<p>Seminar, three hours. Recommended preparation: intermediate knowledge of a second language. Exploration of how illness, suffering, and care move across languages, cultures, and systems of knowledge. Examination of what happens when experiences of the body are communicated across linguistic and cultural boundaries, particularly as they enter medical discourse. Consideration of what is lost, reshaped, or standardized as experiences of the body are translated; and how these exchanges are mediated in clinical and interpretive settings. Study brings together translation studies, narrative medicine, and literary texts, examining these questions through both theory and case studies. Topics include clinical encounters, colonial histories, and contemporary debates about artificial intelligence and machine translation and interpretation in health care. P/NP or letter grading.</p>

Comparative Literature

College of Letters and Science

COM LIT 180A - Illness in Translation

Illness in Translation

Analyze translation as a cultural and interpretive practice: students will explain key concepts from translation studies—equivalence, untranslatability, domestication and foreignization, and the “remainder”—and reflect on their roles in literary, cultural, and medical texts.

Evaluate the role of translation in healthcare communication: students will analyze clinical encounters, interpreting practices, and multilingual health communication to understand how language mediates relationships between patients, clinicians, and institutions.

Examine the political and historical dimensions of translation: how translation has functioned within colonial encounters, global health initiatives, and contemporary migration contexts.

Compare translations of literary texts to understand the ethics and limits of representation: through close reading and comparative analysis, students will evaluate how different translations of literary works—such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich—render illness, suffering, and medical discourse.

Connect humanities frameworks to contemporary issues in medicine and technology

General Catalog

Illness in Translation

COM LIT 180A

4 units