\u201cYou\u2019re reading a book in a foreign language, and you think, \u2018This is a really cool book. I want my friends or my mom to read it,\u2019\u201d says Zielinska-Elliott, a master lecturer in Japanese. \u201cThen you start hearing it in your head translated, and you get this urge to translate it.\u201d<\/p>\n Zielinska-Elliott also directs BU\u2019s MFA in Literary Translation<\/a>, an intensive, one-year program in the art of translation. The program is administered by the Department of World Languages & Literatures<\/a> and draws faculty from the departments of classical studies, romance studies, English, and creative writing\u2014all of whom are themselves professional translators. Though the MFA was only launched in 2019, BU enjoys a rich legacy of literary translation work and instruction, going back to the late 1970s.<\/p>\n For her part, Zielinska-Elliott has translated many Japanese works\u2014including 12 Murakami novels and several short story collections and essays\u2014into Polish over the last three decades. She cites two primary methods of translation: one is to create a rough draft of a translation and go back to look up words and fix the mistakes; and the second, which she employs, is to create a near-final translation in one draft, looking up unfamiliar words as she goes.<\/p>\n Balancing her translation work with being a professor and running an MFA program can be hard, and Zielinska-Elliott says she translates during every free moment she has\u2014completing up to 15 pages a day of the original work. She says the best translators are good writers in their native tongue who understand that they\u2019re not translating words, but rather translating what the words mean.<\/p>\n \u201cI think everybody can learn the techniques of translation, to a degree,\u201d she says. \u201cIf you don\u2019t love language, if you don\u2019t enjoy this process, then you probably will never become really, really good.\u201d<\/p>\n The origin story of BU\u2019s MFA in Literary Translation goes back more than 40 years<\/span><\/a> to a classroom in BU\u2019s School of Theology. That\u2019s where, beginning in 1978, the late Rodolfo Cardona, a professor of foreign language, first invited a small group of academic colleagues and students for a Friday afternoon discussion of the art of translating literature. These informal chats became formal in 1982 when Cardona used part of a $3 million Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant to launch\u2014with Rosanna Warren, the former Emma MacLachlan Metcalf Professor of the Humanities, University Professor, and professor of English and romance studies\u2014the BU Translation Seminar<\/a>: a weekly speaker series open both to the public and to graduate students seeking course credit.<\/p>\n The seminars attracted a who\u2019s who of literary types from even beyond the translation world, including Nobel Prize-winning writers Joseph Brodsky and Seamus Heaney. Over the next 30 years, the seminar took shape under the leadership of Warren, a beloved American poet and translator in her own right, until she accepted an appointment at the University of Chicago in 2012. By all accounts, it was a literary translation community that punched way above its weight. The addition of an <\/span>MFA in Literary Translation in 2019<\/span><\/a> took it to the next level.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The one-year MFA welcomes up to six students each fall and is taught by faculty from the Departments of World Languages & Literature, Romance Studies, Classical Studies, English, and Creative Writing. Students take courses that include translation history and theory, language-specific workshops, and advanced literary study, then work closely with faculty mentors to produce a publishable translation of a text of their choosing as their capstone project. Zielinska-Elliott believes the program\u2019s strength comes from the <\/span>deep well of BU faculty<\/span><\/a> who have translated works of literature or written on translation<\/span>: a database of translations and scholarship on translation by current BU faculty includes more than 200 works.<\/p>\n \u201cWe only accept students in languages in which we have a faculty member who either is a translator of that language or knows a lot about translation and is able to work with a student one on one,\u201d Zielinska-Elliott says. \u201cThat makes us very different from other programs, which accept students in any language. We feel very strongly that while the most important part of translation is the final product, so there also needs to be a process where somebody makes sure the student is actually translating the text, and that they are getting all the nuances and understanding of what\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s those nuances that Zielinska-Elliott thinks will protect translators from the threat of artificial intelligence, or AI. She encourages students in her undergraduate Japanese translation class to use AI tools like Google Translate and chatbots to check their own work for<\/span>\u00a0some assignments<\/span>\u2014even if she discourages it in her master\u2019s students\u2019 translations and avoids it in her own work so as not to mute their hearing of the author\u2019s voice. But professional translators shouldn\u2019t fear being replaced by robots just yet, she says. Since 2015, she\u2019s pasted the first paragraph of Yasunari Kawabata\u2019s Snow Country<\/em> into an AI translator (first Google Translate and now DeepL Translate) to test its accuracy with one of her classes.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m happy to say that it still can\u2019t do it,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s gotten better, but it still cannot do what a human could do yet.\u201d<\/p>\n Why?<\/p>\n \u201c[AI] doesn\u2019t have taste,\u201d she says. \u201cIt has a hard time judging the beauty of a sentence. So until it learns to differentiate that and has some aesthetic sense, the translation will still need a human.\u201d<\/p>\n Evan Laufman (CAS\u201924, GRS\u201925) became enamored of translation while pursuing his bachelor of arts in Japanese language and literature, when he took Zielinska-Elliott\u2019s Japanese translation class his third year. Laufman started translating stories and manga\u2014Japanese comics\u2014in his spare time, even winning <\/span>the Han Suyin Literary Prize<\/span><\/a> in 2023<\/span> for his translation of Motoyuki Shibata\u2019s short story, \u201cValentine.\u201d Entering the MFA program in translation after graduation was a natural next step.<\/p>\n \u201cThe idea of studying a more niche field like translation so closely was very enticing,\u201d Laufman says. \u201cIn the few months leading up to the program, I found myself getting increasingly excited to learn about translation theory and literary style; I couldn’t wait to see how my studies would impact my thought process as a translator, and how that impact would be visible in my work.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Anna](\"\/cas\/files\/2025\/01\/IMG_5974-511x636-1.jpg\")
Creating an MFA<\/h3>\n
![\"Translator](\"\/cas\/files\/2025\/01\/Screen-Shot-2023-08-13-at-4.56.16-PM-1536x1273-1-636x527.png\")
![\"Translation](\"\/cas\/files\/2025\/01\/IMG_2224-636x477.jpeg\")
A New Generation of Translators<\/h3>\n
![\"Evan](\"\/cas\/files\/2025\/01\/Evan-bio-pic-426x636.jpeg\")