ARIEL project
A brief overview
The ARIEL (Auteur en Résidence Internationale En Lorraine) residence is a writer's residence organized by the Arts, Literature and Languages university department and the Charlemagne University Institute of Technology. This residence, which has been created in 2018, enables each year a foreign writer to stay in Nancy, and is aimed at highlighting the guest author as well as his work, in order to make them known to the French population, mostly thanks to the ARIEL blog. The guest is a writer who writes in one of the languages which is taught at the University of Lorraine, on the Lettres et Sciences Humaines Campus of Nancy.
This residence relies, to a large extent, on the commitment of students from the University of Lorraine, be them students of modern languages, information and communication, French, philosophy or psychology. This project enables them to highlight their knowledge and know-how in order to contribute to the guest authors' growing visibility and audibility.
The guest author in Nancy must devote about 70% of his time to his writing. He is, by the way, asked to write a text which is inspired by his experience in Nancy. The writer must devote 30% of his time to mediation events with his French audience – be it an audience made of professionals of the book world, or an audience made of pupils –, through the organization of writing workshops, of lectures, or of discussions about one of the author's literary works.
The advantages of this residence
As stated above, the ARIEL residence is based on the commitment of the University of Lorraine students, who can participate in:
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The organization of events (accompanying the author when he travels, interpreting);
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The organization of a "journée d'études" at the university about the author's presence;
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Creative projects and the presentation of these projects during the residence's closing ceremony;
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The writing of articles for the ARIEL blog;
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The strengthening of the ARIEL social networks;
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The author's official interview at the end of the residence;
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The collective translation of one of the author's works.
All of these ways of participating in the ARIEL project can add value to a CV, which is a great advantage for students.
ARIEL translation
The ARIEL residence also has a translation dimension since students – supervised by lecturers who are used to translating texts – collectively translate one of the guest author's works, in order for a French publishing house to publish it in the months following the end of the author's residence.
All the students who are willing to participate in this translation are split into small groups of 3 or 4 students and then, each group is given an excerpt of the to-be-translated work and is assigned to a referent teacher. Within each group, students can choose either to work on their respective sides and then to commingle their translations, or to work as a whole from one end to the other of the translation work.
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Each group of students needs to have finished translated the whole excerpt which was attributed to them by the end of December, so that the second semester of the academic year can be devoted to the collective proofreading and rewriting of the entire translation.
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This collective translation aims at confronting several translations in order to get a homogeneous outcome which will be composed of the best parts of each translation.
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In 2019, Mark SaFranko's novel The Suicide was translated by a group of students and was published by Inculte as Suicide.
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In 2020, Laura Fusco's collection of poems entitled Nadir was translated and published by Unicité.
We are currently working on the translation of South African author Mohale Mashigo's The Yearning.
Doriane's personal opinion on the ARIEL project
I have participated twice in the ARIEL residence, as part of the translation team of Mark SaFranko's Suicide (in 2018-2019) and Mohale Mashigo's novel entitled The Yearning (in 2020-2021).
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Both my first experience and the second one have been amazing and extremely instructive, be it on the academic level or on the personal level. These translations enabled me to be more self-confident and to have faith in my abilities. The people I had the opportunity to meet were wonderful, and our teachers have been quite extraordinary. They were always there for us and were ready to answer any question we might have had. I cannot but thank them for that.
Any question?
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To have more information on the ARIEL project, please click here.
If you have any question about this project, please contact Doriane.
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ARIEL social networks
