Translating French into English, via Yazigian

Proof of registration, via a QR code on your phone or on paper, will be required to enter Reid Hall. Entry will be refused to those who are not registered.

Please note that access will not be permitted 15 minutes after the start of the event.

This event will be held in English and French.

Daniel Levin Becker, currently a Fellow at the Institute, will be in conversation with French–Hungarian author Nina Yargekov, whose novel Double nationalité he is translating from French into English this year. Their discussion will center on questions specific to the novel, with its inventive take on naming and bilingualism, as well as the comparative qualities of French and English more generally—including gendered nouns, shapeshifting pronouns, and artisanal obscenities, to name a few. The event will be bilingual but principally in English.

Daniel Levin Becker is a writer, editor, and translator based in Paris. He has been a member of the literary collective Oulipo since 2009. He is the author of Many Subtle Channels: In Praise of Potential Literature (2012) and What’s Good: Notes on Rap and Language (2022) and the translator of books by authors including, most recently, Jakuta Alikavazovic, Éric Chevillard, and Laurent Mauvignier. At the Institute, Levin Becker is working on an English translation of Nina Yargekov’s Double nationalité (2016), a long novel in which a young amnesiac with dual citizenship slowly pieces together her identity, both personally and geopolitically.