Word for Word Exchange: Catalan

Columbia University School of the Arts & the Maestría en Creació Literaria, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2014-2015

In October 2014, two School of the Arts graduate students from the Writing Program traveled to Barcelona, Catalonia (Spain) to participate in Word for Word’s inaugural Catalan translation exchange. There they met their Catalan translation partners and participated in a series of workshops, classes, and events hosted by the Màster en Creació Literària de IDEC- Universitat Pompeu Fabra with generous support from the Institut Ramon Llull and the Fundació Han Nefkens, including an intensive translation workshop led by author and translator Yannick García and a panel discussion on literature in Catalan hosted by the Institut Ramon Llull.

Over the course of the semester, the participants continued to collaborate and translate each other’s work online, supported by the faculty at their respective institutions. In April 2015, the students met again in New York City when the UPF students arrived at Columbia. All four students participated in a final workshop and review led by the poet and translator Rowan Ricardo Phillips. A public reading was held April 1, 2015, where the students presented their work alongside participants in the exchange to Turin, Italy.

Columbia University School of the Arts Participants:

ALICIA MEIER studied photography and design at Washington University in St. Louis and ELISAVA School of Design in Barcelona, and writes primarily on visual arts. She graduated with her MFA in creative nonfiction and literary translation from School of the Arts in May 2015, and is currently at work on both a long essay about the impact of the 1992 Olympics on Barcelona’s urban landscape, and a translation from the Catalan of Santiago Rusiñol’s Oracions.

SCOTT SHANAHAN is a writer and translator living in New York City. He recently completed his translation from the Catalan of Mercè Rodoreda’s Viatges i flors, and is working on a novel set in northern Spain for which he is inventing a language, Amaganeco.

Universitat Pompeu Fabra Participants:

AINA BARALDÉS studied Translation and Interpretation Studies at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, where she spent two semesters abroad as an exchange student at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. She finished her degree online from the United States, where she worked as an au pair. She then completed graduate studies in Creative Writing and Publishing. She is currently completing her second year as an intern in the foreign rights department at Penguin Random House Spain.

MARTA CARNICERO HERNANZ lives in Barcelona, Catalonia. She is an industrial engineer who never leaves home without a book, a notebook and a pen in her bag. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, where she presented her first novel, Els petits detalls odiosos.

Institutional Partners:

The MAESTRÍA EN CREACIÓ LITERARIA at the UNIVERSITAT POMPEU FABRA-IDEC seeks to build a relationship between the creative activity of current authors and high-level academia, enhancing the education of writers. The essential intention of the Master is for participants to be able to develop their ability to write original texts in one of the key genres of contemporary creation, in addition to acquiring knowledge about general literary issues, learning to judge both their own works as well as others from different periods, and preparing for the first stages of practical experience in the professional sphere.

The INSTITUT RAMON LLULL is a public body founded with the purpose of promoting Catalan language studies at universities abroad, the translation of literature and thought written in Catalan, and Catalan cultural production in other areas like theatre, film, circus, dance, music, the visual arts, design and architecture.

Institutional Funders:

Founded in Barcelona in 2009 by Dutch writer and arts patron Han Nefkens, the FUNDACIÓ HAN NEFKENS seeks to stimulate artistic creation in Barcelona by providing support to international artists creating and collaborating on artwork in the city.

The ANTONIA & VLADIMIR KUALEV CULTURAL HERITAGE FUND is a foundation based in Los Angeles with a strong interest in supporting collaborative and cross-disciplinary arts programs and arts education.

Workshop Instructors:

YANNICK GARCÍA (Barcelona) is a writer, translator, interpreter and editor based in Barcelona. His most recent novel, La nostra vida vertical was published in 2014 by L’Altra Editorial and was the recipient of the Premi Documenta. He teaches translation at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Among the authors whose work he has translated are Jules Verne, Sebastian Barry, and George Saunders.

ROWAN RICARDO PHILLIPS (New York) is the author of The Ground: Poems (2012) as well as the critical volume When Blackness Rhymes with Blackness (2010). He translated Salvador Espriu’s story collection Ariadne in the Grotesque Labyrinth (2012). Phillips received a 2013 Whiting Writers’ Award and has also received the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award and the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award for Poetry. A contributing writer at Artforum, he has taught at Columbia University and at SUNY-Stony Brook, where he’s served as director of the Poetry Center. Phillips lives in New York and Barcelona.