Selim Özdoğan was the Max Kade Writer in Residence during the Fall 2016 term. During his residency, Özdoğan visited Professor Kristin Dickinson’s seminar “Un/Translatability in Theory and Practice” to workshop student translations from his most recent novel Wieso Heimat? Ich wohne zur Miete (2016) (Who Said Heimat, I’m Only Renting). Students first read the novel and then selected individual chapters to translate. Over the course of several weeks, students subsequently read, discussed, and edited each other’s work together with the author. Overall, this project offered the exciting opportunity for students to engage in a collaborative translation practice which underscored the value of translation as an ongoing process rather than simply an end product. 

The refereed online German Studies Journal Transit recently published these translations that Özdoğan and the students worked so hard on during Dickinson’s seminar. These translations are by Milena Beltrama, Brittany Boyle, Brandon Cummings, Kristen Datta, Hannah Kelley-Watkins, Nathan Korth, Edward Kosta, Ted Ma, James Margard, Sydney McConnell, and Sabrina Walker. 

In addition to the students’ translations, Transit also published an introduction to the novel and an interview with Selim Özdoğan by Kristin Dickinson. The interview and translations can be read here: http://transit.berkeley.edu/2017/dickinson-3/.

Selim Özdoğan. Photo credit: Harald Krichel, CC BY-SA 3.0.