Ferreira-Mendes Portuguese-American Archives and the Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture Event
The Translator's Memoir: Reflection on an Embodied Art
This session will feature a reading from Elizabeth Lowe's recent memoir, Translating from the Portuguese: A Life Translated (Tagus Press, 2025), followed by a conversation with the UMass Dartmouth community of students and scholars on the translator's memoir as a genre and as a testimony to the agency and vital role of the literary translator as a creative writer, communicator, and educator in today's fractured world. Elizabeth will speak about translation as an embodied art form: how the lived experience of the translator—particularly location and geography shapes her life, how she works with language, and the body of her work. She will give details on her relationship with the Brazilian and Portuguese writers she has worked with, including the iconic Clarice Lispector and younger writers such as J.P. Cuenca. The event will offer meaningful insights into sustaining and sustainable practices from a prolific translator and leading voice in the field of literary translation.
Elizabeth Lowe has translated over thirty works by Lusophone writers from Brazil, Portugal and Africa. She was one of the first to translate Jorge Amado, Clarice Lispector, Rubem Fonseca, Nélida Piñon, and António Lobo Antunes. She is a professor in the New York University Master’s in Translation.
Ferreira-MendesPortuguese-American Archives
Mario Pereira
5089999270
mpereira6@umassd.edu