23 Jun EKATERINA PETROVA: TRANSLATING IN THE DIRECTION OF THE SHADOW
Ekaterina Petrova: Translating in the Direction of the Shadow
Monday, June 28, 6pm
KROKODIL Center
Apply to office@krokodil.rs by Friday, June 25
Working language: English
On Monday, June 28 in KROKODIL Center, Ekaterina Petrova, a literary translator and nonfiction writer working in English and Bulgarian, will hold a translation lecture aimed primarily at translators translating to English, but also to those working in any other language combination.
For the past three years, Ekaterina has been translating a novel by Iana Boukova, Traveling in the Direction of the Shadow, and she will use this experience to give an overview of some of the main challenges of translating from Bulgarian to English, such as domesticating vs. foreignizing, title, long sentences, skipping of pronouns, names, foreign words, words appropriate for the period, word play, etc. and her strategies in handling those challenges – illustrating all of them with specific examples.
She will also give some “tricks and tips” that might be useful to translators in general, regardless of what languages they translate from/into, including collaborating with the author, working with editors, editing and revising your own work, promoting your work, and generally advocating for translation and the work of translators.
Ekaterina Petrova is a literary translator between Bulgarian and English and a bilingual nonfiction writer. She holds an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa, where she was awarded the Iowa Arts Fellowship and helped edit Exchanges: Journal of Literary Translation. Her translation-in-progress of Iana Boukova’s novel Traveling in the Direction of the Shadow was awarded a 2021 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant. Ekaterina’s literary translations and nonfiction writing have appeared in various Bulgarian and English-language publications, including Asymptote, Words Without Borders, European Literature Network, 91st Meridian, EuropeNow, Ninth Letter, Drunken Boat, B O D Y, and Vagabond. Her translation of Bogdan Rusev’s novel Come to Me was published by Dalkey Archive Press in 2019, while the nonfiction anthologies My Brother’s Suitcase and Fathers Never Go Away in her translation came out with ICU Press in 2020. She teaches literary translation at Sofia University and occasional translation workshops.