S127. The Politics of Translation: Aimé Césaire's The Tragedy of King Christophe
Saturday, April 2, 2016
9:00 am to 10:15 am
Panelists discuss politically-charged translation problems in this play, set in postrevolutionary Haiti. How should one translate nègre, which is in most contexts a term of racial abuse, but is for Césaire usually neutral or honorific (its cognate in modern Kreyòl is racially unmarked, meaning simply "man")? Should nonstandard French be rendered as nonstandard English? Paul Breslin and Rachel Ney present the decisions made in their new translation. Roger Reeves offers a critique of their work.
Participants
Moderator:
Paul Breslin is professor of English, emeritus, at Northwestern University. His most recent books are Between My Eye and the Light: Poems and, with Rachel Ney, a translation of Aimé Césaire's La tragédie du roi Christophe.
Roger Reeves was awarded a 2014–2015 Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University and a 2013 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, and Tin House. His first book is King Me.
Dominic Thomas
