Ulyana Wolf reveals the magic of poetic translation!

Ulyana Wolf reveals the magic of poetic translation!

Ulyana Wolf, a respected poet and translator, discusses in her latest article in Research Frankfurt the challenges and opportunities of poetic translation. The issue entitled "Language. We understand each other!" not only deals with the theory of translation, but also places it in a cultural context. Wolf links her reflections to silent film star Buster Keaton and his film “The Ballonatic,” which is a fascinating approach to explaining the translation process.

Wolf emphasizes that the path to translation does not begin with literal decoding, but rather with non-comprehension, which initiates the creative process. This process involves taking apart, reassembling, and understanding texts differently, resulting in a “second body” of the poem. This body includes sound, rhythm and multilingualism and opens up new perspectives on the underlying texts.

Insights into Wolf's work and background

The writer, who was born in East Berlin in 1979, has a multi-faceted literary career. After stints in Berlin and New York, she returned to her homeland in 2018. In addition to poetry, Wolf has worked on numerous translations from English, Polish and Belarusian. Her essay “Etymological Gossip” was awarded the Leipzig Book Fair nonfiction prize in 2021.

Her debut volume of poetry “kochanie, today i bought bread” will be published in October 2023 in an English translation by Greg Nissan. Even as a child, Wolf wrote poems that were characterized by rhymes. Over the years, she shifted her focus to word games and linguistic explorations. She describes her relationship with her mother tongue, German, as ambivalent, influenced by her experiences between different languages ​​and cultures.

Wolf addresses the complex forms of multilingual writing in contemporary literature and notes that this has often been neglected in German studies. In particular, authors such as Herta Müller and Emine Sevgi Özdamar contribute to embedding the discussion about multilingualism in literary contexts - an aspect that has become increasingly important in new research since the turn of the millennium Academia.edu confirmed.

Conclusions and current topics

In her article in Research Frankfurt Wolf suggests that multilingualism in literature goes beyond aesthetic presentations - it establishes a fundamental connection to topics such as identity, alterity and intercultural dialogue. Other topics in the journal deal with language acquisition in children growing up multilingually, the role of facial expressions and gestures and the linguistic-historical connections between European languages.

Wolf's reflections on multilingualism and its significance for literary translation not only open up new perspectives on existing works, but also call for a redefinition of language and identity. Her works invite you to think beyond the fixed boundaries of language and to discover the creative possibilities that arise from translating between languages.