Translation Program Featured in Arts & Sciences Magazine
The origin story of BU’s MFA in Literary Translation goes back more than 40 years to a classroom in BU’s School of Theology. That’s 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—with Rosanna Warren, the former Emma
MacLachlan Metcalf Professor of the Humanities, University Professor, and professor of English and romance studies—the BU Translation Seminar: a weekly speaker series open both to the public and to graduate students seeking course credit.
The seminars attracted a who’s 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 MFA in Literary Translation in 2019 took it to the next level.