1/23: Community Guidelines; Translation, women, and gender

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:

1. As a group, review each other’s individual bCourses posts and consider how they pertain to the group’s theme.
2. 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!
3. 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.
4. 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:

1. 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
2. Read Gabriela Mistral’s “Locas mujeres” (Crazy Women) poems (in the course reader)
3. 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.

1/21: Welcome to Translating Women!

Hello! It’s a pleasure to (virtually) meet you. We’re really looking forward to our semester together. Please take a few minutes to explore our class website and read about our class.

Before each class, you’ll find the agenda and homework posted on the home page of this website. Here’s what we’ll be doing on our first day of class tomorrow, Tuesday January 21, from 12:30-2pm in 242 Dwinelle:

We’ll briefly introduce the course. Then we’ll start with brief intros for today:

• Please say your full name and what you like to be called
• If you’re comfortable, please share your gender pronouns
• Tell us where you’re from

We’ll then do a brief activity, in groups of 3 and then as a whole group, to start to think about translation. Below are emoji translations of the first lines of some well-known novels. We’ll pass out a handout of those lines, and please try your best to match the lines to the emojis.

Afterwards, we’ll have a brief discussion about these translations:

• Which ones were easy? Which ones were hard? Are there some that just didn’t make sense?
• What translation strategies were used to turn the first lines into emojis? How did you as a reader figure those out?
• Do you think any of these change based on the language we’re speaking or the cultures we’re coming from? Can you think of other examples particular to the language(s) you speak? Do you read or use emojis differently in different languages?
• Do you even think these are translations? Why or why not?
• Finally, what emojis would you use to get across the concept of translation? 

This discussion should help you brainstorm ideas for the Introductory Text, which is due at the beginning of our next class.

Finally, we’ll go over the syllabus and schedule.

The homework for the upcoming classes will always be located at the end of each post. Here is the upcoming homework:

1. Please read through the syllabus carefully and email us with any questions that arise.
2. By 2pm Wednesday, January 22, post a brief response on bCourses under the Discussion link “Community Guidelines.” For you, what factors contribute to creating a collective learning environment? What is the most important guideline you’d suggest to help build our reading and writing community? Explain why this is important and how it will impact your and our shared experiences in this class. You might want to consider guidelines pertaining to respect, active listening, inclusive language, constructive criticism/peer review, electronics, food in class, etc. For examples, check out the University of Michigan’s CRLT. This is a discussion that we’ll continue in class, so please do read each others’ posts and feel free to like and reply to them!
3. The Introductory Text is due at the beginning of next class, Thursday, January 23. It should be printed, stapled, formatted, submitted via bcourses, and turned in in your writing folder as indicated on the assignment. (We ask that you please do this before reading the 4 pieces below.)
4. The Interest Inventory is also due at the beginning of next class, Thursday, January 23, in your writing folder. We’re looking forward to getting to know you!
5. Also for our next class on Thursday, January 23, please read the following 4 short pieces. These texts will be passed out as a packet in class, and we ask that you use the links below to familiarize yourself with the links within the articles themselves.
   • “Where Are the Women in Translation?” by Alison Anderson
   • “Women in Translation: An Interview with Margaret Carson and Alta B. Price”
   • “Emboldening Queer Characters: On Translating Gender” by Victoria Caudle
   • “The Political Power of Translation” by Chenxin Jiang
6. Ideally by Thursday, January 23, but by Tuesday, January 28 at the latest, buy the course reader at Krishna Copy, which is located at 2595 Telegraph Avenue. We recommend going with someone you met in class today.
7. Get a copy of Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend.