The American University of Armenia (AUA) Certificate in Translation
(CTRA) program’s 2015 class of translators recently produced the
Armenian versions of political theorist Hannah Arendt’s two essays,
which appeared in the critical e-journal Arteria.
As part of their practicum in translation, which is the final course
in the Certificate in Translation program, the students worked
individually and collaborated as a team on the translation of “Expansion
and the Philosophy of Power” (1946), an essay which became part of
Arendt’s best-known book The Origins of Totalitarianism, and “Society and Culture” (1960).
Sona Avagyan, one of the translators stressed the importance of this
selection: “I think that the choice of Arendt was very useful since the
ideas which she expressed decades ago are completely true for today’s
reality as well.”
Another translator, Lusine Babayan, noted how “translating Arendt was
a challenge. Her ‘Expansion and the Philosophy of Power’ is a text,
which, on the one hand, might seem intelligible for a first-time reader,
but, on the other hand, a closer look makes it extremely tough to
render. It surely enriched my understanding of power and its
mechanisms.”
CTRA lecturer Shushan Avagyan, who led the translation workshop and
offered constructive feedback throughout the process, said, “The
students were guided through their apprenticeship in stages—drafting and
experimenting with techniques learned from previous courses, comparing
the original with a range of translation versions, and finally editing
the translation as a whole.”
On June 6, 2015, Avagyan received an AUA Faculty Research Award to
expand the teamwork beyond the confines of the classroom and curate a
project that will build upon the translators’ knowledge and skills
acquired during the past academic year. Within the next year, her team
will research and translate several other essays by Arendt and publish
them in book form.
Despite her worldwide prominence, the Armenian reader is not very
familiar with Arendt’s work whose writings span totalitarianism,
imperialism, justice, revolution, the nature of freedom and the
faculties of thought and judgment. The question with which Arendt
engages most frequently is the nature of political existence as distinct
from other realms of human activity. The essays chosen for this
translation project are all related to the analysis of political life,
critical for anyone committed to building a civil society. The funds
from AUA’s Faculty Research Award will enable the publication and
dissemination of these important essays, making them available to the
different political communities in Armenia and to the public at large.
Since its inception in 2012, at the end of every academic year, the
Certificate in Translation program has presented the Armenian reader
with a translation of a text by an intellectual who has influenced
thought and shaped discourse. Arendt is a marvelous discovery for those
who cannot read her in the original or in Russian translation, as her
work had never been translated into Armenian until this point.
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