Translating canonical texts: a discussion (with illustrations from Russian and French)

Martin Sorrell has recently published a Selected Poems of Apollinaire with Oxford World’s Classics (see a glowing review here - https://academic.oup.com/fs/article/70/4/611/2197881/G-uillaume-A-pollinaire-Selected-Poems-Translated); Muireann Maguire has published a review essay on recent translations of Tolstoy (and Tolstoy translation more generally) and is an active translator from Russian; and Adam Watt has written the introduction and notes to a new English translation of Proust’s Un amour de Swann (trans. Brian Nelson) forthcoming in November with Oxford World’s Classics https://global.oup.com/academic/product/swann-in-love-9780198744894?cc=gb&lang=en& and has a chapter forthcoming on Derek Mahon’s translation of Valéry’s Le cimetière marin. Discussion will attend to a range of matters relating to translating ‘classics’: why do we (re-)translate? should we buy into the ‘each generation needs its own Dante/Tolstoy/Proust (etc)’ argument? what was particularly challenging about translating Apollinaire? how do different translators approach Tolstoy? how do we handle the annotation of translations? Audience intervention and participation most welcome!