Marilyn Gaddis Rose

Marilyn Gaddis Rose is the founding director of the Binghamton University Translation Research and Instruction Program. This program, which shared the American Translators Association Alexander Gode medal with Monterey in 1981, now offers the PhD in Translation Studies. (She herself received the Gode medal in 1988 and ATA special service awards in 1983 and 1995, the latter as founding editor of the ATA scholarly monograph series.) Her most recent monograph is Translation and Literary Criticism (1997), and her most recent book-length translation Sainte-Beuve's Volupté. A View of Him (1995). Distinguished Service Professor of Comparative Literature, she currently serves on the Executive Council of the Modern Language Association.

Abstract of presentation:

Translation as a Learning Tool: the Joy of Translation, III

Translating enforces life-long learning, and this may be its great satisfaction. A translator learns a lot from nearly every assignment. Translators know that knowing the languages involved is just the beginning of a translation. And even knowing the cultures may not get the translator much further. In fact, skimming off what the first writer may have put together laboriously is a kind of facile expertise. Translating equals learning when the translator must research the text subject, pursuing its by-ways, nor just the mainstream, but the intriguing peripheries also. This will happen whenever the translator must deeply interface with another mind. Professor Gaddis Rose will share some of her resulting explorations of Western literature, concentrating on canonical writers. She expects to learn more from the other participants.