Past Events

Cold War Women: Recovering Forgotten Translators of Russian and Soviet Literature

April 5th 2023, Jonathan Swift Theatre, Arts Block, 6.15pm

British interest in Russian authors had already waned before Garnett’s death in 1946, but during the Cold War (inter)cultural curiosity reignited, creating opportunities both for literature and for women translators. Hamish Hamilton, Hutchinson and Penguin in the UK, Dutton and Harper and Row in the US, Foreign Languages Publishing House in Moscow independently commissioned new translations of the Russian Classics and British, American and emigrée Russian women assumed roles as literary translators. Some lesser-known female translators were commissioned for their cultural, linguistic, and literary capital and, in return, literary translation provided employment, self-validation, and professional respectability. It also presented a platform for ideological activism including, on occasion, a smokescreen for (political or personal) intrigue. In this talk, I will be drawing on my latest microhistorical research to spotlight the professional careers (the practices, networks, tribulations, and achievements) and the complex socio-political contexts of a selection of forgotten female translators who acted as cultural gatekeepers between Russia, the UK, and US during the Cold War.

**Cathy McAteer** is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Exeter for the ERC-funded project: The Dark Side of Translation: 20th and 21st Century Translation from Russian as a Political Phenomenon in the UK, Ireland and the USA. Her main research interests are in the field of classic Russian literature in English translation, specifically Penguin's Russian Classics. Her first monograph Translating Great Russian Literature: The Penguin Russian Classics (BASEES Routledge series, 2021) is available in Gold Open Access. She is currently finalising her second monograph Cold War Women: Female Translators and Cultural Mediators of Russian and Soviet Literature in the Twentieth Century.

Fall Down the Rabbit Hole: a Literary Translation Workshop

March 28th 2023, Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation, 2pm

In collaboration with DU Modern Languages Society, we are excited to invite you to a literary translation workshop... and all levels are invited! Whether this is your first or fiftieth time having a go at literary translation, we want to see you at this exciting tea party.

The workshop will be taking place at Trinity's very own Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation whose mission it is to develop, promote and support literary translation in Ireland.

The event is free, but registration is required. Click here to register.

Frank Wynne in Conversation: The Creative Art of Literary Translation

14th November 2022

Thank you to everyone who came to our event. You can listen back to the conversation between Frank Wynne and Anastasia Fedosova that delved into the entanglements between translation, adaptation, performance, gender and queer theory, postcolonialism and other topics, below.

Literary translation touches all aspects of the creative arts, enabling the exchange of human stories across cultures, eras, and different media. This conversation with renowned translator Frank Wynne provides an opportunity for the Forum to reflect on how translation also transforms, critiques, and performs as a creative art in its own right. With examples drawn from the disciplines of drama, film, and music, grounded in his extensive experience as a translator, this discussion will connect practices and theories of translation to key issues in our contemporary cultural scene.

This talk is co-organised by the Trinity Journal of Literary Translation and the Creative Arts Practice research theme, with support from the Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation.

Frank Wynne is an Irish literary translator, writer and editor. He has translated numerous French and Hispanic authors including Michel Houellebecq, Patrick Modiano, Javier Cercas and Virginie Despentes. Over a career spanning more than twenty years, his work has earned him the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, he has twice been awarded both the Scott Moncrieff Prize and the Premio Valle Inclán. Most recently, his translation of The Art of Losingby Alice Zeniter won the 2022 Dublin Literary Award. He has edited two major anthologies, Found in Translation: 100 0f the finest short stories ever translated and QUEER: LGBT writing from Ancient Times to Yesterday. In 2022, he was chair of the jury for the International Booker Prize.

Guiding the conversation with Frank will be Anastasia Fedosova. She is a final-year English Literature student at TCD. Her dissertation looks at Irish translations and adaptations of Anton Chekhov’s dramatic work. She is Editor-in-Chief of the Trinity Journal of Literary Translation for the 2022-23 academic year. She is the deputy Radius editor of The University Times, publishing manager of celebreMagazine, and a contributing writer to Trinity News and Luxury Investment Magazine.