Creative Poetry Translation Workshop (French>English).

This fun and challenging-yet-accessible workshop gives students a unique insight into the creative translation process. It provides opportunities for authentic translation practice, language development and meaningful discussions around creative careers using languages. It focusses on the poem ‘Carpe Diem’ by Valérie Rouzeau and its English translation by Susan Wicks.

This creative workshop has been carefully devised by a translation and educational professional. It has been very successfully delivered to multiple groups of year 8, 9 and 10 students in various schools across the country by native and non-native French speakers. Feedback from students and class teachers alike has been overwhelmingly positive, with student feeling accomplished and motivated having engaged with authentic language in innovative ways.

Students will begin the session by decoding and describing images and words. They will be guided through translating a poem crudely using a glossary (or an online translator, if you prefer). They will then be taught how to refine, polish and perfect a translation. There will also be opportunities for freer practice in which students can create their own version of the poem using transplantation, transcreation techniques.

As the session and materials are based on the “decode > translate > create” model, the workshop can be edited to work with different poems and/or languages of your choosing.

All resources are provided. Some printing may be required.