The Art of Translation: Dialogues

A series of conversations in the RACC movable studio: Irina Mashinski in dialogue with masters of the art of translation, as they reflect on their work.

What is translation, after all? What is the nature and the role of the ‘original’ in each particular case? And what is actually being translated? And why is it relevant now, of all times?

In this program Peter Daniels reflects on his work translating Vladislav Khodasevich (1886-1939), as well as his versions of war poems by Akhmatova, Balmont, Bunin, Gumilyov, and other poets of the WWI era.

Video recording on the RACC/Roman Khidekel YouTube channel

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Peter Daniels began translating Vladislav Khodasevich in 2009 as a Hawthornden Fellow. The Selected Poems were published by Angel Classics in 2013, and were shortlisted for the Rossica, Oxford-Weidenfeld and Read Russia prizes. His third collection of poems, My Tin Watermelon, appeared from Salt in 2019 as part of his Creative Writing PhD from Goldsmiths College, London.

https://www.peterdaniels.org.uk/

Irina Mashinski was born in Moscow and graduated from Moscow University where completed her Ph.D. In 1991, she moved to the US, where she worked as a high school mathematics and science teacher and taught at universities. Irina Mashinski is the author of eleven books of poetry, essays, and translations in Russian. She is co-editor, with Robert Chandler and Boris Dralyuk, of The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry (Penguin Classics, 2015) and of Cardinal Points, the journal of Slavic literature in English (Brown University), and co-translator of Lev Ozerov’s Portraits Without Frames (NYRB Classics, 2018). Irina Mashinski is the recipient of several Russian literary awards and, with Boris Dralyuk, of the first prize in the 2012 Joseph Brodsky / Stephen Spender International Translation Prize competition. Her English-language debut, is The Naked World. A Tale with Verse (MadHat Press, 2022). www.irinamashinski.com

On YouTube: Irina Mashinski

On Twitter: @IrinaMashinski

This program is made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Cojeco and Tianaderrah Foundation.