{"id":4,"date":"2024-12-10T00:00:38","date_gmt":"2024-12-10T05:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/translation\/news\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T20:43:27","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T00:43:27","slug":"translation-seminar","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/translation\/translation-seminar\/","title":{"rendered":"BU Translation Seminar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our flagship Lecture Series, established in 1978 before Translation Studies was even a recognized field, has welcomed some of the most accomplished translators and literary figures of the last half-century.<\/span><\/p>\n

Held on most Friday afternoons each spring, the Translation Seminar lectures offer intensive and lively literary conversations about what makes literature work across languages. Students, writers, scholars, and translators from across Boston and New England gather to debate whether Odysseus should be called a “complicated man,” how to capture dialects in translation, what to do with rhyme and meter, and other fundamental questions about literary craft. The Q&A sessions, which often run longer than the lectures themselves, show how the translator\u2019s task is the ultimate form of close reading and a fine art in its own right that requires of its practitioners not just linguistic precision and deep cultural understanding, but also creativity and imagination.<\/span><\/p>\n

View past lectures here.<\/a> Or browse our alphabetical list of guest lecturers since 1978<\/a>.<\/p>\n

2026 Lecture Series<\/h6>\n
The 2026 lecture series was moderated by Professor William Waters.<\/h6>\n

Recordings of 2026 lectures can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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January 23 \u2013 Greening in the Garden: How Translation Transforms English<\/h3>
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CAS 306, 725 Commonwealth Avenue<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

2:30 – 4:15<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Emma Ramadan<\/b> is a literary translator of over 40 books from French. She has been awarded the PEN Translation Prize, the Albertine Prize, the James Tait Black Prize, two NEA Fellowships, and a Fulbright. Her translations include Anne Garr\u00e9ta’s <\/span>Sphinx<\/span><\/i>, Marguerite Duras’s <\/span>The Easy Life<\/span><\/i>, Abdellah Ta\u00efa’s<\/span> Living in Your Light<\/span><\/i>, and Lamia Ziad\u00e9’s <\/span>My Port of Beirut<\/span><\/i>. She is also the co-founder and former owner of Riffraff bookstore and bar in Providence, RI, and the current program director of the Art Omi: Writers Residency in upstate New York.<\/span><\/p>\n