Translating Poetry

The 14th conference of the Estonian Association of Comparative Literature in November 2021 focuses on “The Factor of Lyrical Poetry in the Formation of Literary Cultures”. As members of the “Translation in History” project, Miriam McIlfatrick-Ksenofontov and Miriam Rossi have put together a translation panel with the aim of bringing together papers that explore the fundamental role of translation and translators of lyrical poetry in the social and political transformation of individual identity into cultural identity. The panel offers an inspiring variety of visions on the proposed topic. McIlfatrick-Ksenofontov approaches the translation of Juhan Viiding’s poetry from Merlin Donald’s perspective of distributed cognition. Miriam Rossi discusses Elena Shchvarts’s case of pseudo-translation to explore the role of poetry translation as a search for identity in the Soviet unofficial field. Tanya Escudero, research fellow at Tallinn University, engages in formal analysis of poetry, taking a closer look at Spanish translations of Shakespeare’s  sonnets as one of the most translated poetic works in Spain and Latin America. Further contributions to the panel stem from colleagues from England, Japan, Spain, and Sweden. The two panel sessions take place on November 2, at Tartu University. https://sisu.ut.ee/eacl2021/programme