Zenith vs. Zenith: Reflections on Translation (Practice and Theory) and a Few Things He Got Wrong

Description: Celebrated translator and biographer Richard Zenith has spent much of the past three decades translating and writing about the great Portuguese modernist poet Fernando Pessoa. This spring, two of his translations of Pessoa’s poetry and prose will be republished with extensive revisions. At Yale, Zenith will talk about what—through all these years—led to some of those revisions and reflect on translation more generally.

Richard Zenith has translated Galician-Portuguese troubadour verse and poetry by Luís de Camões, Sophia de Mello Breyner, João Cabral de Melo Neto, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, and many living poets. Author of an acclaimed biography of Pessoa published last year, he has rendered half a dozen Portuguese novels into English as well. His translations have won prizes from PEN and the Academy of American Poets.