Translator Education with University Extra Mural Projects: Literary Translation Practice

Abstract

The extramural project “Translator education: literary translation practice” (FORTRALIT) started in 2017 at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). It aims at promoting the practice of literary translation through two main actions: the translation of reports written by professional (literary) translators whose subject matter should be their own professional practice, and the (re)translation of literary texts. The article intends to describe the FORTRALIT Project and to briefly expose some of the activities developed in the scope of the Project. In addition, it intends to detail a task carried out in the scope of the Portuguese/English language pair by students of the Language/Literature course, and to report the views of one of the trainees. The pedagogical basis of the FORTRALIT project encompasses discussions about the training of translators as well as researchers’ views on retranslation and its use for teaching literary translation. FORTRALIT favours the teaching of translation as advocated by Hurtado Albir (2005, 2020), in other words, based on the development of (sub)translation skills and on the focus on tasks. In the context of FORTRALIT, the task of (re)translation (a “reading exercise”, “stealth retranslation” or “retranslation proper”) was chosen in these first years of activity. The task seems useful as one offering both a reflection on the “incompleteness” inherent in the translation process - by comparing various translations, for example - and a practical translation exercise followed by reflection and discussion based on a comparison with models that would be “canonical”.