Annual Living in Languages Colloquium to Explore Issues of Translation, Identity

By Bethany Bump

ALBANY, N.Y. (April 1, 2025) — The departments of English and Languages, Literatures and Cultures at UAlbany will present the 7th annual Living in Languages Colloquium this week, a two-day event focused on issues of translation, language and identity.

The colloquium, which will be held Wednesday and Thursday via Zoom and in person, will feature experts and scholars from UAlbany and universities abroad who will discuss themes related to translation, reading and ideology.

Panelists will discuss translation as exile, translation in relation to community and in bilingual contexts, translation in terms of adaptations both in visual and auditory contexts, across a range of genres, said co-organizers Ilka Kressner and Helen Elam.

“Translation requires us to slow down,” said Kressner, associate professor of Spanish in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at UAlbany. “It makes us ponder minute forms of interacting with others, detect a strangeness within currently accepted norms, and vice versa, make the familiar a bit less so. It is a deeply liberating and creative endeavor. Here, I follow Eliot Weinberger, the translator of the works of Octavio Paz and Jorge Luis Borges, for whom ‘cultures that do not translate stagnate, and end up repeating the same things to themselves.’ And we can do so much better."

This year’s keynote address will be delivered by UAlbany alum Kazim Ali, a professor at the University of California, San Diego and prominent writer of poetry, fiction and memoir. He will speak on “Making America Monstrous Again: Queerness, Community, and the Problems of Translation in Frankenstein.” His address will be available via Zoom and in person, Wednesday, noon-1 p.m. in LC 06.

Ali will also be featured in a NYS Writers Institute event later that day on “The Arts of Translation and Poetry,” which will include a poetry reading, conversation and Q&A at 7:30 p.m. in the Campus Center Multipurpose Room.

There will also be a special session Thursday with College of Arts and Sciences Dean and Psychology Professor Jeanette Altarriba, who will speak on “A Twist on Learning Translations: Evolutionary and Adaptive Approaches.” She will discuss adaptive and survival memory as she presents research from her lab on emotional versus non-emotional translations in English and Spanish. Her session will be held via Zoom from 3-4 p.m.

Panelists will also discuss the works of popular authors, poets and philosophers, including Ursula LeGuin, Amy Tan, Malek Alloula, J.R.R. Tolkien, Anna Maria Ortese, Emily Dickinson, Martin Heidegger and Friedrich Hölderlin.

“Yoko Tawada, whose native language is Japanese and who writes in German, tells us that ‘even one’s mother tongue is a translation,’” said Elam, associate professor of English at UAlbany. “Translation fosters an awareness of what we might think of as ownership – of language, of nation, of identity — even as it reveals the porousness of borders and opens up a space for an understanding of the other, because the other is, also, ourselves. Every year our Living in Languages Colloquium explores the multiple registers of identities and reminds us to keep our borders open to the nomads who come calling.”

The colloquium is free but attendees must register in advance to receive a Zoom invite. Click here to see the full lineup of panelists and speakers.

Many of the ideas explored at the colloquium are also discussed in the Living in Languages Journal — an online, open access, peer-reviewed publication devoted to translation studies and generated by graduate students and recent graduates of the English and LLC departments. The third edition is available now.