Alycia Bird (BA, Linguistics) decided to focus on the more theoretical aspects of translation for their capstone project by restarting the Canon Translation Journal, a University of Michigan online publication that shares students’ translations. Alycia gained many skills such as communication, managing expectations, leadership, and website design. Through this project, Alycia was able to appreciate translation more as an art form, and saw how important it can be outside of direct literary translation. They plan on using their minor to translate marketing campaigns for different languages and cultures, believing strongly that translation studies can be of value to anyone.
Samantha Dunlap (BA, International Studies and Spanish) translated a series of twenty-two sonnets and three canciones (longer poems) about the myths of Daphne and Apollo and Hero and Leander. Throughout her project, she was able to become more familiar with searching for poems pertaining to the themes she was looking for, which were love and heartbreak, predator and prey.
Ashley Duong (BA, International Studies and Psychology) created a project that involved translating 2020 election information into Vietnamese. This included creating videos which explained the voting process in the United States and how to vote, as well as designing a FAQ section, website, and Facebook page for accessibility to the Viatnemese community. Ashley learned the important skills of flexibility and adaptability because she was forced to drastically adjust her project to a virtual format due to COVID. She also was able to hone her professional Viatnemese vocabulary that she had not previously been exposed to as much. Ashley believes translation is important because it allows different communities to come together, and she hopes to utilize these skills wherever she can throughout her life.
Lauren Levitt (BA, International Studies and Spanish) completed her capstone project working with the University of Michigan Language Resource Center and the History Department’s Immigrant Justice Lab. She translated documents from Spanish to English for the lawyers of the Michigan Immigration Rights Center. In participating in this project, she gained a much broader vocabulary related to the legal field and learned the impact of translators in this particular field. While her after graduation plans are not directly connected to translation studies, she hopes to utilize her skills by translating similar documents in a community service or volunteer setting.
Arthur Mengozzi (BA, International Studies and Russian) worked on translating a 75-page Russian journal “The Chinese Preacher,” from 1938. This journal aimed to unite the Russian diaspora in China following the Russian civil war, but ultimately it ceased its project in 1956. By working on this project, Arthur was able to refine his skills with relative and participial clauses, which were very extensive in this Russian work. The most important part of this for him was expressing human emotion and establishing communication across cultures. Arthur sees translation as a way to unite and understand others, especially in this particular journal because these communities and voices were essentially lost. He hopes to be able to continue to do this sort of work whenever he can.
Hannah Parton (BA, Comparative Literature, Russian, and Spanish) chose to translate foreign songs into stories and then analyze their relation to foreignization versus domestication. In other words, how much a song still looks like a song in story form, or how much it deviates from its original in genre. This is called lyrical-prosaic translation. She translated the song “Marine Merchande” by Les Cowboys Frignants (French-Canadian) and several songs from the rock opera Legado de una Tragedia by a Spanish band of the same name. Hannah values her translation skills, and this project helped to further her understanding of the more abstract side to the translating world. She plans to use her skills in the future as much and as long as she can.
Ryan Sahijdak (BA, German) translated a 57-page document called “Besitzgeschichte des Fischbräu in Massing.” In doing so, she was able to gain skills such as time management and a finer legal vocabulary set, especially pertaining to Baravian/Southern Germanic-specific terms. This project focused on non-fiction/technical translating, which Ryan found useful for furthering her knowledge. She was also able to collaborate with her advisors as well as other German professors. Ryan hopes to be able to find full-time work as a translator, or at least be able to work on translating part-time.
Kaitlen Sawyer (BA, International Studies) followed a more traditional approach for her project, translating two short stories: “Casa Tomada” by Julio Cortázar in Spanish and a work by Lu Xun in Mandarin Chinese. She learned technical skills like producing drafts, meeting deadlines, and refining her translation methods. During this project, she began to see the process of translation in its more artistic form by recognizing the adaptability of it all depending on the translator as an individual and their experiences. She hopes to use these skills however she can in her future endeavors because of how much it has enriched her life and love of other cultures, languages, and texts.
Samantha Tosa (BS, International Studies and Spanish) worked on her capstone project in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic which altered her original plans for the project. Samantha took the opportunity to learn about the rich history of interpreting, hear from the perspective of a medical interpreter, and take a 40-hour training course offered by the Interpreter Services Program at Michigan Medicine. She combined this research with her own personal interpretation experience to write a paper on the history of language interpretation and its various contexts.
