Announcing the 3rd Annual
CLASSICAL TRANSLATION CONTEST
Students from all departments are invited to submit translations of texts from Latin, Ancient Greek, and Modern Greek.
We know that there are many people inspired by the beauty of these languages who wish to render them more freely and creatively than classwork often involves. This contest is intended to highlight the work of students who are interested in the process of translation as a creative, intellectually meaningful enterprise. We welcome students in Classics and other languages and literatures as well as creative writers and students interested in translating Greek and Latin into other media, such as music, the visual arts, screen arts, theater, dance, etc.
Faculty in all departments are encouraged to announce this contest to their classes. We invite graduate students to inform their own undergraduate language and writing classes about this contest, and to enter it themselves.There will be two categories of contestants: undergraduate students and graduate students. Prizes will be given in each category for the first, second, and third place winning entries of original translations from the languages of Greek or Latin of any era. Winning authors will have the opportunity to present their translations and receive their prizes at the annual Classics awards ceremony.
The awards ceremony featured guest Diane Rayor, who delivered a presentation entitled "TRANSLATING APHRODITE". Diane Rayor is Professor and Chair of the Classics Department at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. She is the author and translator of The Homeric Hymns: A Translation, with Introduction and Notes (U of California P, 2004); the coeditor, with William Batstone, of Latin Lyric and Elegiac Poetry: An Anthology of New Translations (1995); the author and translator of Sappho's Lyre: Archaic Lyric and Women Poets of Ancient Greece (U of California P, 1991); and the translator, with Stanley Lombardo, of Callimachus: Hymns, Epigrams, Select Fragments (1988). She read from her translations of the "Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite" and Sappho's poetry, and she discussed the practice of translation, particularly the issue of translating voice.
Winners for the Classical Translation Contest:
Undergraduate Prizes:
Coming soon.
Graduate Prizes:
Coming soon.
TRANSLATION WORKSHOP: "THINKING IN LATIN: A CONVERSATION WITH FRANK BIDART".
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
12:00 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.
Angell Hall 2175 (Classics Library)
A brown bag lunch and TRANSLATION WORKSHOP entitled "THINKING IN LATIN: A CONVERSATION WITH FRANK BIDART". The panel of respondents featured Benjamin Acosta-Hughes (Classics), Catherine Brown (Comparative Literature and Romance Languages), and Ray McDaniel (Sweetland Writing Center), and the discussion was moderated by Yopie Prins (English and Comparative Literature). Frank Bidart has published five books of poetry. The first three are collected, with new poems, in In the Western Night: Collected Poems 1965-90 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1990). His fifth volume, Desire (FSG), appeared in 1997 and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, and National Book Critics Circle Award. He has also been honored with the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Foundation Writer's Award, the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award presented by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Shelley Award of the Poetry Society of America. He teaches at Wellesley College.
