From Here to There Newsletter of the International Center for Writing and Translation
University of California, Irvine Volume 1 | Number 1 | Fall 2004-05
from the Director spent much time considering the idea of what it means to have languages and cul- A Message from tures in conversation with each other. With this newsletter, we felt it was time ICWT Newsletter Debuts to make available to a larger audience the Chancellor how the Center supports writing and Welcome to the first issue of From Here translation, and how we aim to nurture In April of 2002, I was honored to par- to There, the newsletter of the Interna- those conversations among languages, ticipate in “Inaugurations,” the event tional Center for Writing and Translation cultures, individuals, and disciplines, too. that welcomed the International Center at UC Irvine. With this newsletter, we for Writing and Translation (ICWT) to have put into We are particularly glad that Chancellor UC Irvine. I now have the great pleas- print the Cen- Ralph Cicerone has helped us inaugurate ure of introducing the Center’s newslet- ter’s life: its the newsletter with a message. In addi- ter, From Here to There. events, excerpts tion, we want to thank, here, Dean Karen from scholars, Lawrence, who has championed the A glance through these pages will re- writers, and art- ICWT from its inception and has been an veal that, although still in its infancy, ists who visit. incredible support to it. the Center has already made its mark In addition, you on the UC Irvine landscape, and it has will find here Finally, we want to acknowledge and also reached beyond the boundaries of interviews with thank our two governing boards. First UCI to embrace and inspire local, na- faculty, students, we thank the Advisory Committee, tional, and international communities. and other individuals who contribute to which is comprised of faculty from the making the Center what it is. School of Humanities; this dedicated The ICWT has funded major interna- group participates in all of our events and tional translation projects, as well as After three years of developing programs guides the academic component of the translation research projects by UCI and focusing our mission, the ICWT has Center’s mission. Second, we want to faculty and graduate students. It has devote a special note of thanks to our provided fellowships for UCI School of Executive Board, distinguished individu- Humanities graduate students and in- In this Issue als – writers, activists, translators, schol- ternships for undergraduate students. It ars – who contribute incredibly to the has sponsored and cosponsored a vari- Center through their ideas and energy. ety of events that have brought to cam-
They help us to make the Center known pus acclaimed scholars, writers, artists, From the Director 1 throughout the world. actors, filmmakers, publishers, and From the Chancellor 1 translators from around the world. Dilek Dizdar 2 You will find here the record of the Cen- Translating Women 3 Belle Boggs 4 ter’s journey – a continual one – from In all of its endeavors, the ICWT has Elvis in the Third World 5 here to there: from Irvine to far places demonstrated a commitment to schol- Edward Fowler 6 and back again.~ arly excellence and the creative spirit. Abby Mims 6 We will watch with interest as the cen- Lynh Tran 7 ter continues to refine its programs and Fine Print 7 define its future; for now, I invite you Travels with Ngũgĩ 8 Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o is Distinguished Profes- News in Brief 8 sor of English and Comparative Literature to enjoy the premiere issue of From Jacques Derrida 9 and Director of the International Center for Here to There.~ Island Voices in World Culture 10 Writing and Translation in the School of Calendar 11 Humanities at UC Irvine. The first part of his Ralph J. Cicerone six-part novel, Murogi wa Kagogo, which is Chancellor written in Gikuyu, was published in Kenya in August 2004. The English version of the novel, The Wizard of the Crow, is expected to be published in the coming year. Eye on the Executive Board EXECUTIVE BOARD 2004-05 Dilek Dizdar on Translation and Interpretation
In an email-interview, the ICWT learned migrants for migrants this becomes even Jacques Derrida more about Board member Dilek Dizdar. more obvious – How do I relate to my In answers that came from Germany mother tongue? Who am I as inter- and Turkey, Professor Dizdar talked preter? How do I relate to the authority Manthia Diawara about her own research and revealed on the one side and the migrant on the her genuine interest in the theoretical and practical intersection of translation other? In community-interpreting, the Dilek Dizdar and interpreting. in-between-position is experienced in the Dilek Dizdar teaches at both Boğaziçi Susan Kent University, Istanbul (Turkey), and Johan- nes Gutenberg University Mainz Bei Ling (Germany). In Istanbul, her department has been newly changed from “Translation and Interpreting” to Elena Poniatowska “Translation Studies” in order to reflect more adequately the “aim to combine Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak theoretical work on translation with the discipline's applied branches.” At Mainz Mark Strand University, Dizdar teaches in the school of Applied Linguistics and Culture Stud- ies, where some 2500 students are trained Michael Wood as translators or interpreters. At Mainz, she teaches within the Department of General Linguistics and Culture Studies, ex officio where theoretical courses in translation
studies and linguistics are offered. most radical way and this experience Karen Lawrence leads to an awareness of what translating In Dizdar’s own research, she and a col- is all about.” Wole Soyinka league, Şebnem Bahadır, began a pilot project whose goal was to “combine is- Because of her work, Dizdar notes the sues of translation studies, migration importance of scholars and practitioners Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o studies and linguistics in theory and from other fields – like legal studies – teaching practice.” Although Germany discussing the need for interpreting. has a large community of Turkish mi- While she acknowledges the need for grants, Dizdar explains that “there is no interpreters, she also emphasizes the im- degree-program to train interpreters for portance of laws and regulations that Turkish… so there is a lack of profes- “secure the right to be interpreted in gen- sional interpreters and translators.” At eral.” Guidelines are needed, she argues, the same time, the universities have stu- to address “the quality of the interpreting dents of Turkish origin who are being service in social settings, at the borders trained “as interpreters or translators for where refugees arrive, the psychiatric other languages and with German as their clinics where tortured and traumatized mother tongue.” Dizdar and Bahadır felt people are treated, in shelter houses for it would be interesting and useful to have women, etc.” a program for this specific audience: “our focus is on translating and interpreting She uses Turkey as an example: “In Tur- for the community: medical interpreting, key, community-interpreting has not court interpreting, interpreting for migra- been an issue at all until very recently, tion authorities and the like.” when we had that terrible earthquake in 1999. Most rescue teams came from A larger issue they wanted to confront is abroad and a real communication prob- that “community-interpreting seems to lem was experienced, which of course function like a traumatic gateway to the means also a cultural problem, one con- problematics of interpreting and translat- cerning differences in crisis management, ing.” For instance, she explains, “if you organizational structures, etc. The Trans- have interpreters-to-be who will work as lation and Interpreting continued on page 8 2 African and Asian women writers to a munity members, too. It was indeed a “Translating Women” wide audience. celebration of the writing of women and the voices and languages in which they Celebrates African & Abena Busia and Susie Tharu have been are most at home.~ Asian Women Writers involved in producing groundbreaking and historic published collections of Afri- can and Indian women writers. Writer, “Translating Women: Africa and Asia” Meena Alexander, and poet, Abena Busia, on March 1, 2004, continued the ICWT’s both also read their poetry and discussed series, “From Here to There: Languages their own writing in the panel-discussion. in Conversation.” In this particular event, the ICWT featured three acclaimed The event – panel, reading, and book- women writers and editors whose efforts signing – was attended by many students have helped bring the significant works of from writing classes, by faculty and com-
the Gardener and Fireflies. But it was the play Abena Busia, Susie Tharu, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Excerpts from Meena Alexander’s The Post Office, telling as it did of the death and Meena Alexander meet on the bridge “My Translated Life” above Campus Drive. of a young boy, that haunted me, and indeed I want to speak of my life as a poet, and living haunts me still. Someday I tell myself I will I would like to end by reading a short ex- in language, which is what a poet does. After make a poem and evoke the way in which as tract from a chapter in Fault Lines. I have all, where else can she live? And for me, life children in India, my cousins and I put on the called it “Home at the Edge of the World”: as a poet began with translation. play for our immediate family. A Bengali play,
translated into English and acted out in the What do I mean by this? My very first poems courtyard of a Kerala house, in the constant I think of the poet in the twenty-first cen- which I wrote at the ages of ten and eleven, presence of Malayalam, our mother tongue. tury as a woman standing in a dark door- were composed in French. It seemed to me, Yet we spoke the words in Tagore’s own Eng- way. having been made to learn a few lines by Ver- lish translation, in our lisping Indian English. laine by heart in school – I refer to Unity High She is a homemaker, but an odd one. All this was in India, but also in the Sudan, for School in Khartoum, Sudan – it seemed to me having learnt some lines, that French was from the age of five I traveled back and forth She hovers in a dark doorway. She needs surely the only across the Indian Ocean. I spent most of the to be there at the threshold to find a bal- language fit for the year in the Sudan where the language of the ance, to maintain a home at the edge of lyric. Mercifully north was Arabic. As a teenager I had a the world. none of my earliest group of poet friends who wrote in Arabic and French poems sur- it was my friends who translated a few of my She puts out both her hands. They will help vived. Soon English poems and submitted them to the her hold on, help her find her way. enough my affec- local newspaper. So it happened that my very tions shifted and I first publications were in Arabic, the language She has to invent a language marked by found in English a of the place in which I lived, but a language many tongues. more capacious which to my distress I could not read or write, instrument for my though I could indeed speak it with a certain As for the script in which she writes, it longing. But those earliest longings as they fluency. People would come up to me and binds her into visibility, fronting public found expression in poetry, were flattened say “I saw your poem in the newspaper.” And space, marking danger, marking desire. out, imitations of Toru Dutt and Sarojini Naidu, then add, something like “I really liked it” or cut and pasted as it were, onto white paper. “I didn’t really get it. What was it about?” Behind her in the darkness of her home Indeed I found in those early Indian women And all I could was shake my head and smile and through her pour languages no one composers of poetry in English something of wistfully, making it clear that while I read and she knows will ever read or write. the circuitry of sense that a colonial childhood wrote English, I could not lay claim to the had instilled in me. Nor can I forget the po- same talent in Arabic. They etch a corps perdu. Subtle, vital, un- ems of Wordsworth, which too, like Verlaine, I seizable body. had to learn by heart. His subdued, yet feb- So it was that my life as a poet began in rile lines, spoke very directly to me. translation, that connection to a reading pub- Source of all translations.~ lic which alone could allow me a “real” exis- Nor can I forget Rabindranath Tagore; I knew tence. So it was that a translated life, held – Meena Alexander ~ his poems in English translation from Gitanjali, sway. 3 Awards and Fellowships writing? tween teaching and writing? Do you make time to write every day or do you Glenn Schaeffer BB: Yes, I taught composition and crea- work when the inspiration strikes you? tive writing, and I'm very grateful for the Awards experience. So many programs don't af- BB: Making time every day was hard last ford writers the chance to teach, or they year. Teaching is an emotionally and Courtney Santos, 2003-04 ICWT Intern, UCI graduate (English), and MFA candi- overload their writers with teaching re- physically draining experience, and I date at UC Riverside, interviewed Belle sponsibilities that overwhelm their writ- teach in a school where the students face Boggs, 2002-03 Glenn Schaeffer Award ing time. I guess I learned to present some really difficult problems and barri- recipient and graduate of UCI’s Pro- what I loved or admired about a piece of ers to learning and good behavior. I also grams in Writing. writing to a group of students. I learned a go to graduate school at night. But by lot about what's missing in people's high about April, I was finding more time to FHTT: Did you school experiences with writing. I have write, and I was able to spend the whole work on your this quote from Flannery O’Connor on the summer writing. I like to write in big novel Everybody wall in my classroom: "I write to dis- blocks of time, with a book next to me so Knows This Is cover what I know." I think rather than I can take little breaks. My favorite place Nowhere while what you know, teaching really helps you to write is the Rose Reading Room in the you were receiv- discover what you think about something. New York Public Library. ing the Glenn Schaeffer Award? FHTT: As a New York City Teaching Fel- FHTT: You’ve been working on short sto- Belle Boggs in New York. Did the award low, you have been teaching Creative ries that take place in the rural south, stipend give you Writing to elementary students, from kin- right? Is working on a collection of short more freedom to spend your time writing? dergartners to fourth graders, and will be stories a different experience from writing serving as a first grade teacher. How do a novel? BB: I graduated from UCI in June of you approach teaching creative writing to 2002 and moved to New York in July. At young children? BB: Working on a collection is so differ- that time, my book was finished — it had ent. The stories inhabit your mind in a a beginning, middle, and an end — but it different way, and the experience of writ- needed a lot of work. The Glenn ing is, for me, a little more intense be- Schaeffer award gave me the freedom to I love teaching writing to chil- cause I see the arc of the story happen in a work uninterrupted on revising and re- dren... The great thing about much shorter period of time. The fact of shaping the book before I tried to find an little kids is that they can get writing a short story collection grew out agency or a publisher. excited about anything that of my limited time, but I'm finding that I'm really happy to be working on these excites you. My students are FHTT: How did your experiences in stories. They take place mostly in King UCI’s MFA in Creative Writing program really into poetry, bookbind- William County, Virginia, where I grew shape the way you approach writing? ing, sharks, and contempo- up, and have been a helpful way for me to What did you work on as a thesis project? rary sculpture. address some unresolved feelings, good and bad, about it. BB: Geoffrey Wolff and Michelle La- tiolais taught us to put our work and its FHTT: Do you have any advice for aspir- development first, and not to think about BB: I love teaching writing to children. I ing writers? For aspiring teachers? For things like publication until we were found this out as a writing teacher in students who would like to attend gradu- ready. They modeled their own great ad- Santa Ana, through UCI's Humanities Out ate school? miration for other writers and works, and There (HOT) program. I think teaching showed us how that could instruct, which creative writing to kids is a lot like teach- BB: I guess the most important thing I've has helped so much since leaving the pro- ing it to college students – you try to learned is not to give up and to be disci- gram and the structure of workshop. move them away from restraining clichés plined about your work. To keep reading More than anything, though, I think the and sentimentality and towards an under- all that you can. And I absolutely program helped me see the value of a standing first of what they want to say, recommend graduate school as a great community of writers — even if that and then of the reader and her needs. I'm place to meet people, challenge yourself, community is just you and one or two very inspired by the work coming out of and give yourself time to write and read other writers who share stories every the Teachers and Writers project in New and think.~ month. York. The great thing about little kids is that they can get excited about anything FHTT: Did you serve as a teaching assis- that excites you. My students are really Editor’s note: “Youngest Daughter," a short story from Boggs’ latest collection, won tant while you were a student in the pro- into poetry, bookbinding, sharks, and con- second place in the Glimmer Train Summer gram? If you did, what did you learn temporary sculpture. 2004 Very Short Fiction contest. Another from the teaching experience? Has teach- story, “Good News for a Hard Time,” is ing creative writing affected your own FHTT: How do you divide your time be- forthcoming in Glimmer Train.
4 the Path Behind Us a teenager. When he first heard the Elvis UCI in “Elvis hit “Love me Tender,” he hated it, but in the Third bought an LP the next day in Kampala World,” an because he thought he would never be event hosted Elvis Redux able to get Elvis Presley’s music in by the ICWT. Professor Peter Nazareth brought Uganda again. He didn’t have an LP re- The presenta- the King to campus in fall 2003 cord player at the time, so had to carry the tion included record around with him and play it wher- film and music Q: What do a university professor living ever he could, trying to figure it out. clips, and Iowa and a teenager living in Uganda played to an have in common? And thus began what became a life-long interested and fascination with all things King. In 1992, engaged audience of students, faculty, A: The King of Rock and Roll! at the insistance of a colleague, Nazareth staff, and members of the local commu- started teaching a course on “Elvis as An- nity. Peter Nazareth, professor of English and thology,” in which he explores the impact African American World Studies at the of Elvis on Third World cultures. The lecture was followed by an energetic University of Iowa, grew up listening to performance by Thai Elvis impersonator country western music in Uganda and was On a fall day in October 2003, Nazareth Kavee Thongprecha and a screening of introduced to rock and roll music there as brought his insights and observations to the 1960 movie Flaming Star.~
In a Q&A following the screening of bushed and his family massacred by the come to say goodbye because he has seen Flaming Star, Nazareth drew on his Kiowa after returning home from dinner with the Flaming Star. Telling Clint not to come essay “Joe Lightcloud and the Flam- the Burtons. Pacer and Clint ride to town for closer, he rides off to his death. ing Star: Land and Alienation in Elvis the doctor, who refuses to come, until they Presley’s Indian Movies,” which sum- take a child hostage and thus force him: but The movie ends with the message that per- marizes and contextualizes the film. they arrive too late because Neddy Burton haps someday there can be peace and un- has seen the Flaming Star of death and has derstanding between brothers. But the issue Elvis plays his first Indian role in his next gone out to meet it. Pacer blames the doctor is not just of blood: it is also of the conse- movie, Flaming Star, set in the 1870s; Elvis for her death. The doctor says that even if he quences of exploitation and land alienation... plays Pacer Burton, whose father (John had been in time, “the woman” would have McIntire) is white and mother (Delores Del died – which triggers Pacer’s fury: was his Flaming Star deals with [this] key issue in the Rio) Kiowa... Pacer’s brother, played by Steve mother not a human being to be called “the same way as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s first pub- Forrest, is called Clint... Clint is white, born of woman”? He goes to kill the doctor, but Clint lished novel, Weep Not, Child (London: the first wife of Sam Burton. Pacer’s relation- grabs him by the throat and pulls him back. Heinemann, 1964). In both novels, the issue ship with the white community, like that of his Pacer pulls his gun on Clint and tells him that is land and land alienation. The white settler mother, was an uneasy one, and racist things he will kill him if he tries to stop him. Going who has bought the land claims the land is were said about and done to them. out, he meets his father, his because he has worked who knows the day he on it. Buffalo Horn, like The Kiowa people have appointed a new feared has come: Pacer is Ngotho in Ngũgĩ‘s novel, chief, Buffalo Horn, who tries to persuade going to join the Kiowa. But says the land is theirs, an- Pacer to join the Kiowa and fight against he gives Pacer his blessing. cestrally, spiritually. In white people. “The white man came and took Ngũgĩ‘s novel, all that can away our land,” he says. “And now he is Pacer joins Buffalo Horn on happen is that the white pushing us.” ...Buffalo Horn thinks he will condition that his father and man is killed on his land by have a powerful propaganda weapon if Pacer brother be left unharmed. Ngotho’s son Boro, a free- chooses to identify with his Indian side. Unfortunately, another dom fighter who also has This is a political choice for Pacer: will he group of Kiowa warriors Peter Nazareth and Thai Elvis, no vision for the future, fight with or against the colonizers? comes in who did not know Kavee Thongprecha, in 100 HIB. Boro, who will die. The of the agreement and they movie presents the ques- Pacer and his mother go to visit the Kiowa kill Sam Burton. Pacer, dressed like an In- tion of land alienation truthfully from the per- village to help him decide. While white people dian, sees them chasing his brother and goes spective of the Kiowa people who have lost think of Pacer as an Indian, in the village he to help him. their land to white settlers... looks like a cowboy; he has grown up away from the culture. He asks for time to think. When Clint recovers consciousness, he is in But Pacer has no solution: he only reacts to On their way back, his mother is shot by a bed… Through the window, he sees Pacer the situation. So there cannot be an answer: demented Will Howard, who had been am- approaching on horseback… Pacer has his father is killed, and he [Pacer] dies.~
5 Faculty in Focus Notes from Abroad my understanding of her life, but I will do my best here. Westerbrok was a hold- UCI Faculty UCI Graduate ing camp where Dutch Jews were sent before they were shipped to concentra- Research Grants Student International tion camps, and it functioned to some Summer Travel Grants degree like normal society, in that it had Edward Fowler, Professor, East Asian Lan- schools and activities. Hillesum sent vol- guages and Literatures, and 2002-03 Abby Mims, MFA candidate in UCI’s Pro- ICWT grant recipient, talks about his ex- umes of letters from the camp to her grams in Writing and 2001-02 ICWT grant friends and family back home outlining periences in Japan doing research for recipient, traveled to Europe to research an annotated translation of "Living on the life of Holocaust diarist Etty Hillesum. many of these aspects, as well as details the Brink: The Memoirs of a Tokyo Day of the sunsets she could glimpse through Laborer." My travels to Europe were invaluable to the fence. I spent the lion’s share of my time in my research and further understanding of Japan in the Tokyo area. I wanted to Etty Hillesum. I spent the bulk of my Today, none of the barracks is standing; secure as large a window as possible for time in The Netherlands, Amsterdam in the only remnants of the original camp meeting the author and discussing sev- particular. Although the city has obvi- are a guard tower, a length of barbed eral textual problems with him. That ously changed greatly from her time, it wire fence and 50 feet of the train track may seem an easy task, but in fact the has also maintained an old world sensi- that took prisoners to Auschwitz. The author, who is very reclusive (he didn’t bility, from its museums and architecture, end of the track is raised and twisted up even show up for an award at a literary to its cobbled streets that house more bi- to the sky, in a protest of the horrors of ceremony honoring his book), had ex- cycles than cars. Her original residence the Holocaust; a symbol of what, for pressed reluctance about a face-to-face is preserved (at least externally) and her now, has ended. Standing at the end of meeting. descriptions of the landscape beyond it those tracks and looking out to the hori- are much the same as today. zon, everything around you fades away Fortunately, patience and no little lob- and you are alone in a barren field, trying bying on my part finally won the day, to grasp for a moment what the people on and I was able to meet with him a total those trains might have felt.
of three times. The first (and most im- Standing at the end of those portant) meeting took place at the mid- It only solidified what I already thought dle of a bridge that spans the Sumida tracks and looking out to the of Hillesum in terms of her bravery in the River (Tokyo's major waterway), at his horizon, everything around face of such despair and evil, the amaz- request — so as to be out of earshot of you fades away and you are ing ability she had to find beauty in a place that she must have known fore- anyone. alone in a barren field, trying shadowed her death. There are no re- to grasp for a moment what I was able to visit both Kamagasaki, the cords from her time at Auschwitz, and it the people on those trains day laborer quarter in Osaka, and is assumed she was gassed immediately San’ya, the one in Tokyo — the latter might have felt. upon her arrival. for a total of ten days. In addition, I continued my perennial pursuit of fa- What struck me the most about the com- miliarizing myself with various city pound was its size, the sheer monstrosity neighborhoods, an activity which led to To stand where she might have stood and of it. I thought being there would some- the publication of an essay, in Japanese, to see what she essentially saw brought how make the Holocaust real to me, but I that appeared in the Asahi, Japan’s most her to life in a way that reading her jour- still find the sheer number, the sheer in- respected newspaper, in September nals could not. Visits to Jodenbreestraat, humanity, difficult to comprehend. That 2002. the Jewish Quarter, further illuminated is why writing about Hillesum and un- the community in which she lived, as did derstanding her struggle is crucial; to My thanks once again to the ICWT for visits to the Jewish Historical Museum conceptualize and feel for the loss of one its support.~ and the Dutch Resistance Museum. His- gifted individual illuminates the lives of torical documents and photographs gave millions of others whose names we do Editor’s note: Professor Fowler recently a clearer sense of her life within a par- not know. For me, my travels to the secured the rights for the translation of ticular Dutch-Jewish culture, as well as places where Etty Hillesum lived and Living on the Brink; the book will go into more explicit details about the Jewish died have done just that.~ production later this year. Council, a controversial organization that employed her for a time.
While all these documents provided cru- cial research information, the most af- fecting parts of my travels were my visits to Camp Westerbork and Auschwitz. There are hardly words for their effect on
6 Internally Yours Collaborations something already in existence, in this case PowerPoint technology, and, add- UCI Undergraduate ing one’s own creativity, in this case Lawrence Lessig Lessig’s, to create something new. Student Internships Puts Fine (Key)note In his talk, Lessig offered the example Lynh Tran, English, an intern in the fall of Mickey Mouse, the very symbol of 2002-03 quarter, shares her experiences on “Fine Print” Disney, Inc., a company strongly sup- working with the ICWT. Barbara L. Cohen, Director, HumaniTech portive of the Sonny Bono Act. Inter- My time with the ICWT gave me the estingly, Mickey Mouse himself was opportunity to develop skills in becom- Lawrence developed by Walt Disney from an ear- ing resourceful. For learning to think Lessig titled lier cartoon, Steamboat Willie, the latter on one’s feet applies as much to the his keynote created by Disney in 1928 as a parody administrative side of work as it does to lecture at the of Buster Keaton’s film Steamboat Bill, the academic. May 2004 Jr. In 1928, the time of Walt Disney’s Fine Print Steamboat Willie, the average copyright In retrospect, my fondest memories Confer- term in the U.S. was only about thirty belong to those few days of setting up ence — co- years, fostering an environment that and holding the Western Humanities sponsored by enabled Disney to create something en- Alliance conference. I had never be- the ICWT tirely new from something already in fore experienced such a fast-paced en- and oth- existence, the way that ideas are gener- vironment with asking a multitude of Lawrence Lessig at the po- ers — “The ally created in a society with a healthy guests to sign in here and there, making dium in the Monarch Bay Good of the public domain. last minute cop- room, UCI Student Center. Journal in ies of the sched- the Digital That period of 30 years stayed pretty ule, and giving Age.” Professor of Law at Stanford much intact until 1978, and from then directions to University and founder of the Stanford on, the public domain has increasingly UCI visitors Center for Internet and Society, Lessig diminished (with the Bono Act adding who had nothing has made his mark as an activist for U.S. to do with our copyright law reform, most notably in event. the case Eldred vs. Ashcroft, which he brought before the U.S. Supreme Court And yet, it in 2003 to challenge extension of U.S. amazes me to copyright term limits brought upon by this day how one the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension half-hour later, Act of 1998. He ultimately lost the case, Intern Lynh Tran staffs each person had but used his lessons learned (about the reception table at found a seat, which he has written extensively) to the WHA conference October 17-19, 2002. some on the spearhead efforts through organizations floor, and with such as Creative Commons for restoring his tape recorder or her notebook in the balance between copyright and crea- hand, contentedly listened to the soft, tivity, originating, in this country, with "Fine Print" co-organizers Barbara Cohen ethereal tones of Professor Ngũgĩ’s lec- the Constitution. and Michael Szalay flank speaker David ture. That moment reminds me of the Halberstam. beauty that is the sharing of ideas and Lessig’s strong following among univer- still another twenty years in 1998) to its experiences, the patience of the hu- sity faculty, librarians, and staff was evi- point now in which the delicate balance manities, and the capacities of the mind dent at his PowerPoint driven lecture at between copyright and creativity so spe- and heart. And essentially, I feel that UCI’s Student Center on the evening of cifically and carefully crafted in the this is what the Center stands for. May 20. But this was not your average Constitution seems to have disappeared. PowerPoint presentation: Lessig’s Working at the ICWT has encouraged slides of minimalist phrases (“progress,” Lawrence Lessig is on a mission. me not only in my future plans for “creativity,” “free public libraries...”) in Through his books, daily blog, his or- graduate literary study, but also my in- white on black and black on white com- ganizations such as Creative Commons terest in working in development to bined with extensive use of video clips and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, foster the growth of programs such as displayed artistry seldom associated his law practice, speaking engagements, the Center in the future. My internship with PowerPoint presentations. and his teaching, he stays focused on his with the Center was an invaluable ex- Through this artistry, Lessig put into goal of restoring the public domain of perience for which I will always be practice what he preaches, what his ideas if there is to be any hope of a fu- grateful.~ Creative Commons website refers to as ture rich in discovery, creativity, and a “remix of culture,” the building on innovation.~
7 travels with Ngugi University; the University of Wisconsin/ ADVISORY Madison; the University of Pittsburgh; Washington University in St. Louis, MO; COMMITTEE Director Travels Far Macalester College in St. Paul, MN; Dil- 2004-05 Afield to Promote Center lard University in New Orleans, LA; and Evergreen State College in Olympia, Many of us on campus are familiar with WA. Barbara Cohen Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o in one of two roles: HumaniTech as Distinguished Professor in the Depart- The 2004-05 academic year will find him
ment of English and Comparative Litera- delivering the keynote address at the Lucia Cunningham ture or as Director of the ICWT. What American Literary Translators Associa- Spanish and Portuguese many may not know, however, is that tion (ALTA) Annual Conference in Las
Ngũgĩ also maintains a very active travel Vegas; participating in a reading in Cork, Sarah Farmer schedule, and, in doing so, acts as the Ireland; presenting lectures at the univer- History ICWT’s ambassador to the world. sities of Toronto and Michigan; and par- ticipating in a conference in Seoul, South Edward Fowler Since coming to UCI in 2002, Ngũgĩ has Korea. East Asian Languages & Literatures participated in conferences and presented lectures in seven countries, including In all of his journeys – local, national, or David Theo Goldberg England, Senegal, South Africa, Jamaica, international – Ngũgĩ publicizes and pro- UC Humanities Research Institute Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. He has motes the ICWT and, by extension, UC African-American Studies also participated in events at numerous Irvine. We hope you’ll join us in future universities in the U.S., including UCs columns as we track his travels and at- Ketu Katrak Santa Barbara and San Diego; California tempt to answer that intriguing question, Asian American Studies State Universities Dominguez Hills and “Where in the world is Ngũgĩ wa Fullerton; Loyola-Marymount; Duke Thiong’o?”~ Dragan Kujundzic English and Comparative Literature News in Brief “Dilek Dizdar” continued from page 2 Russian Studies Department at Istanbul University Akira Lippit McGlynn Translates started a supplementary program to Film & Media Studies Indonesian Literature train interpreters for these situations. Certainly there is need for Kurdish in- Steven Mailloux In 2002-03, John H. terpreters in Turkey as well, for Arme- English and Comparative Literature McGlynn received a nian, for Arabic, for Russian and many grant from the ICWT other languages.” James McMichael to help support a pro- English and Comparative Literature ject translating the Dizdar feels privileged to be a part of short stories of Indo- the ICWT’s Executive Board. In par- J. Hillis Miller nesian writer Pramoe- ticular, she notes that the ICWT, since English and Comparative Literature dya Ananta Toer. All it is not an academic department, has a That is Gone unique position in the world of transla- Jane Newman (Hyperion 2004), represents the fruit of tion studies, programs, and academic English and Comparative Literature that labor and embodies the very first departments whose focus is translation work published as a direct result of the or interpreting. She explains that the Carrie Noland ICWT’s funding support. ICWT has certain advantages when French & Italian compared to most university depart- A resident of Jakarta since 1976 and a ments of translation and interpreting. Michael Szalay working translator for many years, The ICWT highlights, according to Humanities Center McGlynn is the co-founder of the Lon- Dizdar, a key issue in its programs: English and Comparative Literature tar Foundation, an organization estab- “the right to translate and the right to lished to preserve and promote the cul- be translated.” Hu Ying ture and language of Indonesia. For her, the ICWT, in the expression of East Asian Languages & Literatures Through the foundation, McGlynn has edited, managed the translation of, and its mission, makes a clear statement published numerous works on Indone- about the following: “the asymmetries sian literature and culture. The ICWT in who and what is being translated is proud to have helped support his lat- from which language and culture into est project.~ which other language and culture… this will help make translation more visible.”~ 8
Passages Jacques Derrida
We sadly mark the passing of Jacques Derrida, UCI Professor and ICWT Execu- tive Board member.
You have by now heard about the death of Jacques Derrida; the world has lost a great thinker and philosopher and teacher. Closer to home, the loss of this incredibly generous colleague and teacher is one that we want to acknowl- edge here in the context of the Center.
Since the Center's beginning in 2001 Professor Derrida — who generously spoke at the opening-event of the ICWT — was a truly passionate sup- porter of the development of the Center and always ready with many sugges- tions about what we might do and how Jacques Derrida talked about translation in theory we might grow. and practice at “Inaugurations,” the ICWT’s open- ing event, April 4-5, 2002. Even when he was far away, the ICWT felt buoyed by his presence and energy; we recall happily the intense spirit he brought to this Center. We will miss him.~
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
Editor’s note: the next issue of From Here to There will feature a section celebrat- ing the life of Professor Derrida.
Peggy Kamuf, Ellen Burt, and Dragan Kujundzic joined Jacques Derrida (third from left) in wel- coming the ICWT to UC Irvine and the world.
9 Island Voices in World Culture
About the Writers
Kamau Brathwaite is a pro- Witi Ihimaera is a profes- "Island Voices in World Culture" on November 18, 2004, marks the con- fessor of comparative litera- sor of English and Distin- tinuation of our series "From Here to ture at New York University. guished Creative Fellow in There: Languages in Conversation.” In Born in Barbados, Maori Literature at the this series, we invite distinguished writ- Brathwaite worked at the University of Auckland. He ers/scholars working in and from mar- University of the West Indies has served with the New ginalized languages and cultures to ex- for nearly three decades. Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Can- plore their relationship to the language berra, New York, and Washington, D.C. The of the culture from which they write or Although he is best known for his poetry such as Rights of Passage, he is also a play- first Maori writer to publish both a book of draw and their relationship to the domi- short stories and a novel, he is also an opera nant language. wright, essayist, literary critic and lecturer. librettist and playwright. His literary works He has received the Neustadt International The activities of the center are prem- Award for Literature, the Casa de Las Ameri- include Dear Miss Mansfield, Nights in the ised on the principle that knowledge cas Prize for poetry and for literary criticism, Gardens of Spain, and The Whale Rider, begins HERE, where we are, to as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim which he also turned into a screenplay that THERE, where they are, and back Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation, and won the People’s Choice Award at the To- again to where we are, in short, that the Ford Foundation.~ ronto Film Festival.~ knowledge is a result of reciprocal con- tact and linkages on the basis of equal- ity and respect. Sia Figiel is a poet and Epeli Hau’ofa is the direc- novelist from the village of tor of the Oceania Centre It is with this in mind that we focus on Alega, American Samoa. for Arts and Culture, which the writers and writing of the Pacific She is the language arts he founded in 1997 at the and Caribbean in "Island Voices in and literature teacher at University of the South World Culture." Our featured guests the Pacific Islands Centre Pacific. His publications are Sia Figiel, Epeli Hau'ofa, Witi Ihi- for Educational Development. Her first novel, maera, and Kamau Brathwaite. include an ethnography, Mekeo, a short story Where We Once Belonged, won the regional collection, Tales of the Tikongs, a novel, The event is two-fold. It begins with a Commonwealth Writer’s Prize Best First Kisses in the Nederends, and a series of one-and-one-half-hour seminar and Book. Also a performance poet, she has three papers on the theme of A New Oce- Q&A session in which our speakers appeared around the world and has been an ania. Born 1939 in Papua (New Guinea) of explore, from personal experience and artist in residence in Barcelona, Spain; at the Tongan missionary parents, Hau’ofa is now a practice, why they write in the lan- University of Technology in Sydney; the Pa- citizen of Fiji. He was educated in Papua, guages they have chosen and how this cific Writing Forum at the University of the Tonga, Fiji, Australia and Canada.~ has impacted the languages and the cul- South Pacific, Fiji; and was recently Distin- tures from which they draw. guished visiting Writer at the University of
Hawaii at Manoa. Her fourth novel, Salt Sis- The second part of the event opens with a traditional Maori welcome, per- ters, is due for release in spring 2005.~ formed by Te Manawa Maori of South- ern California. Following the wel- come, each of our writers reads from original work in a celebration of their multiple languages and cultures. The evening ends with a reception and book signing.~ 10 2004-05 Calendar International Center for Writing and Translation
ICWT Events University of California, Irvine 179 Humanities Instructional Building Island Voices in World Culture Irvine, CA 92697-3375 November 18, 2004 | 4:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. 949-824-1948 (voice) 135/137 Humanities Instructional Building and Crystal Cove Auditorium, UCI Student Center 949-824-9623 (fax) With Sia Figiel, Epeli Hau’ofa, Witi Ihimaera, and Kamau Brathwaite [email protected] Moderators: Rajagopalan Radhakrishnan and Gabriele Schwab www.hnet.uci.edu/icwt Series: From Here to There: Languages in Conversation Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o On Poetry - Out of English Director
April 7, 2005 | 4:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. Colette LaBouff Atkinson 135/137 Humanities Instructional Building | UC Irvine Associate Director With Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Kofi Anyidoho, and Hwang Chi-Woo Moderator: Laura O’Connor Christine Aschan Series: From Here to There: Languages in Conversation Manager Language and Human Rights June 2, 2005 | 4:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. 135/137 Humanities Instructional Building | UC Irvine With Robert Phillipson, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, E. Ann Kaplan, and Oyeronke Oyewumi Series: Other Ways of Knowing: The Challenge of Cultures in Contact For additional information about these events, please contact the ICWT at 949-824-1948 or
Co-sponsored Events
Art Both Ways: Translation, Restoration, and Re-creation 27th Annual ALTA Conference October 27-30, 2004 | Las Vegas, NV Information: 702-895-3033 or
Human Rights, Technology, and Humanities Volume One | Number One | Fall 2004-05 HumaniTech 2004-05 Lecture Series | Details as available Information: 949-824-3638 or
The UCI English Department at 40: A Celebration of James McMichael Editing/Design/Production March 12, 2005 | Time/Location TBA Christine Aschan Information:
11
Events Forward
The ICWT hosts
Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill
Kofi Anyidoho
Hwang Chi-Woo
at UC Irvine on April 7, 2005
details on page 11
International Center for Writing and Translation University of California, Irvine 179 Humanities Instructional Building Irvine, CA 92697-3375-03