Translation 3.0: A Blueprint for Translation Studies in the Digital Age Katherine M. King A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Hispanic Studies University of Washington 2019 Reading Committee: Anthony Geist, Chair Heekyoung Cho Elizabeth DeNoma David Domke Leigh Mercer Kathleen Woodward Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Hispanic Studies ©Copyright 2019 Katherine M. King University of Washington Abstract Translation 3.0: A Blueprint for Translation Studies in the Digital Age Katherine M. King Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Anthony Geist Department of Spanish & Portuguese At the close of the second decade of the twenty-first century, Translation Studies has evolved into an accepted and even booming discipline in higher education. Since translation touches on every aspect of scholarship, learning and communication, especially in the age of globalization and digital communication, universities that don’t already have Translation Studies programs are contemplating how to begin. This document is a blueprint, a guide, to understanding the explosive growth of the discipline and how to structure an approach to Translation Studies that meets the needs of students, faculty, administration and the publics served by a university. The blueprint examines Translation Studies as a discipline over the last 20 years by reviewing six university Translation Studies programs as case studies and analyzing their growth and evolution in the context of dramatic technologically-driven changes in society. The analysis shows that new translation programs have emerged at universities in cities that experience robust economic and population growth, evidence strong cultural and literary roots and are based in areas strong in technological innovation. But the main driver of success in creating new Translation Studies programs is the presence of activist faculty who passionately support and advocate for a Translation Studies program. Translator training and translation research and scholarship are now on equal footing, as academia begins to understand that the two are inextricably connected. This text is one piece of a multi-faceted Public Scholarship dissertation project. The elements in full are: 1.Translation 3.0: A Blueprint for Translation Studies in the Digital Age (120-page monograph), 2.Can Google Translate Literature? (40-page scholarly article), Translation3point0.wordpress.com (Spain in translation website with articles and data visualization). Taken in full, this project explains but also models the activity of a translation studies hub, a center of activity for a discipline that touches on all others and is a crucial element of twenty-first century higher education. King 1 Introduction “Translation is the engine rather than the caboose of literary history.” Rebecca Walkowitz, Born Translated (2015) “Over the past half-century, translation studies has emerged decisively as an academic field around the world, and in recent years programs devoted to the teaching of translation have proliferated.” Lawrence Venuti, Teaching Translation (2107) In late 2013, I arrived in Seattle nurturing the idea of studying literary translation to improve my translation writing skills and to forge a professional career in the field. At the time, I was a successful media professional and a published though still emerging translator of Spanish- language1 poetry and prose into English. I arrived from multi-cultural, multi-lingual London, where I had been active in professional translation groups and participated in the myriad of translation events, lectures and seminars in the London area. With enthusiasm and high expectations, I returned to my city of birth, known for its love of books, poetry and literature, to find almost nothing in the way of literary translation activities or studies. This dissertation project is part of my effort to change that. It is scholarship as practice, a multi-faceted, multi- disciplinary approach to building the kind of translation community on and off-campus, that I would like for myself and that I believe is a benefit for my university, my city, my state, and my profession. 1 Throughout this project I refer to Spain (the country) and to the Spanish language. The Spanish language is just one of several languages spoken in Spain, the country. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of people around the world in many different countries speak the Spanish language. To ensure clarity, I refer to Spanish-language poetry/fiction/prose (from any country) and Spanish-language poetry of Spain to specify the country. King 2 Seattle is one of the most literate and literary of U.S. cities, a status that gained international designation when it was named a UNESCO City of World Literature in 2017. It is home to many award-winning and best-selling authors and poets, avid readers, and a celebrity librarian in Nancy Pearl. A multi-cultural gateway to the Pacific Rim, Seattle hosts the biggest publisher of world fiction translated into English (AmazonCrossing), one of the biggest video/computer game companies that hires translators for their global gaming platforms (Nintendo),2 and several of the most active players in the research and development of artificial intelligence-driven machine translation (Amazon, Microsoft, and the Allen Institute of Artificial Intelligence). Small Northwest-based book publishers of translated literature make a big mark. Copper Canyon Press in nearby Port Townsend is a nationally recognized, award-winning poetry publisher whose titles include works by major Spanish language poets Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, and Vicente Aleixandre in translation to English. Seattle-based Fantagraphic Books publishes international comics and graphic novels in translation to English and promotes itself as “Publisher of the World’s Greatest Cartoonists.” Small non-profit publisher Wave Books, a 2017 recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, publishes poetry in translation from Spanish, Russian, French, Arabic and German. Chin Music Press, another tiny independent Seattle publisher nestled in the lower-floor warren of the colorful Pike Place Market, publishes, among other things, translated works from Japan and Korea. Seattle’s beloved independent bookstore The Elliott Bay Book Company regularly features presentations by translators, and its events coordinator Karen Maeda Allman served as a judge of the 2018 National Book Award for Translated Literature. Seattle is also home to high-profile translators and translation scholars and 2 Lars Knudson, Nintendo Associate Localization Producer, told UW graduate students in 2017 that the company’s game translation team consists of approximately 60 people at Nintendo’s U.S. headquarters in Redmond. Asked if he would describe the work the teams do to create and translate narratives as “literature,” he said yes, citing the narrative, character development and dialog as some of the game’s literary characteristics. King 3 a major public research university, the University of Washington, where translation is taught and studied in isolated pockets across campus, but not yet acknowledged or institutionalized as an academic discipline. US Department of Labor (US Department) job growth statistics place translation as one of the fastest growing sectors in the US economy. The growing need is driven by dramatic changes in mass migration of peoples, technological innovation, economic globalization, and digitized communication and publishing. Many scholars identify the digital age as the most important change in human culture since the invention of the printing press circa 1440. Translation is at the core of this change, argue leading translation scholars such as Michael Cronin, who wrote in his 2013 Translation in the Digital Age: “Students, scholars, and, indeed, anyone interested in the future of human cultures and languages, would be well advised to watch carefully what is happening to translation in a digital age” (2). Scholars Jeremy Munday (2016), José Lambert (Routledge 2013), and Lawrence Venuti (2017) go further in their most recent publications to affirm that there is no longer any doubt that translation studies is an established academic discipline. For Venuti, “translation studies has emerged decisively as an academic field around the world” (1), and Munday declares it is one of the most “spectacular” events to occur in the humanities in recent years (9). Yet in Seattle, with all its obvious resources and potential, organized translation scholarship and training lags. In summary, I arrived home in Seattle hoping to develop my career as a literary translator but found that the training opportunity I sought did not exist. As a long-time digital media innovator and entrepreneur, it occurred to me fairly quickly that if the scholarly opportunity I was looking for didn’t exist, I would somehow have to create that opportunity. It was at this moment that I was introduced to the concept of Public Scholarship, through my investigation into the UW Spanish & Portuguese Department’s new PhD in Hispanic Studies degree program. King 4 The program’s description intrigued and inspired me; its students could choose to develop an alternative dissertation project beyond the traditional monograph, and students would be encouraged to collaborate with the Simpson Center for the Humanities to develop a Public Scholarship approach to their academic undertaking. I learned that Public Scholarship is an academic movement that has emerged in response to changes