Michael Roberson (Vancouver Island University)
mike@****.com (Log-in to reveal)

The possibility of failure in the process of translation represents an inherent risk. Beyond the linguistic challenges, translation raises questions about cultural imposition, as well as cultural opportunity. This panel seeks explorations of translation as an art of failure, to borrow from John Ciardi’s essay, “Translation: The Art of Failure.” Thinking about the positive value of this failure is of particular interest, although all considerations of failure and translation are welcome.

As a point of departure, this panel’s title borrows from John Ciardi’s essay, “Translation: The Art of Failure.” Generally the possibility of failure in the process of translation represents a well-understood risk—whether the intention of the translator is fidelity or improvement (à la Walter Benjamin). Beyond the linguistic challenges, translation raises questions about cultural imposition—which includes the empowerment or disempowerment of voices along certain political lines, such as gender or sexual orientation. In this way, practices of dystranslation or queer translation provide positive avenues for thinking through the challenges of translation in more positive ways. Importantly, too, translation represents a cultural opportunity despite being haunted by failure. According to Gayatri Spivak, translation is both necessary, but impossible—an act in and of itself on behalf, and therefore ethical, but consistently marked by the humble realization of impossibility. This awareness of impossibility marks the ethical imperative of the translator as double. Thinking about the inherent but positive value of this failure is of particular interest, especially as the use of translation in experimental poetry focuses on harnessing noise and failure as generative constraint. As well, scholarship around failed translations also suggests that failures provide perspective on the values and aesthetics of both target and source cultures as much as successful or received versions.