A New Semester: The First Class is the Deepest

For those readers who don’t happen to live or have studied in Germany, you may be surprised to hear a new semester was kicked off this week. Here the academic year is divided into two semesters, both with 15 weeks of classes: the so-called Wintersemester from early October to early February and the Sommersemester from early April to mid-July. Incidentally, this is one reason why I was only able to attend one summer school ages ago and usually can’t make it to the annual ALTA conference. But to be perfectly honest, I love teaching, the rhythm of getting a fresh start every half-year, a new batch of students, most of them interested in learning something and not just passing the class.

When I claim that the first class is always the deepest, it’s not just a sly/corny reference to a perennially covered pop song, there’s an kernel of truth involved. Because once the introductions are done with and the ice has been broken, you inevitably have to address some fundamental questions. What is translation? Why do we translate? What does the phrase “lost in translation” actually mean? What makes a translation good or bad, and how can you know? Usually my shortest version of an answer to the first question can be boiled down to: translation is when a text (written or oral) from one language is "rewritten" in another language. And ideally the new text works just well as the old - or even better.

However, we usually don’t dive straight into literary translation in the first class session. Instead, I usually throw them for a loop by distributing something I happened across a couple years ago: a short list of library rules printed on a flyer and handed out in the library. In addition to being asked to translate these rules from German into English, the students are asked to think about issues including who the target audience could be, what kind of style we should aim for, what to do with the pictograms, and how to translate that odd German word Handy (cell phone, mobile, smartphone or just phone?).

After taking on the stereotypical German topic of rules, we usually decide there aren’t very many rules when it comes to translation, and sometimes you have to break them.