Call for Applications: “Translating Critical Thought, A Four Day Workshop at Yale” due October 31st

Conference Dates: January 5 to 8, 2026

Why “Translating Critical Thought/Traduire la pensée critique” at Yale? Critical thought broadly encompasses the scholarship for which the Yale French Department, and by extension, its academic journal, Yale French Studies, is internationally renowned: it ranges from “French theory” to cultural studies, interdisciplinary work in literature and the social sciences, and literary criticism writ large, in all its methodological variety. We are pleased to offer an intensive workshop to doctoral and postdoctoral students interested in acquiring specific tools and skills for the translation of critical non-fiction and theory from French into English and English into French.

Goals of the Workshop

This workshop aims to achieve several objectives: to build a network of scholars at Yale working in non-fiction translation; to improve translation skills for graduate and postdoctoral students, so that as emerging scholars in their fields they may produce and evaluate translations of sources, archives, and other research materials; and finally, to introduce new skilled translators to work within academia.

Whether the translators are working from French to English or English to French, the workshop will help participants acquire a nuanced bilingual understanding of specific concepts and terminology related to this area, to improve their professional skills by providing them with a practical toolbox to deal with current translation issues, and to gain access to a professional network by meeting with successful professional translators as well as editors working for magazines, scholarly journals, and university presses.

Our previous workshop in 2018 has begun to grow an international network of French and U.S. translators of critical thought. A second workshop, hosted here at Yale, specifically for Yale students, will further expand this network and continue the essential work of transmitting theoretical and critical conversations between French and English thinkers.

Schedule

The workshop will last four days on campus and will bring together 10 translators: 8 participants (4 with projects from French to English, 4 with projects from English to French) and two lead translators (Patrick Hersant, Professor, Université Paris 8 and Catherine Porter, Professor emerita, SUNY-Cortland).

Applications

Each student will receive a stipend of $1,000 for attending the workshop.

The application should include:

• A letter of motivation explaining your background and your interest in this workshop.

• A description of the translation project including an abstract of the text and why it merits translation

• A sample of the translation in progress (5 pages or ~1,500 words)

• The original document (scanned)

We will accept proposals for translating non-fiction (creative and/or academic) articles or book-length projects.

Applications must be sent by October 31st to Nichole Gleisner. Participants will be notified by the end of November.

Questions? Email alice.kaplan@yale.edu or nichole.gleisner@yale.edu

Sponsors

The Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund and The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale

The Albertine Foundation contribution to Yale Center of Excellence

The Department of French Yale French Studies Fund

The Yale Translation Initiative at the MacMillan Center