Course Title：Traducción y formación del canon literario: el caso de Argentina

This course will deal with a wide range of representations (at the fictional level) of the role of translation and translation procedures, and the constitution of a nation’s literary canon. The course will be focused on – but not restricted to – the literary works of Jorge Luis Borges and Liliana Bodoc, two Argentinean authors who for different reasons have set standards for the recognition of “literary quality” in the local arena. The course has been taught before in Argentina, Brazil, Denmark and Finland with the structure of a seminar. For the occasion of the BFSU ISS2019 the same structure is recommended with a view to triggering active oral participation among advanced students of Spanish as a Foreign Language. The seminar will be assessed on a double criteria basis, including the dialogic exchanges with students, and the preparation and production of a 2000-word argumentative essay. The main aims of this course are: 1) finding and recognizing translation issues in the selected works of Borges and Bodoc; 2) classifying and defining “translation problems” in Borges and Bodoc’s notions about a writer’s ethics and responsibilities; 3) describing and arguing about the impact of “translation problems” in Argentina’s literary canon (and / or other Southern American countries). The course will be taught in (Río de La Plata) Spanish thus students are expected to have a good command of Spanish as a Foreign Language (or ELE, Español como Lengua Extranjera). Due to the expected high standards of conceptual explications and digressions, this seminar is specially targeted at Junior (or Above) students.