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SLC.edu / International and Exchange Programs / Summer Programs / Translation in Buenos Aires

Summer of Translation in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Sarah Lawrence College offers a summer course in translation in Buenos Aires, Argentina, taught by SLC faculty member Dr. Maria Negroni. The program runs from May 26 through June 24, 2012. Successful completion of the course will result in five Sarah Lawrence credits.

Course Curriculum

This course will engage you in the practice and theory of literary translation. You will be required to read the most relevant texts written on this complex issue. Particular attention will be given to Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, who so provocatively addressed translation in his lifetime. You will also create projects based on contemporary Argentine literature and will have the opportunity of working with some of the most remarkable writers of today. Novelist Liliana Heer, micro-fiction writer Ana María Shua, poet and journalist Guillermo Saavedra, and poet and translator Paulina Vinderman are just a few of the artists who will be visiting your classroom.

The translation class will be held at ProyectArte, an institution committed to the exploration and promotion of the Arts in Buenos Aires. You will also join a gallery or an organization in an internship three days a week. Dr. Negroni will discuss the various options for an internship in advance of your departure to Buenos Aires. Participation in the internship is required for full credit. 

Course Requirements

  • Students must have completed at least Intermediate level Spanish (two years) at the college level.
  • Students will meet in class for three hours, four times a week (Monday-Thursday) with Dr. Negroni to delve into the theory and practice of translation. Each week students will submit a written assignment in response to the weekly readings.
  • Students will be involved in projects with contemporary Argentine writers.
  • Students will participate in the cultural life of Buenos Aires by attending at least three scheduled events per week (book presentations, readings, and visits to museums, galleries and artists' studios). A weekly report on the events will be required.
  • An internship three days a week for a minimum of three hours a day. Students will be asked to keep a daily journal that will be submitted along with a written report of their internship to Dr. Negroni at the end of the program.

A selection of student translations titled B.A. BABEL Summer 2012 will be published the following spring semester within the annual SLC student publication BABEL.

Buenos Aires sign

Understanding Translation

"(Ezra) Pound spoke of translation as pedagogy or a school and he was right. To render the work of a writer from one language into another implies a widening of our own perception:  not just the linguistic, historical, political, social –that is, cultural-- references that configure a work have to be deeply considered, but also the plural, infinite dimension of the imaginary space. Each writer embodies a vulnerable and unique tension between word and world. Translation makes porous and habitable those differences. It reveals the rhythms, the obsessions that pulsate beneath the forms of a verbal heart. As a result an improvement takes place, not just (or not merely) personal but rather at the level of language. A widening of the possible registers is produced. By opening up to otherness, we leave behind self-involvement and cultural self-sufficiency: the change changes us." —Maria Negroni, Poet and Professor of Literature at Sarah Lawrence College