Before we get started, does anyone have any remaining questions about the syllabus? We’ll say a few words about participation, and we’ll also go over homework.
Thank you for your thoughtful and nuanced bCourses posts and responses. We’ve put some groups together based on affinities (there were many!), so please sit with your group members, introduce yourself, and also take out your name signs.
Here are the groups:
- Respect, “time and space to speak without judgement”: Cecily, Lauren, Annie, Carla
- Individual and group engagement, active learning: Alyssa, Naia, Misha
- Paying attention, not interrupting, minimizing distractions (e.g. electronics, food): Denise, Edwin, Carolina, Ella
- Using “I” statements and appreciating others’ (students’, authors’, translators’, characters’) perspectives and experiences: Clara, Sofia, Sophie, Max
- Keeping an open mind (with others and oneself), being open to challenges and mistakes: Margarita, Giovanna, Christine, Ivy
- Being patient when others are speaking; encourage, welcome and support, others: Howard, Samiha, Daniel, Giselle
- Active listening, coming prepared: Sally, Alexis, Aimee
- Suggestions while reading each others’ writing, peer review feedback, learning from peers, working in small groups: Emily, Alicia, John, Dawn
We’ll complete the following steps in our groups:
- As a group, review each other’s individual bCourses posts and consider how they pertain to the group’s theme.
- Together, draft a guideline for your group’s theme underneath your names in this Google doc. The statement should start with the phrase “We will…”. It can be anywhere from one sentence to a few sentences. Feel free to copy and paste/edit parts of your posts!
- Examine the other groups’ guidelines. Is there any language you’d like to edit or revise? Any additions you’d like to make? What’s missing? Please insert a comment if there’s anything you’d like to edit, revise, cut, add, etc.
- Read the posts out load and vote to reach consensus. Each and every individual should feel comfortable with the community guidelines we establish for this class.
Our community guidelines are meant to be treated as a living document, and we’ll continue revisiting, revising, and expanding these guidelines over the course of the semester. You can find them here.
With our new Community Guidelines in mind, we’ll launch into our first real class discussion on the packet of articles related to translation, women, and gender that you read for homework. Please stay in your small groups and discuss the following:
- What did you each write about for your introductory texts in relation to translation and/or gender? Are your experiences and thoughts on these topics similar or different? How so?
- How did your thoughts on translation and gender shift (or not) after reading these 4 pieces?
For our group discussion, we’ll discuss the above as well as the questions below. In small groups and in the full-class discussion, please be sure to refer to specific examples or phrases from the text (with page numbers.) Try to keep in mind not only what the articles are saying but how they’re saying it.
- Did the particular issues in these articles make you think about what is possible or not to translate into another language or culture or context?
- What identity considerations are present in these texts? Which ones do you feel are missing?
- If you speak another language, what is similar to/different from the issues that came up about specific languages here?
- Some of these pieces were published a few years ago, while others are more recent. For you, what’s stayed the same since then? What’s changed?
Before you leave, please turn in your Introductory Texts and Interest Inventories in your Writing Folder. Please make sure your name is on the front of your folder.
Homework:
- If you haven’t already: buy the course reader at Krishna Copy, which is located at 2595 Telegraph Avenue, and get a copy of Elena’s My Brilliant Friend
- Read Gabriela Mistral’s “Locas mujeres” (Crazy Women) poems (in the course reader)
- Read Ursula K. Le Guin translator’s introductions, which you can access here.
Note: we will be reading a number of different translator introductions and notes throughout the semester. Rather than view these as the only key to a piece of translated literature, we can think of them as providing one interpretive perspective into the work, by someone very familiar with both the original and the translation.
Translating Women 