Experimental Translation: The Work of Translation in the Age of Algorithmic Production

The history and future of an alternative, oppositional translation practice.

The threat of machine translation has given way to an alternative, experimental practice of translation that reflects upon and hijacks traditional paradigms. In much the same way that photography initiated a break in artistic practices with the threat of an absolute fidelity to the real, machine translation has paradoxically liberated human translators to err, to diverge, to tamper with the original, blurring creation and imitation with cyborg collage and appropriation. Seven chapters reimagine seven classic ＂procedures＂ of translation theory and pedagogy: borrowing, calque, literal translation, transposition, modulation, equivalence, and adaptation, updating them for the material political and poetic concerns of the contemporary era. Each chapter combines reflections from translation studies and experimental literature with practical guides, sets of experimental translation ＂procedures＂ to try at home or abroad, in the classroom, the laboratory, the garden, the dance hall, the city, the kitchen, the library, the shopping center, the supermarket, the train, the bus, the airplane, the post office, on the radio, on your phone, on your computer, and on the internet.

Lily Robert-Foley has moved back and forth between the US and France: from San Francisco where she was born, to Iowa where she did my undergraduate degree, to Paris for a year abroad, and then back to San Francisco for her Master’s Degree, then Chicago, where she spent two years as a piano teacher and intern at the Green Lantern Gallery and Press. She returned to Paris for her PhD, finally setting in Montpellier where she is Maîtresse de conférences, Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 in the Département d’Etudes Anglophones.