In this workshop, we will collaboratively translate a Bengali poem into English with a focus on translating emotions and affect. The poem in focus moves between different affective registers, among them irritation, grief, love, longing, and accrues around the act of waiting. How do we work through these registers and move them across languages? No prior knowledge of Bengali is required.
Utsa Bose is a second year DPhil candidate in History at the University of Oxford. His current research focuses on infectious diseases and pandemics in colonial South Asia between the late-19th/early 20th centuries. He was also the Graduate Teaching Assistant for the MSt in Comparative Literature and Critical Translation (CLCT) between 2023-2024. He enjoys translating and writing fiction, and his translations have appeared in journals such as Asymptote, while his original fiction has been published by Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters