Translation as Multilingual Collation: The Case of Vernon Lee (1856–1935)

RETHINKING TRANSLATION

SPEAKER: Colton Valentine, Junior Fellow, Harvard Society of Fellows

What does it mean to translate an author into one of her own languages? This talk explores that question through the case of Vernon Lee, a late-Victorian polymath who worked across English, French, Italian, and German. Drawing on a forthcoming translation of Lee’s non-English writings, I map out the conditions under which we might think of translation as a form of multilingual collation. Though collation invokes the specters of equivalence or invisibility, I show how the technique in fact estranges a language through its attention to polyphony, idiosyncratic style, and what I call “multilingual drift.” Taking up the queer relationship between Lee and one of her contemporary translators, I suggest that these linguistic repertoires are historically entangled with a writer’s sexuality.

About the Speaker

Colton Valentine is a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. He works broadly on literary and book history in the long nineteenth century, with a focus on translation and queer studies. His essays have recently appeared in Representations, ELH, MLQ, Victorian Studies, and The New Yorker, and his critical translation, Vernon Lee’s Cosmopolitan Prose, is forthcoming with MHRA in 2025.