Online Graduate panel

Odile Cisneros (MLCS) is a poetry scholar and translator with interests in Latin American avant-gardes, contemporary Brazilian poetry, concrete poetry, ecopoetics, and literary translation who teaches in the Department of Modern Languages & Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta. She recently translated Galáxias by Haroldo de Campos (2024), has coedited Novas: Selected Writings of Haroldo de Campos and has translated the work of Jaroslave Seifert, Régis Bonvicino, and Sérgio Medeiros, among others. Her translations are included in the Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry. She also creates and manages the website ecopoesia.com.

Houssem Ben Lazreg is a freelance translator/interpreter, Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies at UOA, and a French/Arabic instructor. His research interests include politics, translation and journalism. His translations have appeared in journals such as Transcultural, Transference, Multilingual Discourses and Metamorphosis, while his commentaries on international politics are published with Reset Dialogues on Civilizations, International Relations, Al Jazeera, ABC, and the Conversation.

For several decades, the Middle East and North African region (MENA) has been marked by political volatility, transnational rivalries, and armed confrontations. In this context, translation plays a key role in mediating how conflicts and their protagonists are represented by international news outlets. Particularly, News translation serves as a site for reshaping narratives, constructing ideological perspectives, and influencing global perceptions. By injecting political biases, reframing narratives, and foregrounding themes of legitimacy or unlawfulness, news outlets align with the interests of geopolitical stakeholders, thereby shaping the conflict dynamics.This presentation investigates a central research question: how do news translations of media coverage construct competing narratives of the 2019 military campaign launched by General Khalifa Haftar on Tripoli, and what ideological and geopolitical implications emerge from these interventions? Drawing on Baker’s Narrative Theory (2006), van Dijk’s Critical Discourse Analysis (1997, 2001), and Martin & White’s Appraisal Theory (2005), the study employs corpus analysis to examine how global and regional outlets represent the 2018 offensive on Tripoli through language productions and translations. It further interrogates the role of ideology and media patronage in shaping the geopolitical outcomes of the translation process. The findings reveal consistent patterns of editorial intervention, ideological polarization, and narrative reframing across translated texts. Pro-Haftar translations engaged in positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation, reframing Haftar as the legitimate commander of a “national army” engaged in counterterrorism. Conversely, pro-GNA translations constructed an opposing narrative: while portraying the GNA as the sole legitimate, internationally recognized government, they framed Haftar as a criminal warlord backed by authoritarian regimes and foreign mercenaries, amplifying his role in producing chaos and humanitarian suffering. Pro-GNA outlets also foregrounded Turkey’s role as a legitimate defender of Libyan sovereignty, while omitting or downplaying controversial details such as the deployment of Syrian mercenaries and arms deliveries to the GNA. 

Kai Lin is a Ph.D. candidate in Translation and Russian Studies in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Russian Studies from China and a master’s degree in Translation Studies from Russia. His research interests include Russian media, audiovisual translation, queer discourse, and censorship. His current work examines the censorship of Anglophone queer films dubbed in Russia, investigating how queer narratives are reshaped and mediated within the Russian queerphobic media landscape. 

Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight (2016) offers a poignant exploration of identity, queerness, and self-acceptance. However, the Russian release of the film in 2017 with a restrictive "18+" rating underwent significant alterations due to the country’s queerphobic sociopolitical climate, particularly after the 2013 anti-LGBTQ+ "propaganda" law. This paper examines the extent to which these changes—specifically through censorship—compromise the film’s integrity, using a queer translation framework (Epstein and Gillett, 2017; Baer and Kaindl, 2018; Baer, 2021) and Alexander Doty’s concept of “queer readings.” By analyzing three key scenes, this study compares the original English version of the film with its official Russian translation, exploring how crucial moments of homophobic violence, familial rejection, and queer acceptance were altered. The omission of homophobic slurs, loss of emotional resonance in key visual moments, and shifts in dialogue weaken the impact of the protagonist’s self-discovery journey, undermining the narrative’s emphasis on personal and social transformation. Through these shifts, the Russian version diminishes the original film’s nuanced portrayal of queerness, limiting its potential to challenge heteronormative norms. The findings highlight the challenges of maintaining the authenticity and affective power of queer narratives in the face of state-sanctioned censorship. 

Meiling Xiao is a PhD student in Transnational and Comparative Literature at theUniversity of Alberta. She is interested in the linguistic turn and aesthetic autonomy in contemporary Chinese poetry from cross-cultural perspectives. Her recent work has appeared in Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews and Journal of Foreign Languages and Cultures. 

Abstract:

When does translation become ars poetica, a poet’s manifesto about poetry’s nature and social function? I analyze Chinese modernist poet Zhang Zao’s rendering of Wallace Stevens’s “The Idea of Order at Key West” (1934). Through misreading in translation, Zhang transforms Stevens’s ambivalence about poetic ordering and prowess over reality into confident assertion. Most tellingly, Stevens’s desperate seeking in “blessed rage for order” becomes “秩序的激昂” (passion of order). Throughout the translation, uncertainty morphs into certainty; the singer gains creative agency; fragmented syntax flows into fluency. These shifts reveal translation as a unique space for poetic self-definition and justification. Produced when 1990s Chinese poetry faced marginalization, Zhang Zao’s translation functions as meta-poetic defense—not just translating Stevens but arguing with him, asserting poetry’s formative power at a cultural crisis point.