Master of Arts in Literary Translation
Refined literary translators must be lifelong students of literature and they must have superior writing skills in English. The Master’s Degree in Literary Translation Studies (MALTS) at the University of Rochester provides a multi-faceted approach to the preparation of literary translators by combining academic rigor, strong practical training, and intensive professional development through internships with the Open Letter press and other literary presses.
Although the minimum degree requirement for admission to the program is a bachelor’s degree, it is expected that applicants will have significant preparation in one or more literary traditions. As literary and publishing professionals, they also need to understand the business of translating, editing, and producing books. The MALTS degree prepares students in all of these areas by requiring advanced literary study and training in international literature. One of the signatures of the program is the availability of publishing internships, both in the U.S. and abroad, that will prepare students for the complex work of collaborating with editors, agents, marketing professionals and others involved in the production of literary translations.
The MALTS program is based on translation into English. All students will maintain a portfolio of all the translation work they accomplish while in residency, and they will consult as necessary with their advisor on their projects (see Program Components). To complement and further enrich their shorter translations, students will produce a book-length, publishable-quality translation as a Master’s degree thesis. The thesis consists of two parts: a translation of a complete work and a commentary and analysis of the particular problems the translator encountered and the solutions found. Both a creative and an academic work, the thesis will showcase the student’s abilities as a literary translator and articulate his or her analytic capabilities as an academically and culturally informed reader of texts.