Members of the Case Western Reserve University community have planned the first major international symposium to focus solely on the literary translations made in socialist countries (both in Eastern Europe and Latin America) from 1959 to 1990. Many studies have been devoted to translation studies in the last few decades. Still, none has yet focused on the role played by literary translations within the socialist bloc and how the translation of literature became a political and ideological instrument to advance the formation of the socialist society. The organizers of this symposium hope to rectify this situation.
The “Translating Socialism International Symposium” will be held Oct. 18–21.
The symposium will honor Pavel Grushko, one of the main Russian translators who made Latin American literature accessible and known in the former Soviet Union.
This event is sponsored by an Expanding Horizons Initiative grant, the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities and the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures.
Keynote speakers and their presentations will be:
- Brian James Baer, president of the American Translation and Interpreting Studies Association—“Competing Canons: Translating Latin American Literature in the Cold War”
- Timothy Pogačar, editor of Slovene Studies Academic Journal—“The Writer as Character: Literary Translations in the Soviet Union, 1950s–1960s”
- Pavel Grushko, senior translator for the movie I am Cuba—“Translating Poetry: Telling without Reciting?”