Join the PTC’s collaborative translation workshops to be part of a vital and necessary act of creative exchange. The workshops allow you to access the poetry of another culture without needing to speak the language. In fact, no language skills are needed, just curiosity and a love of words.
At our online and in-person sessions, we travel the world together, enjoying the endless nuances and creative discoveries of the art of translation. The process is both creative and analytical, a challenging problem where there is no one solution. So, in order to understand and translate poetry, we explore cultural and social customs, literary traditions and radical innovations and dig deep into each poets’ influences and influence.
This is a great environment to discover a new language or culture or even an opportunity to share your language and your culture with like-minded poetry fans. Many of the people who attend workshops stay in touch with us and each other. Some workshop regulars have gone on to publish poems or have careers in translation.
Translating poetry is an open process, where the journey is often as important as the outcome, and everyone brings something different to the table. It might be knowledge of the source language or culture, an ear for rhythm, nuance and language more generally or you might be able to offer an anecdote, fact or perspective that shines new light on the subject of the poem.
As one workshop participant put it: ‘It’s a bigger thing than poetry, it’s communicating across the globe, and poetry is a wonderful way to do that.’