the 2019 Sant Jordi Translation Contest

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At the Translation Center................................................... Page 30 Academics, Presentations, and More........................................... Page 34

On and In Translation............. Page 24

ON THE COVER: Zecchi, Barbara Reading Emily Dickinson's Body [collage/oil pastels and acrylics/paper on canvas] 2018. Private Collection, Massachusetts Barbara Zecchi, Professor of Cinema and Iberian Studies and Director of the Interdepartmental Program in Film Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, was Director of the Translation Center from 2014 to 2016. In November 2019, she exhibited her art at the Emily Dickinson Museum as part of the "Emily Dickinson in Translation" event during Amherst Arts Night Plus.

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Greetings, Translation Center Community and Friends Near and Far! Welcome to Translation Times! I hope this newsletter finds everyone healthy and hopeful that better days are ahead.

W

e started assembling this newsletter in the summer of 2020 and wished to release it at the start of the fall semester.

However, the constant flow of shifts associated with the pandemic slowed that plan down. But here it is! Some of you will know that this is not the first newsletter the Translation Center has ever published. In our archives, we found volume 1, issue one, published in December 1996.

It was called Translation Center News. In 1999, the publication had another name Translation Times. Reports were also published in addition to newsletters. Some of these documents from the archives are on our website. We’ll continue to use Translation Times as the title.

This current issue covers 2018-2020. Following what was done in the past, Translation Times includes news from the Translation Center--projects we work on and activities we sponsor--and on scholarly and educational activities related to translation initiated by members of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the nearby collegesAmherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and Smith.

The last time we tried to count, we identified over 70 faculty members affiliated with our five campuses who either translate literary or scholarly texts or publish about translation phenomena.

(Please see the “People” section on the Translation Center’s website. If there’s an update we need to make, please let us know!) An article "Bridging the Gaps of Language," that was published in a local newspaper in May 1979 announces the opening of the "new UMass Translation Center" and calls our

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DIRECTOR’S

NOTE

university and colleges “a harbor filled with multilingual persons.” Four decades later, it still is!

Although we look out for translation-related activities on our campuses and in the area and many of you send us updates, there are certainly things we miss, so, please, let us know about them.

Apologies for the many events and activities we missed including here! Translation Times relies on contributions from our community members. Look out for a call for contributions from the Translation Center at the end of the spring semester for the 2020-2021 newsletter. If you have content you’d like to share before then, please send it to Aitor Bouso Gavín, our graduate student assistant. I thank Aitor for collecting the content for and putting together this current issue. I also thank our undergraduate student assistant, Vitor Silva, for helping him. Their example shows that students continue to be an important part of the work of the Translation Center. I thank the students who contributed pieces to this newsletter and the faculty members who responded to our call or accepted our invitation to contribute to this newsletter.

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Newsletter of the Translation Center | 2018 - Spring 2020

One of the highlights of the past two years was the Translation Center’s 40th anniversary. On September 30, 2019, International Translation Day, we held a celebration at the Translation Center in Herter Hall which began with a workshop with literary translator Emma Ramadan followed by a reception featuring remarks by the Translation Center’s former director (1994-2014) Edwin Gentzler, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature, Dr. Julie Hayes, former Dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, and UMass Amherst faculty and students, a book display titled “On and In Translation,” curated by graduate student Hyongrae Kim (Comparative Literature Program), an open mic, and sweet treats. This newsletter includes the celebration’s program and a letter from Professor Gentzler to mark this milestone.

Another highlight from the past two years, has been the creation of a workshop series for interpreters and translators in education. The workshop series provides an educational and professional setting in which participants can learn more about the standards and procedures of interpreting and translation and helps schools improve the quality of language access offered to families. The first version of the program was developed in the summer of 2018 for Holyoke Public Schools upon the request of Dr. Stephen Zrike, former superintendent/receiver for HPS, for bilingual school employees who offer translation and interpreting services in their schools. Since then, the Translation Center has offered the series to other school districts, including Amherst Regional Public Schools (see Paulina OchoaFigueroa’s article), and freelance translators and interpreters. The individual workshops are led

by UMass Amherst faculty members, including Professors Meghan Armstrong-Abrami, Moira Inghilleri, and Cristiano Mazzei, and professional interpreters, translators, and individuals with notable experience in language access in education

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The Translation Center provides an essential service to many individuals, organizations, museums, schools, and businesses by translating documents, scheduling interpreters, and more to meet urgent needs.

lead the individual workshops. UMass Amherst graduate students provide support to the workshop instructors and participants, and help the Translation Center manage the series. The workshop series includes a customized language assessment led by Professor Danielle Thomas in collaboration with graduate students, translators, and interpreters, that helps districts and schools determine if their bilingual employees should develop their skills as interpreters, translators, or both. The workshop series transforms and expands depending on the profiles and needs of each district, and what we learn from participants.

Starting in the 2020-2021 academic year, a partnership with the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education will allow over 100 bilingual employees from multiple school districts throughout the state to participate in the workshop series.

In looking through files, the Translation Center has a history of working with Massachusetts partners to develop programs to meet specific needs regarding interpreter and translator education. The Translation Center has a history of helping the state to improve language services. In the late 1990s, the Translation Center responded to a request from the Trial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and developed, again, thanks to collaboration with UMass Amherst faculty and graduate students, a customized “Spanish for Court Employees” course

offered statewide, starting in Holyoke, Worcester, and Dorchester. In 2000, the Translation Center developed another program with state courts to “increase the pool of qualified interpreters in the state” with the goal of improving “the delivery of justice in the Commonwealth and to provide jobs for UMass graduates in the language programs” (Fall 1999, Translation Times). I’m thrilled to be a leading part of the Translation Center’s history of efforts to bring together the expertise of our faculty and students to help the state strengthen language access for its residents.

These two highlights and many of the events you’ll read about in this newsletter represent events and programs that take more than a day to create and carry out. But on a daily basis the Translation Center provides an essential service to many individuals, organizations, museums, schools, and businesses by translating documents, scheduling interpreters, and more to meet urgent needs. The current pandemic has exposed language access divides in Massachusetts and beyond. The Translation Center continues to work with longtime clients and has enjoyed learning about the needs of new clients.

In times like these and always, everyone must get the message. Our project managers, Shawn Lindholm and Río Hernández, continue to carry out the everyday operations of the Translation Center. They have adapted to working remotely during the pandemic and kept our essential services running as smoothly as possible despite furloughs and other obstacles. THANK YOU! An increase in the demand in our services means that the Translation Center has been able to offer more work to our translators and interpreters, and they have not let us down. Thank you! Please continue to encourage individuals, organizations, businesses, and companies to translate with us. The best way to reach the Translation Center is at our new email address translate@umass.edu. Pass it on!

Although the Translation Center offers the same services as language service providers, we are not

the same because we belong to UMass Amherst.

The work we do is set in a larger context where so many people are thinking about translation and translating. And that makes a difference. The more support the Translation Center receives from clients and partners, the more support we can offer to the community, the university, faculty, and students.

Don’t miss the words from our students in this newsletter. They are such a special part of the Translation Center. And thanks to their time with us, students gain valuable professional experience and develop an awareness of responsible language use and language accessibility that they will have with them forever to influence their professional and intellectual lives. The current brand campaign of UMass Amherst is BE REVOLUTIONARY. Being revolutionary sits very well with translators because we know that translation changes everything, translation challenges everything, and that every translation makes a difference. In his book Translation and Rewriting in the Age of PostTranslation Studies (Routledge, 2017), Professor Gentzler says “...translation is one of the most revolutionary acts: bringing across an idea or form from another culture and offering the possibility to change people’s lives” (230).

For Spring 2021, besides continuing to work on essential projects of all sizes in multiple languages, we especially look forward to having a search for an assistant director of the Translation Center. In the next issue of Translation Times, we’ll include content related to translation activity from the 2020-2021 academic year. Happy New Year!

Take good care and be in touch,

Regina Galasso, PhD

Director, Translation Center Associate Professor, Spanish and Portuguese Studies UMass Amherst

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Newsletter of the Translation Center | 2018 - Spring 2020

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Scholarly and educational activities featuring translation by members of the community of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the nearby colleges.

Sant Jordi: A Festival in Translation Saint Jerome may be the official patron saint of translators, but lately it is George, the patron saint of Catalonia, who has been inspiring new ways of celebrating translated literature.

Each year the Catalan festival of Sant Jordi, or Saint George’s Day, which falls on April 23 and is widely known as the Day of the Book and the Rose, gives rise to events worldwide that can be located on a trilingual platform in Catalan, Spanish and English at #BooksandRoses.

This year at UMass Amherst the annual Sant Jordi celebration took place as a virtual guest visit by esteemed translator Peter Bush to the Catalan Studies Facebook page. In his video lecture, Bush commented on new work in translation, in particular on a selection of texts from Barcelona Tales (Oxford University Press, 2019). He shared how the 6

stories he chose for the anthology show a city in transformation, and touched on choices a literary translator must make related to research, creative liberty, self-editing, and collaboration. Through this format, Bush’s talk reached over 700 visitors.

A passage might be a place to walk, or a portion of literary text, or a means of moving toward transformation. In one of the texts from Bush’s anthology, Miquel Molina’s prezviously unpublished story “The Three Steps,” a young man makes a pilgrimage to meet an author during Barcelona’s Sant Jordi festival. As the narrator walks the length of the city, he must negotiate the wonderfully phrased “to-and-fro of books and roses.” The encounter leads to a rewriting of reality and expectation, culminating in, as many translators will surely appreciate, a punctilious typographical correction.

Barcelona Tales stories translated by Peter Bush

Since a to-and-fro of books and roses was not possible in person in 2020, students in the Catalan Studies program created their own online celebration. Their creative responses included a tap dance, video booktrailer, song recordings, and even instructions on how to carve soap roses for handwashing in response to the pandemic. Beyond its traditional focus on all things literary, Sant Jordi has become an occasion for community building through the embrace of new interpretations.

Hillary Gardner

Lecturer of Catalan Studies Spanish and Portuguese Studies UMass Amherst

Inside Taifa Llibres.

Carrer de Verdi, Barcelona.

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Newsletter of the Translation Center | 2018-2020

Playwright José Manuel Mora works with students and faculty.

Theater and Translation at UMass Amherst Since 2018, the Translation Center has participated in a joint collaboration with the Spanish and Portuguese Studies Program and the Cultural Office of the Embassy of Spain to promote Spanish theater and performance. In April 2018, Angélica Liddell visited our campus for the premiere in the United States of her play with texts from her poetry collection Los deseos en Amherst (Desires in Amherst). Liddell, an award-winning and internationally recognized Spanish playwright, director and performer, played her personal homage to Emily Dickinson’s poetry and aesthetics.

Los deseos en Amherst was presented at UMass and the Embassy of Spain in Washington DC thanks to the collective effort of a group of students, faculty, and community members, who translated the supertitles.

will bring Spanish playwrights to campus in the next three years.

Mora worked with students in a staged reading of the translation of his play, Los nadadores nocturnos (The Night Swimmers). I commissioned the translation to Elena Igartuburu, PhD candidate in the Comparative Literature Program. Igartuburu participated in the staging of the play along with other student actors. I was able to attend some of the rehearsals. As an observer of the artistic process I experienced the negotiation of translation decisions with the playwright and the cast. This experienced reaffirmed me on the benefits of making the translator participate in the rehearsal room along with the rest of the artistic team.

David Rodríguez-Solás In October 2019, UMass Amherst hosted José Manuel Mora, recipient of an artistic residence that 8

Associate Professor Spanish and Portuguese Studies UMass Amherst

TRANSLATION ACTIVITY

Translat Library The UMass Amherst Libraries announced the launch of Translat Library, a new journal based at UMass Amherst and published through ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst in collaboration with the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in Spain.

The journal is devoted to the literary culture of Europe from 1300 to 1600, with an emphasis on vernacular translations, the Romance letters, and the Latin tradition. Albert Lloret, Associate Professor and Director of Spanish and Catalan Studies at UMass Amherst, serves as general editor of the Translat Library, together with Barcelona Professor Alejandro Coroleu.

The Editorial Board is composed of a roster of scholars from the UK, Italy, Spain, and the U.S. Translat Library stems from a long-term project led by a group of researchers based at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. The project, which has received funding from the Spanish government since 2006, culminated in 2018 with the publication of a monograph as well as a database on medieval Catalan translations (Translat is the medieval Catalan word for both ‘translation’ and ‘copy’).

Inspired by the sections of notes and manuscript excerpts that were common in 19th century journals, the journal aims to offer a venue for research based on archival and documentary work.

It seeks to publish short articles documenting the identification of a manuscript or incunable, the source of a text, archival information on an author or work, the paratexts of a rare edition, the complete or excerpted edition of an unpublished text, and published but neglected text, among other topics.

Albert Lloret

Associate Professor Spanish and Portuguese Studies UMass Amherst

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Newsletter of the Translation Center | 2018 - Spring 2020

High school students from Waltham participating in a workshop series on translation.

Waltham Partnership for Youth (WPY)

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A high school on a Saturday morning is a rare sighting. Each step and noise echoes around the empty hallways and rooms, full of traces of the vibrant life of weekdays. A tall, teen boy with a head full of black hair breaks the silence. He discusses with a classmate, a girl also in her teens with bright brown eyes, which of the Spanish words for the second person “you” they should use to translate a health-related brochure. Once they reached an agreement, they started writing on their computers, looking through online dictionaries, asking each other questions, and reading aloud their impromptu translation to the other five students in the room.

Partnership for Youth (WPY). The program allowed high school students that speak English and Spanish or Haitian Creole to learn about standards and procedures of translation in school and community settings through practice activities, language lessons, homework assignments, and a final project. Students presented and reflected on their work in a closing session with other classmates, family members, WPY, and Translation Center staff before receiving a certificate of completion. About her experience in the workshop, Lisset Herrera wrote: “I have learned a lot about translation. My goal has always been to help the community, and I have seen that (translation) is really one of the ways to go.”

This scene took place last winter, during one of three in-person sessions of a workshop series in translation created by the UMass Translation Center in association with The Waltham

María Camila Vera

Graduate Student Spanish and Portuguese Studies UMass Amherst

TRANSLATION ACTIVITY

THE TRANSLATION CENTER WORKS WITH AMHERST REGIONAL PUBLIC SCHOOLS:

A Remote Workshop Series The Translation Center provided a remote training workshop series to the employees of Amherst Regional Public Schools who serve as interpreters and translators within the school community. The workshop series provided an educational and professional setting in which participants learned more about the standards and procedures of school interpreting and translation, carried out role-playing practices, reflected on specific situations, and built a network of fellow interpreters and translators.

Every Thursday, for four weeks, participants accessed a video lecture on general and specific topics of school translation and interpretation.

The first week, Nicholas Magnolia (UMass alum) presented an overview and history of interpreting and translation, as well as general roles and key vocabularies for school interpreters and translators.

The second session, also led by Mr. Magnolia, featured policies and procedures, dual-role interpreting, study case scenarios, and interpreter introductions. Katherine Moonan (Isenberg ‘21) led

the third session on the translator and interpreter code of ethics and gave an overview of case studies related to educational settings. The final session was imparted by Professor Regina Galasso on the translation of school documents, procedures and processes, IEPs, and glossary development.

After each lecture, participants took a quiz and each Friday, they discussed, explored, and put into practice the knowledge they learned that week. Following each practice session, participants were encouraged to continue these conversations through an online chat. The aim of this workshop series was to help schools improve the quality of their interpreting and translation services and transform the treatment of language throughout the schools.

Paulina Ochoa Figueroa Graduate Student Spanish and Portuguese Studies UMass Amherst

Words by Professor Regina Galasso to accompany the Translation Center's workshops for interpreters and translators in education.

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Newsletter of the Translation Center | 2018 - Spring 2020

Captions L to R: Professor Emeritus William Moebius, former Dean of HFA Julie C. Hayes, Librarian Jim Kelly, Professor Emeritus Francisco Fagundes, and audience members. Carla Suárez Vega and Elena Igartuburu.

Professor Jeremi Szaniawski.

The Translation Center at 40: A Student’s Perspective orking in academia, we immerse ourselves in our research and our teaching, making it difficult to get out of the closed campus community. I believe that, for the past 40 years, the Translation Center has been, especially for graduate students, a door into the real world. My experience working with the Translation Center as a Spanish-English interpreter for the past four years has been truly rewarding. Working there has given me the opportunity to put into practice the knowledge and resources previously acquired in the translation courses I took at UMass Amherst.

Through the different assignments that I have done throughout the years for the Translation Center, I was able to see how translation is needed on many different spheres on a daily basis. From interpreting for workers in training sessions at restaurants or at human resources meetings, to assisting in parentteacher conferences at elementary schools, these experiences have given me the opportunity to get involved professionally in the community.

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As an interpreter, one of the assignments was especially fulfilling. Last year, thanks to the Translation Center, I went back to high school for a whole semester, at age almost 30. My role there was to work as both an interpreter and a tutor for two siblings who just arrived in Massachusetts from El Salvador. Even though I had to be in class at 7 am, which meant getting up at hours I didn’t even know existed, being able to work with these children and helping them make the transition to the United States easier was one of the most enriching experiences I have ever had.

The Translation Center does not only make the professional world available to us, it also provides an incalculable service for the Western Mass community.

Carla Suárez Vega

Graduate Student Spanish and Portuguese Studies UMass Amherst

TRANSLATION ACTIVITY

Seminar on TranslationS This year (2019-2020) the Kahn Liberal Arts Institute of Smith College sponsored one of its year-long seminars on TranslationS. Co-directors, Janie Vanpée and Nalini Bhushan and thirteen Smith College faculty from such diverse disciplines as Computer Science, Data Science, Chemistry, Philosophy, East Asian Literatures, Sociology, French Studies, Italian Studies, Spanish Studies, Portuguese, Comparative World Literatures, Classics, and two members of the Five Colleges from French Studies and Translation and Interpreter Studies, along with five Smith students, met weekly to discuss the work of translation as a practice, as a way to engage with the fundamentals of their own disciplines, as a model for transforming the liberal arts to include linguistic, cultural and political difference at the very center of its mission, and as a tool for social change.

and dissemination of translations; challenging the political and economic forces that determine the global flow of translations; and finally, discussing how to conceive and talk about translation beyond the traditional binaries that seem so entrenched and sclerotic.

Participants presented projects that varied from translating a molecule into music; translating the prominent Indian philosopher, KC Bhattacharyya’s Subject as Freedom, into an English that acknowledged his avant-guard philosophical concepts; exploring the metaphors and examples of subversive translations that Cervantes evokes in Don Quijote to critique the dominant racist and religious ideologies of 16th century Spain; investigating translation in the creation and recreation of dance performances; questioning thethe differences between adaptation, imitation, and translation and the role of authenticity; discussing the role that ethics plays in selecting texts to translate, especially texts from indigenous cultures, and in situations of political and violent conflict; challenging the model of translation as it is appropriated in commerce and in neoliberal discourse applied to the non-Western nations; acknowledging the subjectivity involved in translation and the place of affect in the practice

Arvind Mehrota spoke about the evolution of his approach to translating Indian poetry and then led us in a workshop where we tried our hand at translating a Hindu poem.We visited the Yiddish Book Center where Director Madeleine Cohen and Professor Justin Cammy discussed if and how the translation of Yiddish literature contributed to the preservations and survival or the demise of the language. The first semester concluded with the visit of Vittorio Parisi, Head of Learning and Research, Villa Arson, Nice. His presentation focused on street art as an intersemiotic translation of cultural texts and historical styles (Mexican muralism; Fascist aesthetics) re-contextualized in a contemporary political environment and re-purposed as an ironic comment.

Guest lecturers joined us at intervals throughout the year to share their perspectives on translation in their work. Translator Emma Ramadan inaugurated the seminar with the discussion of her translation of Brice Mathieussent’s Revenge of the Translator, a biting satire that explores the various identities and roles that a translator takes on visà-vis the author of the original text. Professor Jill de Villers shared her research on the problem of translation in cross-linguistic work in assessment of children, specifically the Roma in Eastern Europe.

Sergio Medeiros, the Argentine poet and translator of indigenous texts, launched the second semester, followed by the visit of the Brazilian Continued Next Page

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Newsletter of the Translation Center | 2018 - Spring 2020

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indigenous environmetal activist and politician, Sônia Guajajara and Elena Langdon, her interpreter. Guajajara’s activism echoed Medeiros work in preserving and disseminating indigenous knowledge and culture through his literary translations and anticipated the visit of translation studies scholar, Michael Cronin. In midMarch, the pandemic scattered us to the confined spaces of our homes, but we resumed our conversations over Zoom without losing a beat. We were grateful that Michael Cronin was able to join us via Zoom for a public lecture and subsequent discussion in our seminar. His insights about translation’s growing use of technology and its effects and potential for activism in the looming environmental crisis resonated acutely with the social and cultural changes brought about by the pandemic. resonated acutely with the social and cultural changes brought about by the pandemic.

Janie Vanpée

Professor French Studies and World Literatures Smith Colllege

Emily Dickinson in Translation: Artwork and Poetry at Amherst Arts Night Plus I was generously invited by Professor Regina Galasso to be the featured artist for the fascinating event “Emily Dickinson in Translation” at the Emily Dickinson Museum on November 7, 2019, for the Amherst Arts Night Plus organized by Brooke Steinhauser, Program Director of the Museum. For this edition of Amherst Arts Night Plus, I prepared artworks inspired by the theme of the woman at the window. I am intrigued by the representation of the window as a liminal space that, either physically or symbolically, frames and is inhabited by a wide range of trespassing bodies.

In Golden Age Spanish literature, the term “ventanera” (woman-at-the-window) referred to a woman who, according to men, was thought to enjoy exposing herself in the window as the object of the male gaze. However, from her own point of view, we might argue that the “ventanera” was a woman who dared to look and to be the subject of her own gaze.

The “ventanera” is thus a powerful trope for women artists.

I couldn’t think of a better example of a “woman-at-thewindow” than Emily Dickinson, a “ventanera” par excellence!

For this event, I brought together three series of interconnected works, all inspired by my “ventanera” trope. The first was six video-graphic essays that put into dialogue Emily Dickinson’s proto-modernist poetry with the imaginary of early women filmmakers and modernist painters: Elvira Giallanella from Italy, Germaine Dulac from France, and Remedios Varo, Maruja Mallo and Ángeles Santos from Spain. Early cinema granted women spectators a window to the world that gave them an unprecedented freedom. The second included the ventaneras series (oil pastels, acrylic paintings, and collages) representing a wide range of female silhouettes: lonely women who tried to break through the window barrier; or women-at-the-window that embraced other female bodies thus challenging the Continued Next Page

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TRANSLATION ACTIVITY

Professor Barbara Zecchi with her artwork at the Emily Dickinson Museum during Amherst Arts Night Plus.

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Newsletter of the Translation Center | 2018 - Spring 2020

gender binary in multiple ways. The third was the rulli series (oil pastels and acrylic paintings) that represented the window itself, as I experienced it during my upbringing in Venice. Rulli are traditional Venetian windows made by filigree stained glass rondels that dramatically shape the way one sees the exterior. The glass becomes a filter that injects vivid colors to the landscape.

Similarly, as art historian Xiao Situe has recently argued, Dickinson’s vision of the exterior was mediated by the uneven texture and distortions of the 19th-century New England window glass.

What a privilege it was to exhibit my artwork in Emily Dickinson’s home. What an enchantment to see “my” women at the window on display in Dickinson’s hallway, while translations of her poems were read and discussed in the parlor. Thanks to Professor Regina Galasso, video images became written words; written words became Catalan, French, Portuguese, and Spanish sounds; foreign sounds became English poems; English poems became colors. What a powerful way to experience the magic of translation! A special thanks to Director Brooke Steinhauser for allowing my ventaneras to spend a night gazing through those iconic windows, whose panes are so infused with the poet’s gaze.

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Top left: Professor Barbara Zecchi's artwork and video essay on display.

• Professors Barbara Zecchi and Luiz Amaral, and former Dean of HFA Julie C. Hayes. • Paulina Ochoa-Figueroa reads the poems of Emily Dickinson in Spanish translation. • Emily Dickinson's poems with Catalan translations.

Barbara Zecchi

Professor Spanish and Portuguese Studies Director of the Film Studies Program UMass Amherst

Professor Edwin Gentzler's Letter to the Translation Center March 12, 2018

Dear friends, Thank you for this opportunity to talk about the development of the Translation Center during my many years there. The Center, when I started, was not new, but had been around since its founding in the mid-1970s by Fred Will and Warren Anderson, both professors of Comparative Literature. Pioneering in its vision, the Center offered paid translation projects to students and faculty of the Five Colleges.

It also coincided with the founding of the Five College Faculty Seminar in Literary Translation and the founding of the journal Metamorphoses, which continues to publish, partially subsidized by the income from the Translation Center. I merely inherited a visionary program with a strong tradition.

But when I arrived at UMass in the early 1990s, the Center

had fallen on hard times and was only generating a couple thousand dollars each year, barely coving its expenses.

Further, there was limited quality control, so some of the translations were not up to par. Lee Edwards, then Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts, consulted me, and I suggested that one could either close the Center or try to run it at a profit. Fortunately, she chose the latter, and the Center’s growth and success has been a marvel.

Lee Edwards envisioned a fullservice center—offering major and minor languages, as well as small and large projects. Her model more than succeeded: not only have profits grown, but the educational benefits have proved enormous. Ironically, the educational benefits haven’t been just for students, but for faculty as well.

In 1994, when I started, I thought I knew a lot about translation, having studied in both Europe (Free University of Berlin) and the United States (University of Iowa and Vanderbilt); but what I discovered immediately was the languages needed in the United States were not the languages taught by universities. In the United States, the top languages spoken include Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Chinese, all taught at UMass, but also Vietnamese, Khmer, Tagalog, and Haitian Kreyòl. I had to retool my own approach.

In addition to my normal teaching duties, during evenings and weekends we also taught Vietnamese and Khmer wordprocessing, and standardized Haitian Kreyòl.

Continued Next Page

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I feel very proud at the contributions the Translation Center has made localizing certain languages to better appeal to Massachusetts immigrant communities. For example, the Kreyòl that we offered was not the Haitian spoken in Canada, which is more French inflected, but a more recent version spoken in Haiti under Aristide in the 1990s. Or the Vietnamese that we taught translators to use was a combination of North Vietnamese, where many of the top universities are located, and the South, with its infusion of French and English cultural terms. The same could be said for many languages, including Spanish, Chinese, Korean, and even French. Indeed, the importance of localization in addition to standard translation during these early years significantly contributed to the success of the Center.

Perhaps the most rewarding aspect of the job was helping Massachusetts residents in their business endeavors. I remember one of our first jobs was helping a retired local resident translate product descriptions for a microscope manufactured in the Czech Republic. Our success translated into his success: the Czech microscope was of very high quality, similar

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to corresponding German models, but significantly less expensive. To make a long story short, with our help translating product information and marketing materials, this gentleman was able to sell to many of the largest hospitals in Massachusetts, netting him a nice nest egg for retirement.

Our work in “lesser-known” languages became more widely known, and soon many firms were seeking our expertise.

In the state of Massachusetts, over 90 languages are spoken, and the Translation Center did not discriminate against minor languages. During my tenure we provided translations in over 80 languages, taking great pride every time we added a new language.

We also didn’t discriminate against larger customers. Our largest during my period was General Electric, which enjoys an annual income higher than most nations. Here we needed to compete against the largest translation companies in world, with results measured less in academic terms, i.e. accuracy, and more in what has become known as cost-to-quality, which includes a blend of accuracy, speed, technology, and management. We did very well here, too. I remember a project in the early 2000s that dealt

with executive strategies for multi-tasking, to be launched January 1 simultaneously in China, Japan, and Korea.

There is no Christmas in those countries, and I made myself very unpopular by forcing my team to work over the holidays in order to deliver the translation on time. And what a team it was. We had translators, including both mainland and Taiwanese translators; technicians, as we not only used Chinese, Japanese, and Korean language kits, but also had Chinese operating systems on several computers; layout specialists, who adapted the many illustrations and embedded text in the appropriate boxes; and finally a wonderful project manager keeping track of the files being received, proofed, and then shipped all over the world. Hard work, yes, but exhilarating. Afterwards I learned that one of my mainland Chinese translators from the Isenberg School of Management had proposed to our Taiwanese translator from our own Comparative Literature program.

In sum, we had a wonderful ride, and my memories are all pleasant. I remember the birthday parties, weddings, defenses, graduations, and

holidays, including lunar new year and Eid al-Fitr celebrations.

I remember helping so many individuals with their problems and goals, including adopting children from abroad, deciphering mementos from ancestors, delivering babies in hospital rooms, protecting civil rights in courtrooms, offering any number of social services to immigrants, from healthcare to job programs, and, especially, helping small businesses open up new markets, whether it be the Latino districts of New York or Boston, or Canadian French sections in Montreal or Quebec.

While I have enjoyed great success in my teaching and research careers, the memories from the Translation Center, from the applied translation practices, stand out. We helped hundreds of individuals with their translation and interpreting needs, and the region, both socially and economically, is better off for it. Thanks to all the translators, interpreters, proof-readers, project managers, technicians, and, especially, staff. You know who you are. You made my time at the Center the most wonderful years of my life.

Sincerely, Edwin Gentzler

Newspaper clippings from the Translation Center archives.

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Newsletter of the Translation Center | 2018-2020

THE TRANSLATION CENTER HOSTED TWO SCREENINGS OF DREAMING MURAKAMI, A FILM BY NITEESH ANJAAN. The first in October 2018 with an introduction by Professor Amanda Seaman. The second in March 2019 accompanied by a workshop "Murakami into English: A Translation Workshop" by Professor Anna Zielinska-Elliot (Boston University). Students, faculty, and translators from throughout New England participated in the workshop. Niteesh Anjaan and Mette Holm Skyped in from Denmark for the post-screening discussion.

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FINAL CUT FOR REAL PRESENTS

TRANSLATION ACTIVITY

The Translation Center

of the University of Massachusetts Amherst invites you to a screening of

DREAMING MURAKAMI Monday, October 1, 2018 6:30 pm Integrative Learning Center S404 with an introduction by Amanda Seaman, Professor of Japanese

- WE H AVE TO BE UNREALISTIC DREAMERS -

- WE H AVE TO BE UNREALISTIC DREAMERS -

A FILM BY NITESH ANJAAN

Limited number of seats available. Advance reservations required.

Contact Professor Regina Galasso rgalasso@umass.edu A documentary film about the Danish translator Mette Holm and her work within the literary universe of the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami. An innovative and poetic story of perception, communication and a two-meter-tall animated frog that tries to guard us all against the hate in the world.

WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY NITESH ANJAAN PRODUCERS PERNILLE TORNØE & SIGNE BYRGE SØRENSEN DOP AGAPI TRIANTAFILLIDIS EDITORS DENNIZ GÖL BERTELSEN & NIKOLINE LØGSTRUP SOUND DESIGN ANDREAS SANDBORG COMPOSER ANNA ROSENKILDE VFX DEVELOPMENT MATHIAS BJERRE 3D SUPERVISOR KIM FERSLING VFX TGBVFX COLORIST ANDERS V. CHRISTENSEN POST PRODUCTION MANAGER MARIA KRISTENSEN PRODUCED BY FINAL CUT FOR REAL APS WITH SUPPORT FROM THE FILMWORKSHOP COPENHAGEN • THE SASAKAWA FOUNDATION • DANISH FILM DIRECTORS W W W.D R E A M I N G M U R A K A M I.C O M

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Newsletter of the Translation Center | 2018 - Spring 2020

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TRANSLATION ACTIVITY

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t

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Newsletter of the Translation Center | 2018 - Spring 2020

3

Published translations and scholarship on translation by faculty and students from the University of

ON AND IN

TRANSLATION

Massachusetts Amherst and the nearby colleges

Faculty Publications Francisco Cota Fagundes - Edition, postface, and translation from English into Portuguese of Laurinda C. Andrade’s A Porta Aberta, Lajes do Pico, Azores: Companhia das Ilhas, 2018.

- Edition, annotations, introduction and translation from Portuguese into English of Vitorino Nemésio’s novel, Stormy Isles: An Azorean Tale. Second edition, completely revised. North Dartmouth, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth: Tagus Press; and Providence, Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, Brown University: GáveaBrown, 2019. Simultaneously published in Ponta Delgada, Azores, by Letras Lavadas Edições.

David Ball TRANSLATIONS WITH NICOLE BALL

- Translation from French into English of Abdourahman A. Waberi’s novel, The Divine Song, Seagull Books, London, New York, Calcutta, (2020).

- Translation from French into English of Marco Koskas’ novel, Goodbye Paris, Shalom Tel Aviv, Amazon Crossing, Seattle (2020).

- Translation from French into English of Roger Gilbert-Lecomte collection of poems, Coma Crossing: Collected Poems, Schism Books (2019).

- Edition and translation from French into English of Léon Werth’s novel, Deposition 1940-1944: A Secret Diary of Life in Vichy France, Oxford University Press, (2018).

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David Ball

- Translation from French into English of Tita Reut’s poems, Hamada: Nuit de novembre, drawings by Philippe Hélénon, Éditions Al Manar, Paris, France (2018).

ARTICLES

- “Losing the Lifeblood of World Literature,” AGNIblog, June 2019.

- “Listening: The Ethics of Translation,” AGNI blog, October 2018.

- “L’Impossible n’est pas toujours sûr: traduire James Sacré” Europe, May 2018, pp. 213-216.

- “A Jewish Writer Kept a Secret Diary During the Nazi Occupation of France. It Offers an Important Lesson About History.” Time, May 2, 2018.

TRANSLATIONS IN ANTHOLOGY

- David Ball James Sacré, excerpts from “Looking at a Donkey,” And There Will Be Singing: An Anthology of International Writing from the editors of The Massachusetts Review, Amherst, Massachusetts, 2019, pp. 133-135.

REVIEWS

- Translation Review, Issue 101, 2018, pp. 59-64, Rainer Maria Rilke, When I Go: Selected French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke. Translated by Suzanne Petermann.

Eglal Doss-Quinby TRANSLATIONS

- Together with Gaël Saint-Cricq and Samuel N. Rosenberg, edition, introduction and translation from medival French into English of Robert de Reims’ songs and motets, Robert de Reims: Songs and Motets. University Park: Penn State University Press (2020).

ARTICLES

- “Genre, Attribution and Authorship in the Thirteenth Century: Robert de Reims vs ‘Robert de Rains’.” By Gaël Saint-Cricq. Old French texts and English translations [Appendices IV and V: 205–213] byEglal Doss-Quinbyand Samuel N. Rosenberg.

Early Music History38 (2019): 141–213.

Marguerite Itamar Harrison TRANSLATIONS

- Translation from Portuguese into English of Luiz Ruffato’s novel Unremembering Me, North Dartmouth, Massachusetts: Tagus Press (2018).

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Newsletter of the Translation Center | 2018 - Spring 2020

Regina Galasso BOOK PUBLICATIONS

- Translating New York: The City’s Languages in Iberian Literatures. Series: Contemporary Hispanic and Lusophone Cultures. Liverpool UP, June 2018. Recipient of the 2017 Northeast Modern Language Association Book Award granted for the best unpublished book-length manuscript on modern language literature.

- Avenues of Translation: The City in Iberian and Latin American Writing. (coedited volume with Evelyn Scaramella [Manhattan C], Lewisburg: Bucknell UP in partnership with Rutgers UP, 2019. Contributions from: Esther Allen, Alicia Borinsky, Peter Bush, Nicholas Cifuentes Goodbody, Jennifer Duprey, Charles Hatfield, Hugh Hazelton, Suzanne Jill Levine, Christopher Maurer, Urayoán Noel, Ilan Stavans.

REFERRED ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS

- “Always in Translation: Ways of Writing in Spanish and English.” The Oxford Handbook of Latino Studies. Ed. Ilan Stavans. Oxford UP, 2019.

- “Translation as a Way to Write the City.” Ilan Stavans Unbound: The Critic Between Two Canons. Ed. Bridget Kevane. The Lands and Ages of the Jewish People.

Academic Studies P, 2019.

INTERVIEWS:

- The Translators Relay. Passed the baton by Chantal Ringuet. Web blog post.

Words Without Borders

Velma García Gorena TRANSLATIONS

- Introduction, citical commentary, and translation from Spanish into English of Gabriela Mistral’s letters, Gabriela Mistral’s Letters to Doris Dana, published

by University of New Mexico Press in 2018. Her translation received honorable mention for the Modern Language Association’s Morton N. Cohen Award for a Distinguished Edition of Letters.

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ON AND IN TRANSLATION

Tal Goldfajn TRANSLATIONS

- Translation from Hebrew into English of Nurit Zarchi’s children’s book “Ambatyam,” The Mermaid in the Bathtub, Restless Books (2019).

- Translation from Portuguese into English of Ferreira Gullar’s poetry (Portuguese) published in The Common 17 (2019).

Carolyn Shread TRANSLATIONS

- Translation from French into English of Achille Mbembe’s text, The Universal Right to Breath, published at Critical Inquiry In the Moment in 2020.

- Translation from French into English of Catherine Malabou’s book, Morphing Intelligence: From IQ Measurement to Artificial Brains, published by Columbia University Press, NY, in 2019.

- Translation from French into English of Véronique Tadjo’s book, Aimer: Fields of Battle, Fields of Love, published in The Massachusetts Review in 2019.

ARTICLES

- “Women (Re)Writing Authority: A Roundtable Discussion on Feminist Translation” Ergun et al. Translation, Feminism and Gender, Luise von Flotow and Hala Kamal, London and New York: Routledge, 2020.

- “Une intelligence autre: Reception Plasticity and the Melancholy of the Translated Author” Palimpsestes 33, 2019: 92-101.

- “Translating Feminist Philosophers” in P. Rawling and P. Wilson (eds.) Routledge Handbook of Translation and Philosophy, London and New York: Routledge, 2018: 324-344.

- “Watching Thinking Move: Malabou in Translation” in T. Wormald and I. Dahms (eds.),Thinking Catherine Malabou: Passionate Detachments, London: Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd., 2018: 11-20

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Newsletter of the Translation Center | 2018 - Spring 2020

Margara Russotto TRANSLATIONS

Participated in the Translation of Venezuelan Literary Classics Project: - Togerther with Giovanni Di Vaira. edition, and translation from Spanish into Italian of Enrique Bernardo Núñez’s Cubagua (1931), published by Centro Studi Jorge Eielson de la Universitá di Firenze in 2019.

- Together with Ilan Stavans and Federico Sucre, selection, edition and translation of The Lyrical Mandate / El mandato del canto. An Anthology of Venezuelan Poetry of the Twentieth Century published on Viceversa Magazine, in the Arts and Letters in March 2020.

Corine Tachtiris TRANSLATIONS

- Translation from French into English of Frieda Ekotto’s novel and short story collection, Don’t Whisper Too Much and Portrait of a Young Artiste from Bona Mbella, published by Bucknell University Press in 2019.

- Translation of an excerpt from Dark Love. Exchanges 30 (February 2020).

- Translation from French into English of Marie Hélène Poitras’ short story “On the Head of Johnny Cash,” PRISM International 57.2 (Winter 2019).

- Translation from French into English of Marie-Célie Agnant’s poems “Orpheus” and “Gash,” Visions International 98 (2018).

ARTICLES

- “Allyship and Intersectional Feminism in Translation.” Translating Women: Activism in Action e-book. Institute of Translators and Interpreters.

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ON AND IN TRANSLATION

Graduate Student Publications Elena Igartuburu

Comparative Literature Program, UMass Amherst TRANSLATIONS

- Translation from Spanish into English of José Manuel Mora’s Los Nadadores Nocturnos, The Night Swimmers, featured in “Staging Spanish Theater in Translation: A Roundtable with José Manuel Mora,” Instituto de Cervantes at Harvard University, Oct. 29, 2019.

Jeffrey Diteman Comparative Literature Program, UMass Amherst TRANSLATIONS

- Translation from Spanish into English of Pablo Martín Sánchez’s novel, The Anarchist Who Shared My Name, Deep Vellum (2018).

- Translation from Spanish into English of “Microfictions” by Eduardo Beti’s and Pablo Martín Sánchez and “Metric Poetry” by Pablo Martín Sánchez, included in All That Is Evident Is Suspect, published by McSweeney’s (2018).

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Newsletter of the Translation Center | 2018-2020

4

AT THE TRANSLATION

CENTER

Project Manager Update Immediate Response to the Pandemic

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The Translation Center has been fortunate to continue working through the pandemic with no lapse in service. When University buildings were closed in March, project managers, along with the rest of the Translation Center team, moved to remote operation. While requests for translation of personal documents slowed, we continued providing translation for our regular corporate partners. Since March, the focus of a significant number of requested translations has been on spreading information about Covid-19 best practices. The Translation Center worked closely with UMass Human Resources to translate protocols, signage and fact sheets about Covid-19, and the various governmental relief programs so that international staff and students could be wellinformed.

translations during the months of March and April. Thanks to the hard work and dedication of our translators and project management team, most of these translations were delivered within 24 hours. We were also pleased to partner with the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to provide additional translations related to Covid-19 procedures in five school districts. This extra service allowed the districts to communicate with and develop remote learning plans for their students.

In order to help support the need to quickly respond to the pandemic, the Translation Center waived rush fees for Covid-19-related

Shawn Lindholm

In Fall 2020, the Translation Center office was staffed on Tuesdays to assist students with the translation of their personal documents. We also welcomed back two work-study students to help support our work.

Senior Project Manger

AT THE TRANSLATION CENTER

From the Newsletter Archive

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Newsletter of the Translation Center | 2018 - Spring 2020

Student Assistants Hyongrae Kim PhD in Comparative Literature, 2020

I joined the Translation Center of the University of Massachusetts Amherst as an Assistant Project Manager in the summer of 2019, which was a special year for the Translation Center as it marked its fortieth anniversary. As part of the year-long celebrations, on International Translation Day, a public event was organized and invitations were sent out inviting individuals associated with the Translation Center to visit and share their memories of the organization, read a bit of translated literature, and share their thoughts on translation and interpreting in general.

The event gathered faculty and students, former and current staff members, and a large number of translators and interpreters who took turns speaking about their experience working with or gathered at the Translation Center. The many voices gather there is a testament to how the Translation Center has continued to, since its foundation, establish itself as a hub for scholars and practitioners of translation and interpreting. I was personally involved in the curation of the book display “On and In Translation,” which is located in room 17 of the Herter Annex. This exhibit features translation scholarship published by UMass Amherst faculty over the past forty years. Especially eye-catching are the numerous book covers that cover an entire wall of the large room in color and text. The display is both a monument to the long hours and sleepless nights spent by translators, without whose labors of love, we would not be granted windows into foreign cultures, literatures and peoples, and a testament to the Translation Center’s dedication to supporting translators and interpreters and

lending visibility to the important tasks they play and interlingual/cultural/personal mediators.

Adrelys Mateo Santana Class of 2020

I recently graduated from UMass Amherst with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology, a secondary major in Spanish, and a certificate in Developmental Disabilities and Human Services. I am a native Spanish speaker and I moved to the United States eight years ago from the Dominican Republic. I have spent the past year working as a Student Assistant at the Translation Center, where I had the pleasure of working closely with the director, Professor Regina Galasso, as well as with project managers Río Hernández and Shawn Lindholm, and the assistant project manager, Boyana Dragicevich. Working at the Translation Center has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my entire undergraduate career, as I had the opportunity of improving my translation, transcription, and costomer service skills.

My favorite part about working at the Translation Center was being able to collaborate with so many amazing professionals, which made my job educational and very enjoyable. I could not have asked for a better job or a better team! Starting in the summer of 2020, I will be working as a Laboratory Coordinator for the Self-Regulation, Emotions, & Early Development (SEED) lab here at UMass Amherst. My hope is to go on to obtain my Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology and continue to use my language skills throughout the rest of my career.

Zachary Strouse, educator from the community, at the Translation Center recording his reading of a Dr. Seuss book for a bilingual audio installation at the Amazing World of Dr. Seuss Museum.

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AT THE TRANSLATION CENTER

Updating Our Physical Space

IN ITS FORTY-YEAR HISTORY, THE TRANSLATION CENTER HAS HAD SEVERAL HOMES IN HERTER HALL. In 1999, the Translation Center moved to 442 Herter Hall. Then, at some point the TC moved to the lower-level of the Herter Hall Annex. Since 2014, the Translation Center got a small corner of the ground level of the Herter Annex in room 129. We have been updating our physical space in the lower level of the Herter Hall Annex with some much-needed maintenance and new bright colors. Once we can all return to campus, we look forward to inviting everyone back to the Translation Center.

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Newsletter of the Translation Center | 2018 - Spring 2020

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ˮ

ACADEMICS, PRESENTATIONS,

AND MORE

Thanks to UMass Amherst our students were exposed to the theoretical discipline of Translation Studies at a graduate level, while they could also receive excellent training in

ˮ

the actual practice of translation and interpretation.

Smith Translation Studies Concentration (TSX) ndergraduate concentrations in translation are rare. Equally rare is the defining goal of the Smith Concentration in Translation Studies (TSX), namely, not the practical training of translators or interpreters (although our students are introduced to translating at a challenging level) but to make students fall in love with the complexity and importance of translation as a cultural phenomenon of the highest order. Our requirements include courses on language in general, on particular languages, and on translation history, theory, or practice.

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Studies professor Janie Vanpée, TSX has graduated 48 students). About 20 more students have either declared or are prospective concentrators. Our graduates tell us that translation remains a passion and, for some of them, it actively plays a role in their professional or academic lives.

We have two core courses: the gateway set of lectures “The Art of Translation” (WLT 150), and the capstone seminar “Translating Across Borders” (TSX/WLT 330). Our students greatly increase their command of a language other than English, spend a Junior year or semester abroad, acquire at least 100 hours of practical experience in another language, and create an e-portfolio to self-assess and reflect upon their relation with a second language and culture.

Some examples: a student is taking a year off before attending a graduate program in Bio-Engineering at Brown University to pursue the full translation into Arabic of Sandy Tolan’s Children of Stone; another, who is undertaking a Masters program in toxicology at Harvard University and applying to medical school, will continue helping to interpret in hospitals; two returned to Spain to embark on, respectively, a Masters program to teach ESL and a career in international interpreting; one will use her literary sensitivity and attention to linguistic nuance to pursue a degree in international law at UCLA; several students returned to the country where they spent their year abroad—Germany, France, Japan— to work or study.

In 2019 and 2020, COVID-19 not with standing, TSX had two good years. We graduated our fifth and sixth cohorts of 16 concentrators in total (since its first year in 2015, as a result of the vision and effort of French

In 2019 and 2020 the gateway course WLT 150 was once again the most multilingual class at Smith, with 60 to 70 students from a wide range of majors and languages. Its remarkable lectures made a substantial

ACADEMICS, PRESENTATIONS, AND MORE

contribution to the Five College community. This course is based on about ten weekly lectures by distinguished translators and translation theory scholars, both local and international. It was (and will hopefully continue being) available to the Five College Community in Spring 2020, every Monday from 7 to 9pm.

The capstone seminar TSX/WLT 330 gathered 17 senior concentrators between 2019 and 2020. They worked on projects that ranged across a broad spectrum of disciplines and themes: from translations of literary texts such as biographies, poetry, journals, and correspondences, to flamenco lyrics, mortgage contracts from “Legalese into Plain English,” Native American cosmogonies, film subtitles, children’s stories, and a recipe book. Students translated from Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, Hindi, Spanish, and Yiddish. Their outstanding projects led a number of them to reconsider their career plans. In the most recent case, a student traded graduate school in Mathematics for Translation Studies…and was manifestly ecstatic about it.

As usual, we drew a close connection between gateway and capstone by asking capstone students to present their final projects to gateway students. Indeed, the variety of the former’s majors and interests demonstrated to the latter how the practice of translation is interdisciplinary by nature and works as a bridge across disciplines.

In 2019 students also presented at Collaborations, a Smith College celebration of students’ research.

All students uploaded their extremely professional presentations in their e-Portfolios, as well as their translations for the capstone, in order to demonstrate their presenting and translating capacities to prospective employees or graduate schools.

In the last two years TSX continued illustrating the academic potential of Five College collaborations.

The concentration builds on both Smith’s and the Five Colleges’ many strengths.

TSX builds on the historical strength of foreign language study at Smith; a robust student commitment to study abroad; a proven record of students engaging in internship or research experiences when abroad; a faculty with experience in translation; a faculty and staff with international roots and reach; a growing population of international students who can serve as language and cultural informants as well as concentrators in

their own right; the Lewis Global Studies Center and the Kahn Liberal Arts Institute, spaces, both material and intellectual, that provide intellectual and material support. Smith’s curricular resources in this area are wide-ranging, including courses in the various departments of foreign languages and cultures, World Literatures, Classics, Film Studies, American Studies and English. The Poetry Center and the Five College journal Metamorphoses: A Journal of Literary Translation provide opportunities for guest translators as well as for student internships.

But TSX also draws on the magnificent alreadyexisting resources in the Five Colleges. Carolyn Shread, director of the current, extremely popular, version of WLT 150, is both an accomplished translator and scholar in Translation Studies, and a senior lecturer at Mount Holyoke. TSX greatly benefits from the courses in translation offered at UMass Amherst through its Comparative Literature Program and its MA in Translation Studies; the Translation in the Hispanic and Lusophone Worlds area track and the Catalan Studies area track of the Ph.D. in Spanish and Portuguese Studies, the leadership in Translation Studies spearheaded by the UMass Translation Center; the Five-College Center for the Study of World Languages, which expands the possibilities of languages studied in the area; the Massachusetts Review, a preeminent journal supported by Five Colleges, Inc.; and a good number of courses taught by professors Regina Galasso, Tal Goldfajn, Jim Hicks, Moira Inghilleri, Cristiano Mazzei, and others. Three students who had the luxury to partake, Oxford style, in a weekly graduate seminar at professor Maria Tymoczco’s home in 2019, remember it as a highlight of their studies.

Thanks to UMass Amherst our students were exposed to the theoretical discipline of Translation Studies at a graduate level, while they could also receive excellent training in the actual practice of translation and interpretation. Presently, we are excited about the recent creation of online degree-granting courses on the practice of translation and interpretation, particularly at this precarious moment, and we look forward to continue strengthening our connections.

Reyes Lázaro

Associate Professor, Spanish and Portuguese Director, Translation Studies Concentration Smith College

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Newsletter of the Translation Center | 2018 - Spring 2020

Interpreting Studies and Practice Faculty and Community Seminar

Race, Sex, and Gender in Translation Graduate Seminar

Compared to the field of Translation Studies, Interpreting as a scholarly discipline has “yet to reach maturity,” according to Franz Pöchhacker in Introducing Interpreting Studies (2004). A lot has changed since then, with increasingly more research being conducted and published by different scholars in various sub-fields of this fledgling discipline. However, one thing remains largely unchanged, the gap between academics and practitioners. With this in mind, Cristiano Mazzei, Director of Online Translator and Interpreter Training, decided to organize a seminar that would bring together researchers, practitioners, industry leaders, and community members working with, employing, and researching interpreting.

Translation studies had what is known as the feminist turn in the early 1990s, and the field has increasingly engaged with queer studies over the last ten years. While translation studies has yet to take up the issue of race in a substantial way, some progress is finally being made in this area as well. My graduate seminar in the fall of 2018 allowed students to follow these various turns in translation studies and to place themselves at the new, more intersectional approach to race, gender, and sexuality in translation studies. We first read theoretical texts from feminist and gender studies, transgender studies, queer theory and sexuality studies, and critical race studies before reading scholarship in translation studies that draws on these fields.

Funded by the Five College Consortium, our Faculty and Community Seminar in Interpreting Studies and Practice kicked off in fall 2018, with a lecture by Professor Moira Inghilleri on challenges faced by translators and interpreters trying to use words to convey complex meanings. In her talk, she argued for an expansion of the practice to allow language in all its form, including visual, to serve as a better tool.

The seminar has welcomed 10 speakers to date, with topics ranging from interpreting for traumatized children, re-examining impartiality in interpretation, realities of medical interpreting work in large hospital complexes, video remote interpreting to spoken language interpretation in US schools, training prisoners as interpreters in Spain, professional boundaries of interpreters in asylum-seeking contexts in Israel, and research trends in dialogue interpreting.

Everyone interested in the field of interpreting is invited to all lectures and webinars, which are also recorded and made available to everyone on the webpage of the online Certificate in Professional Translation and Interpreting. (https://www.umass.edu/llc/translationinterpreting-seminars-events). The Fall 2020 schedule is now available!

Cristiano Mazzei

Director of Online Translator and Interpreter Training UMass Amherst

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Bringing together theory with practice, as is essential in translation studies, we then read literary translations that exemplify some of these issues, including Emily Wilson’s recent translation of The Odyssey and Frank Wynne’s translation of Ahmadou Kourouma’s Allah is Not Obliged in which the African child soldier narrator reproduces some of the racist language of the colonizer. We also examined some practical considerations through resources such as blog posts and interviews about remedying the gender gap in translation or how the literary translation profession might become more racially diverse. At the end of the semester, students either wrote a scholarly paper dealing with these issues or completed a short literary translation with a critical introduction. One student, for example, translated an excerpt from an Italian novel by a Black author from Somalia. The syllabus was uploaded to the Humanities Commons for open access sharing and has since been downloaded 520 times.

Corine Tachtiris

Assistant Professor, Comparative Literature Program UMass Amherst

ACADEMICS, PRESENTATIONS, AND MORE

Professional Profile

On Translation and Public Service A conversation with

Lindsay Sabadosa Thursday, November 8, 2018 11:30 am – 12:20 pm

The Translation Center, Herter Ann

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University of Massachusetts Amherst For more information, contact Profess or Regina Galasso 413.545.2203 or rgalasso@umass.edu

Lindsay Sabadosa, a Pioneer Valley native, will discuss how her career as a legal and financial translator shapes her public service. Sabadosa is an alumna of Wellesley College and the University of Edinburgh. She is the Democratic nominee for the 1st Hampshire District in the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

In celebration of International Translation Day 2018

Translation and Constraint: Pascoli, Ungaretti, Pavese A conversation with

Geoffrey Brock Friday, September 28, 2018 12 pm – 1 pm The Poetry Center, Wright Hall Smith College A light lunch will be served.

For more information, contact Jen Blackburn 413.585.4891 or jblackbu@smith.edu Geoffrey Brock is a poet and translator. He earned his MFA from the University of Florida and his PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Pennsylvania. He received several prestigious prizes and fellowships for his poems and translations. He teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Translation at the University of Arkansas.

SPONSORED BY: the Translation The Poetry Center at Smith College, the Poetry Concentration, Italian Studies, tts Amherst.

Concentration, and the Translation Center of the University of Massachuse

Boxes of dictionaries donated to the Translation Center by a local translator in early 2020. This is not the first dictionary donation the Translation Center has received. We have a collection of dictionaries thanks to local translators and faculty.

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Newsletter of the Translation Center | 2018-2020

The Art of Translation: Poetics, Politics, Practice

The Art of Translation: Poetics, Politics, Practice

CLT 150 Lecture Series 2019

WLT 150 Lecture Series 2020 Mondays 7:00-9:00 p.m., Ford Hall

Monday evenings, 7:00-9:00 p.m., Seelye Hall 106

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❖ February 3 “The Fear of Translation: How Change, Loss & Subjectivity Strengthen

Translations” Emma Ramadan, Translator and owner of Riffraff bookstore and bar, Providence, RI ❖ February 10 “Linguistic Currencies: The Translative Power of English in SE Asia and the

U.S.” Vicente L. Rafael, University of Washington ❖ February 24 “Translation and Meaning: What is the Right Question for a Translator to Ask?”

Jay Garfield, Smith College

 February 4 “The Great Derangement? Translation Studies and Future Ecologies”

Michael Cronin, Trinity College Dublin  February 11 “Wrestling with ‘Wild Thing’: Translation and Adaptation Choices

in Bringing Luis Vélez de Guevara’s La Serrana de la Vera to the Stage” Harley Erdman, University of Massachusetts Amherst  February 18 “Writing Home: Translating Luiz Ruffato’s Epistolary Novel Unremembering Me”

Marguerite Itamar Harrison, Smith College  February 25 “Multiglossia and Code Switching in Arabic Translation”

❖ March 2 “One Corner of the Mat: Translation as Struggle (and Research)”

J. Michael Farmer, University of Texas at Dallas

Mohamed El-Sawi Hassan, Amherst College

Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures Annual Lecture

 March 4 “Translating the Holocaust”

Justin Cammy, Smith College

❖ March 9 “Translation, Race, Desire: How French Men Love Africa”

Kaiama L. Glover, Barnard College, Columbia University

 March 18 “Kitchen Table Translation: On Difference and Literary Values”

Madhu Kaza, Columbia University

❖ March 23 “Translating Brazilian Environments and Environmentalities”

Malcolm McNee, Smith College

 March 25 “Mekatelyu: The Challenges of Translating the Fiction of Quince Duncan”

❖ March 30 “Oral History in Translation”

Dorothy Mosby, Mount Holyoke College

Sujane Wu, Smith College ❖ April 6 “From Afro-Brazilian Rituals to Aesthetic Medicine: My Life as an Interpreter”

Elena Langdon, Acolá Language Services & Consulting

 April 1 “Mistranslating Minority: Translation and Queer World-Making after 1968”

Serena Bassi, Yale University  April 8 “Latin America: A Translated Continent”

❖ Wednesday, April 15 “The Changing Climate of Translation”

Denise Kripper, Lake Forest College

Michael Cronin, Trinity College Dublin

 April 22 “What are the Specificities for the Translation of Texts in the Humanities

❖ April 20 “The Politics of Translation: The Case of Catalan?”

Peter Bush, Translator

and Social Sciences?”

Bruno Poncharal, La Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris III

This lecture series is sponsored by the Five College Faculty Seminar in Literary Translation , the Smith College Endowed Lecture Fund, the Program in World Literatures, the Department of French Studies, the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, the Kahn Seminar on Translations, and the Translation Studies Concentration.

This lecture series is sponsored by the Smith College Endowed Lecture Fund, the Program in Comparative Literature, the French Studies Department, the Program for the Study of Women and Gender and the Five College Faculty Seminar in Literary Translation.

All lectures are free and open to the public.

All lectures are free and open to the public.

For more information, contact Carolyn Shread: cshread@mtholyoke.edu For more information, contact Carolyn Shread: cshread@mtholyoke.edu

The Art of Translation: Poetics, Politics, Practice CLT 150 Lecture Series Spring 2018 Mondays, 7:00-9:00 p.m., Seelye Hall 106  February 5 “Questioning the Mother Tongue Paradigm: Jhumpa Lahiri’s Linguistic Triangulation” Anna Botta, Smith College 

February 12 “Smells Like Translation: Human Rights, Bureaucratic Reform, and Encounters with Europe in Turkey” Elif Babül, Mount Holyoke College

 February 19 “Translation and the Arts in Modern France” Sonya Stephens, Mount Holyoke College  February 26 “Feminist Politics of Translation in the Latin/a Americas: A Conversation with Cláudia de Lima Costa and Sonia E. Alvarez” Sonia E. Alvarez, UMass Amherst Cláudia de Lima Costa, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil  March 5 “Representing the Invisible: Interpreting an Approximation of Music” Ng Tian Hui, Mount Holyoke College  March 19 “Plasticity in Translation: A Conversation among Readers, Writers and Translators” Benjamin Dalton, King’s College, London, UK Allison Grimaldi Donahue, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy Carolyn Shread, Mount Holyoke College  March 26 “Feminist Translation as Transnational Feminism: The Case of Virgin Crossing the Atlantic” Emek Ergun, University of North Carolina Charlotte  April 2 “Representing the Language of the ‘Other’ in Ethnography” Erynn Masi de Casanova, University of Cincinnati, OH  April 23 “Traduire à quatre mains: David and Nicole Ball Translating Lola Lafon” Lola Lafon, French author David Ball and Nicole Ball, Smith College This lecture series is sponsored by the Smith College Program in Comparative Literature, the Department of French Studies, the Program for the Study of Women and Gender, the Endowed Lecture Fund, and the Five College Faculty Seminar in Literary Translation.

All lectures are free and open to the public. For more information, contact Carolyn Shread: cshread@mtholyoke.edu

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ACADEMICS, PRESENTATIONS, AND MORE

Five College Faculty Seminar in Literary Translation The Five College Faculty Seminar in Literary Translation meets on average two or three times a semester.

This informal gathering allows literary translators to discuss both works in progress or upon publication with colleagues in the field. The seminar often works from specific examples or enjoys hearing about the insights of a translation process.

Co-chairs Carolyn Shread and Thalia Pandiri (until 2019), Smith College, and Corine Tachtiris (since 2019), UMass Amherst

2018-2019 Marguerite Harrison (Smith College) “On Translating Luiz Ruffato’s Unremembering Me” Frank Hugus (UMass Amherst), “Hans Christian Andersen in the 21st Century” Stephanie Kraft (Community Member), “Lines for Voices: How is Translating a Play Different from Translating a Novel” Denise Kripper (Lake Forest College), “It Sounds Different in My Head: Practicing an Accented Translation”

2019-2020 Corine Tachtiris ,Presentation on the translation of Don’t Whisper Too Much and Portrait of A Young Artiste from Bona Mbella by Frieda Ekotto.

Véronique Tadjo and Carolyn Shread conversation about Amour: Fields of Battle, Fields of Love of Tadjo’s Aimer selon Véronique Tadjo, the revised publication of her earlier Champs de bataille et d’amour.

Maria Pilar Castillo Bernal (Universidad de Córdoba), “Migrant Literature Written by Women: Some Notes on Gender, Language and Translation in Turkish-German Novels”.

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Newsletter of the Translation Center | 2018-2020

Selected Undergraduate and Graduate Courses MOIRA INGHILLERI UMass Amherst COMP-LIT 581: Interpreting and Translation Research and Practice I REGINA GALASSO UMass Amherst SPAN 350: Translation Today: Spanish/English SPAN 600: Travel and Translation SPAN 597PT: Practicing Literary Translation: Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan TAL GOLDFAJN UMass Amherst SPAN597LE: How to Do Things with Translations: Topics in Linguistics and Translation SABINA KNIGHT Smith College ENG 135: Introduction to Writing Creative Nonfiction. Section: “Chinese-English Literary and Cultural Translation.”

CRISTIANO MAZZEI UMass Amherst COMP-LIT 551: Translation and Technology COMP-LIT 582: Interpreting and Translation Research and Practice II PORTUG 397T: Special Topics- Translating & Interpreting for Portuguese-Speaking Communities CORINE TACHTIRIS UMass Amherst COMP-LIT 691RS Seminar- Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Translation MARIA TYMOCZKO UMass Amherst COMP-LIT 751 Theory and Practice of Translation

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ACADEMICS, PRESENTATIONS, AND MORE

Faculty Presentations DAVID BALL “Translation à Quatre Mains: How It’s Done,” Seelye 106, Smith College, April 23, 2018. Guest Lecture, Comparative Literature 150 (Translation) with visiting novelist Lola Lafon and Nicole Ball.

“Why Translate Vichy and the Nazi Occupation of France? And What Are the Problems?” Smith College Conference Center, April 19, 2018. (Smith College Liberal Arts Luncheon Talk.)

“Translating Jean Guéhenno’s Journal des années noires 1940-1944 (OUP, 2014) and Léon Werth’s Déposition 1940-1944 (OUP, 2018): A Comparison,” Five-College Seminar in Literary Translation, Smith College Poetry Center, March 13, 2018.

READINGS

November 20, 2019. Amherst Bookshop, Book Launch for And There Will Be Singing: An Anthology of International Writing, poems by James Sacré, translations and original French.

November 10, 2019. Bilingual reading at ALTA (American Literary Translators Association) Conference, Rochester, NY. Translations and originals from forthcoming book. Roger Gilbert-Lecomte, Coma Crossing: Collected Poems, translated and annotated by David Ball.

REGINA GALASSO “Translation: Art and Professionalism.” Translation Seminar. Boston University. 28 February 2020.

“Reading Translations of New York: Representations of the City Throughout Iberian Writing.” Panel: World Cities in 19th and early 20th-Century Literature. Northeast Modern Language Association.

Boston University. Boston, 5-8 March 2020.

“More Than a Weekend, More Than New York: Josep Pla Translates the City for Catalan Readers.”

Seminar: Fabulous Leviathan: Visions of New York City in Modern Spanish Culture, 1875-1975.

American Comparative Literature Association. Georgetown University. Washington, D.C., March 7-10, 2019.

“Growing with Translation: Language Majors and Literary Translation Courses at U.S. Universities.”

Fourth International Conference on Research into the Didactics of Translation. Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona 20-22 June, 2018.

CONFERENCE COORDINATION

Student Panel Organizer and Chair. “Growing with Translation: Enhancing and Expanding the University Experience.” New England Translators Association. University of Massachusetts Boston.

4 May 2019.

Panel Organizer and Chair. “¿Qué es un acomodo? Holyoke Public Schools on Special Education and Translation.” New England Translators Association. University of Massachusetts Boston. 4 May 2019.

Student Panel Organizer. “A Place to Translate and Interpret: Books, Amherst, the United States, and the U.N.” New England Translators Association. University of Massachusetts Boston. 28 April 2018.

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Newsletter of the Translation Center | 2018 - Spring 2020

TAL GOLDFAJN Participated in a panel on Translation Visibility in the Academy: Scholarship, Teaching, Community at ALTA 2019.

Borders and the Material Cultures of Translation” at the Canadian Association for Translation Studies (CATS 2019).

CAROLYN SHREAD “Accomplishing Complicity: Developing Theories and Practices for Translation Allies” at Naming and Translating ‘the Marginal’ in honor of ebnem Susam-Saraeva at the University of Ottawa, Canada.

“Une intelligence autre: The Plasticity of Translation Reception” at The Reception of French Contemporary Thought through the Prism of Translation at Traduction et communication transculturelle (TRACT) La Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris III, France.

CORINE TACHTIRIS “Translation as Allyship and the Literature of Migration,” International Comparative Literature Association virtual workshop, June 2020.

Speaker on panel “Us Too 2: Sexism and Sexual Harassment in the Translation Profession.” (panel organizer and moderator) American Literary Translators Association Conference, Rochester, NY. November 2019.

“Allyship and Intersectional Feminism in Translation.” Translating Women Conference, London.

October 2019.

“Teaching Race in Translation.” American Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference, Georgetown University. March 2019.

“Unauthorizing Kundera: Rogue Translation of L’identité into Czech.” (panel organizer) Modern Languages Association Convention, Chicago. January 2019.

Speaker on panel “Us Too: Sexism and Sexual Harassment in the Translation Profession.” (panel organizer and moderator) American Literary Translators Association Conference, Indiana University. October 2018.

READINGS AND INFORMAL TALKS

Talk on her translation of Frieda Ekotto’s Don’t Whisper Too Much and Portrait of a Young Artiste from Bona Mbella, Five College Faculty Translation Seminar, Sept. 2019.

Reader and emcee, release event for And There Will Be Singing: An Anthology of International Writing, Amherst Books, Nov. 2019.

Speaker on panel “Imagining/Translation/Power” for the UMass English Department, Oct. 2019.

Reading and talk in conjunction with author Frieda Ekotto on her translation of Don’t Whisper Too Much and Portrait of a Young Artiste from Bona Mbella, University of Michigan, April 2019.

Translation Close-Up Talk on Don’t Whisper Too Much and Portrait of a Young Artiste from Bona Mbella, UMass Translation Center, April 2019.

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ACADEMICS, PRESENTATIONS, AND MORE

Graduate Student Presentations JEFFREY DITEMAN “Polarizing Lorca: Selective Memory in Translations of the Gypsy Ballads” at NeMLA 2018.

PAULINA OCHOA FIGUEROA “Traduciendo Nueva York: Las ‹‹pruebas›› de José Moreno Villa.” Graduate Student Conference: No Direction Home: Travels, Travelers and (Trans)formations. Stony Brook, NY, mARCH 23, 2018.

Mazzei, C., Ochoa-Figueroa, P. and Wu, Y. “Language Transfer on The Screen.” New England Translators Association Online Conference. University of Massachusetts, Boston, May 9, 2020.

CONNECT WITH US: The Translation Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst translate@umass.edu umass.edu/translate

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The Translation Center 129 Herter Hall University of Massachusetts Amherst, MA 01003-9312 Tel: 413-545-2203