Karen Nölle Appointed August Wilhelm von Schlegel Visiting Professor in Poetics of Translation at Freie Universität Berlin
German Translators’ Fund sponsors teaching appointment during 2022/2023 winter semester / Inaugural lecture to be held on October 31 at 7:00 p.m.
№ 185/2022 from Oct 25, 2022
Translator and author Karen Nölle will hold the seat of August Wilhelm von Schlegel Visiting Professorship in Poetics of Translation at Freie Universität Berlin this winter semester. In her inaugural lecture on October 31, entitled “Es könnte auch ganz anders sein. Vom Umgang mit Ungewohntem” (“Things Could Be Very Different: Dealing with the Unfamiliar,” held in German), Nölle will discuss foreign-language literature by female authors and how their works are dealt with by translators and the literary scene. Her talk explores questions regarding how to do justice to these authors and their language, emotions, and thinking. Should we be taking a special approach to these works? How can we ensure that aspects of the new and unfamiliar are brought across in translation without resorting to clichés? The event will be taking place in Schleswig-Holstein’s federal state office building in Berlin and is open to the public. Attendance is free of charge, but prior registration is required by October 29. To register, please use the following link: https://lv-landsh.de/Antrittsvorlesung. The visiting professorship includes a teaching appointment at the Peter Szondi Institute of Comparative Literature, Freie Universität Berlin. As part of a seminar, Nölle will work together with students to translate classic texts from Mary Shelley and Virginia Woolf, as well as from contemporary authors such as Alice Munro, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
Karen Nölle was born in Hamburg in 1950 and spent part of her childhood in California. She studied in Hamburg and Aachen, specializing in English studies, Romance studies, German studies, and philosophy before working as a research associate at RWTH Aachen University’s Chair for English and American Studies. She has worked as a freelance translator since 1984, translating literature from a host of international female authors such as Annie Dillard, Ursula K. Le Guin, Audre Lorde, Alice Munro, and Eudora Welty into German.
She has received many accolades for her work. For example, she was awarded the Eva Bornemann grant, a travel grant from the Freundeskreis zur Förderung literarischer und wissenschaftlicher Übersetzungen e.V. (Friends for the Promotion of Literary and Academic Translations e.V.), and various grants and bursaries from the German Translators’ Fund. In 2008, she was named BücherFrau’s Woman in Publishing of the Year.
Her most recently published translations include Ursula K. Le Guin’s novels The Word for World is Forest and The Telling, published in German as one volume under the title Grenzwelten (Fischer Tor), and Andrea Barrett’s The Air We Breathe and Ship Fever (Unionsverlag). This fall will see the publication of even more of her work, including the translations of Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (Fischer Tor), Annie Dillard’s Teaching a Stone to Talk (Matthes & Seitz Berlin), and Audre Lord’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (Hanser).
Karen Nölle has also worked as a freelance editor since 1990 and held an editorial position at publishing company edition fünf from 2009 to 2019. She is also a writer herself, having written several travel books.
Additionally, Nölle is an active member of several professional associations, for example, the Verband deutschsprachiger Übersetzer/innen literarischer und wissenschaftlicher Werke e.V. (Association of German-speaking translators of literary and academic works). She has been president of the Freundeskreis zur Förderung literarischer und wissenschaftlicher Übersetzungen e.V. since 2019.
About the August Wilhelm von Schlegel Visiting Professorship in Poetics of Translation
The August Wilhelm von Schlegel Visiting Professorship was established in the 2007/2008 winter semester by the German Translators’ Fund and Freie Universität Berlin. Every year, a new person is selected to come to the Peter Szondi Institute of Comparative Literature during the winter semester.
Further Information
More Information
Registration by October 29: https://lv-landsh.de/Antrittsvorlesung
Time and Location of the Inaugural Lecture
- October 31, 7:00 p.m.
- Landesvertretung Schleswig-Holstein, in den Ministergärten 8, 10117 Berlin
Contact
Valentina Voss, Freie Universität Berlin, Peter Szondi Institute of Comparative Literature, Email: valentinavoss@web.de