Whether appointed in a Department of English, Languages, Literature, or Humanities, MLA members across specializations often find themselves teaching works in translation. Indeed, given the interest in diversifying and globalizing their syllabi, faculty increasingly include texts from languages and cultures with which they have little familiarity. Many who do so are also unfamiliar with translation theory, and do not possess tools to aid in fostering a critical reading of translations as translation. This MLA special session, “Teaching Texts in Translation: Theoretical and Pedagogical Approaches,” will present strategies and share success stories for integrating discussions about the theory and problematics of translation into the curriculum in a responsible and productive manner. As the papers demonstrate, when translation is addressed explicitly in the classroom, related questions that arise are not only linguistic and literary, but also political, historical, and sociological. The intended audience for the session is both instructors who are interested in learning how to introduce reflection about the act of translation into their pedagogical practice for the first time, and others who seek new ideas for expanding their practice.

Because the panel intends to provide audience members with a variety of implementable pedagogical strategies for use in diverse classes—world literature, general education, foreign language literature surveys, Honors seminars—it will consist of four focused papers, each 12-15 minutes long. For efficiency, the presider will give a very brief introduction of the four speakers at the top of the session, limited to names and affiliation, and panelists will follow each other directly. This will allow for a minimum of 15 minutes for questions and discussion at the end of the session. The presider will organize a single handout for the session, which will include tools for the classroom drawn from each paper.

In the first paper, “Re-thinking Translation, or the Problem of Foreign Words,” Brian Baer presents examples of different translators’ attempts to render translingual texts, showing that there are few norms governing their decision-making. The sheer variety of translation strategies underscores the philosophical problems raised by translingual texts in translation, problems that go to the heart of the nationalist framing of modern literary studies. For example, Baer asks to what extent translingual writing challenges or reinforces the idea of the “monolingual address,” which Naoki Sakai (1997) posits as an essential feature of the modern world order. His paper demonstrates how comparisons of actual translations can be used in the classroom to explore such issues.

In “Teaching the Translator: Constance Garnett and Milena Jesenská,” Michelle Woods explores what thinking about the translator as a literary figure in their own standing can bring to an hermeneutical understanding of the texts, and how concentrating on the translator as an exegetical figure can help teach students to become more astute readers. To that end, her paper focuses on how teaching Kafka’s Letters to Milena, Jesenská’s journalism and feuilletons, and Garnett’s biography has revealed fertile paths for reading Kafka’s and Tolstoy’s linguistic and aesthetic style, and for reading representations of gender in their works. She shares her success dedicating entire class sessions in courses taught in an English Department, on the works of Franz Kafka and Leo Tolstoy, to studying female translators of their work: in particular, the Czech translator of Kafka’s work, Milena Jesenská, and one of the first English translators of Tolstoy’s work, Constance Garnett. While, she admits, on the surface this makes no sense as none of her students read Russian, German or Czech, these sessions nonetheless have proven to be some of the most stimulating classes in the semester.

In “Teaching Literary Works in the Context of General Education and Honors Courses,” Cassio de Oliveira demonstrates ways in which explicit attention to the status of the readings as translated texts—and therefore to their rhetorical and formal features—can serve as the foundation for the development of close reading skills and analytical writing assignments. The paper focuses on his experience assigning translated literary texts from Russian (Isaak Babel) and French (Albert Camus) in a general education inquiry course on Twentieth-Century Europe. He uses comparisons of translations to prompt classroom discussions on the Russian Revolution, decolonization, and multiculturalism, as well as within the scope of the course’s broader investigation of national consciousness in Europe. The paper also presents an exercise he developed for a writing-intensive Honors seminar on Russian literature and culture, offered entirely in translation, in which different students read different translations of Crime and Punishment, and then trade translations at one juncture.

In the final paper, “Translation Theory in the Early French Literature Classroom,” Gina Greco outlines briefly how she has reorganized her Survey of Medieval and Renaissance French Literature class around questions of translation. While translation might seem an odd topic in a course taught in French, the majority of texts on the syllabus have been translated into modern French from Old or Middle French, and a focus on translation provides a useful entry into the material. Students read excerpts from several theoretical texts, exploring the notions of "domesticating" and "foreignizing" translations, the role of power in the creation of prestige languages, and even the role of the marketplace in the process of translation, and then apply the theoretical concepts to several translations of a key passage in the Song of Roland. The paper then presents a set of scaffolded activities used to convey the different steps that the text has undergone before they encounter it, from manuscripts to edition to translation, and the different roles of the persons involved in the transmission of the medieval text: author, scribe, editor, translator.

Following the four presentations, there will be time for questions from the audience, and then we hope to engage an open discussion about the benefits and challenges instructors encounter when they examine questions about translation in the classroom.