Uploaded November 2023 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
A conversation with Daniel Levin Becker at the American Library in Paris. Filmed on 08/11/2023 with a live audience both in person and on Zoom.
We live in an age of machine-enabled translation, with programs like Google Translate and ChatGPT always available at our fingertips. What does machine translation get right about language – and what does it miss? What makes for a good translation? How does the act of translating literature help us to think about the pleasures and the idiosyncrasies of words?
If anyone can help us to reach new depths of understanding about language and translation, it’s Daniel Levin Becker. At the age of 24, Becker became the youngest member of Oulipo, a group of writers and mathematicians who experiment with the mechanics of language. His recent translation of Laurent Mauvignier’s nail-biting thriller The Birthday Party has been met with widespread praise. As Anthony Cummins reported in The Guardian, Becker’s “endlessly segmented sentences, which snap and crunch with his convincingly apt choices, surely gave his ingenuity a workout.”
Watch to hear Becker’s stimulating perspectives on wordplay, style, translation, and more.
About the speaker:
Daniel Levin Becker is a writer, translator, and music critic. He is the author of Many Subtle Channels and What’s Good: Notes on Rap and Language and the translator of several works, including Laurent Mauvignier’s The Birthday Party. His forthcoming translations include Éric Chevillard’s Museum Visits and Jakuta Alikavazovic’s Like a Sky Inside. He has been a member of the Oulipo since 2009.
Evenings with an Author is generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg.
A conversation with Daniel Levin Becker at the American Library in Paris. Filmed on 08/11/2023 with a live audience both in person and on Zoom.
We live in an age of machine-enabled translation, with programs like Google Translate and ChatGPT always available at our fingertips. What does machine translation get right about language – and what does it miss? What makes for a good translation? How does the act of translating literature help us to think about the pleasures and the idiosyncrasies of words?
If anyone can help us to reach new depths of understanding about language and translation, it’s Daniel Levin Becker. At the age of 24, Becker became the youngest member of Oulipo, a group of writers and mathematicians who experiment with the mechanics of language. His recent translation of Laurent Mauvignier’s nail-biting thriller The Birthday Party has been met with widespread praise. As Anthony Cummins reported in The Guardian, Becker’s “endlessly segmented sentences, which snap and crunch with his convincingly apt choices, surely gave his ingenuity a workout.”
Watch to hear Becker’s stimulating perspectives on wordplay, style, translation, and more.
About the speaker:
Daniel Levin Becker is a writer, translator, and music critic. He is the author of Many Subtle Channels and What’s Good: Notes on Rap and Language and the translator of several works, including Laurent Mauvignier’s The Birthday Party. His forthcoming translations include Éric Chevillard’s Museum Visits and Jakuta Alikavazovic’s Like a Sky Inside. He has been a member of the Oulipo since 2009.
Evenings with an Author is generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg.
