Translating Kafka Workshop, Oxford Translation Day 2024

Seminar Room 11, St Anne's College

We celebrate Franz Kafka’s centenary at Oxford Translation Day with a workshop where participants will explore the linguistic challenges and creative opportunities of translating the deceptively clear yet fragmentary prose of one of the most widely read and frequently translated of twentieth-century writers. Beginning with the famous opening sentence of The Metamorphosis, Dr Ian Ellison and Hannah Scheithauer will guide participants through other examples of Kafka’s shortest stories and aphorisms, evaluating a range of published translations of some of Kafka’s pithiest and quirkiest texts. We will then have the chance to produce our own version of the short story ‘Eine kaiserliche Botschaft’. No prior knowledge of German is required.