Rainbow Lifelong Learning Institute, Boston

Schedule: 

This course will take place on Tuesdays at 1:30 PM for five weeks (3/18/25 - 4/15/25).  This course will take place at the Arlington Council on Aging.

Directions and Parking: https://www.rainbowlliboston.org/location

Course Description.  

Literary translation is different from conveying what a patient is trying to tell their doctor or converting an instructional manual from one language to another. A literal translation won’t suffice. Words have connotations and nuances that have to do with time and place; to translate colloquial expressions and slang requires a particular skill. To do justice to the text, Gregory Rabassa, renowned translator of Spanish into English, would try to imagine he was writing the book the author would have written if he or she were writing in English. This class will compare two or more translations of excerpts from works of Chekhov, Shalom Aleichem, Juan Rulfo, Dostoyevsky, Camus, and Colette. 

Materials. 

The instructor will provide links and excerpts of works to be considered. 

Instructor Biography

Monica Hileman has published over a dozen short stories in journals such as Arts & Letters, The Baffler, the Chicago Tribune’s Printers Row Journal, and Catamaran Literary Reader. Originally from the Chicago area, she holds an MFA from the University of North Carolina and lives just north of Boston. Many years ago, she wrote reviews for Gay Community News and edited short bits for the monthly woman’s newspaper Sister Courage. More recently, a few of her reviews are on the Arts Fuse, a local online magazine.