This Is a Classic

Regina Galasso is Associate Professor Spanish and Portuguese Studies and Director of the Translation Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA. She is the author of Translating New York (2018) and editor, with Evelyn Scaramella, of Avenues of Translation: The City in Iberian and Latin American Writing (2019).

Translation has always been about learning to understand others while finding out something vital about ourselves. Unlike other books in the field, This Is a Classic does not fall into the trap of neglecting one part of that equation to favor the other, and that is because it never loses sight of the fact that a literary classic – whatever else it is or does – teaches us to look at ourselves anew in consideration of others.

• IntroductionLiterary Classics through Translation Regina Galasso (University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA)Prologue: The Translator's Agency and the Literary Classic Abroad: Emily Dickinson's Voyage to BraziliputAdalberto Muller (University Federal Fluminense, Brazil)1. Chinese Classics: The Commentarial TraditionSabina Knight (Smith College, USA) with Kidder Smith (Bowdoin College, USA)2. Happy Hour Homer: On Translating and Performing the Iliad Live in a BarLynn Kozak (McGill University, Canada)3. Today in the Temple of Language: Translating DanteMary Jo Bang (Washington University St. Louis, USA)4. True Confessions of a Literary TranslatorArvind Krishna Mehrotra (Independent Scholar, India)5. What is a Classic? The Case of EsperantoHumphrey Tonkin (University of Hartford, USA)6. The Russian Canon in RetranslationMarian Schwartz (Independent Scholar, USA)7. Translating Yiddish Classics: Redefining Tradition in Modern Yiddish Literature through the Prism of Kadya MolodowskyChantal Ringuet (Independent Scholar, Canada)8. Victor Català's A Film (3000 Meters): Translating a Catalan ClassicPeter Bush (Independent Scholar, UK)9. Translation as StorytellingSusan Bernofsky (Columbia University, USA)10. In Terror and Pandemic: Translating García Lorca's Poet in New York Mark Statman (The New School, USA)11. Stopping at the Surface: Translating Clarice Lispector's The Besieged City and A Breath of LifeJohnny Lorenz (Montclair State University, USA)12. Tanizaki's The Key in Translation: Will You Still Need Me? Will You Still Read Me, When I'm Sixty-Four?Anna Zielinska-Elliott (Boston University, USA)13. An Essay on Nichita Stanescu: The Classic and the Personal in TranslationSean Cotter (University of Texas, USA)14. From Arabic to English, What is a Classic?Michelle Hartman (McGill University, Canada)15. Translating a Classic into the Future: Tómas Jónsson—BestsellerLytton Smith (SUNY Geneseo, USA)16. Love, Anger, Madness Making a Classic: Amplifying Marie Vieux Chauvet's Haitian TrilogyCaroyln Shread (Mount Holyoke College, USA)17. What besides Words?: Translating Bilge Karasu's A Long Day's EveningAron Aji (University of Iowa, USA)18. Nonsense in a Given Direction: Translating the Timelessness of Marguerite DurasEmma Ramadan (Independent Scholar, USA)19. "Sentence" as Lifeline: Translating David Albahari's NovelsEllen Elias-Bursac (Independent Scholar, USA)EpilogueMatching Socks in the Dark; or How to Translate from Languages You Don't KnowIlan Stavans (Amherst College, USA)A Translation ExperimentKleptomaniac Classic: RamonaEsther Allen (CUNY, USA) and Sean Cotter (University of Texas, USA)Index