The French Center of Excellence and Department of French and Italian hosted a conversation between Dr. Mauro Cazzolla and Professor Jonathan Combs-Schilling on Thursday, April 17 to analyze some of the current trends in literary translation and the challenges that a literary translator has to face when they have to translate a literary work. The French Center of Excellence and Department of French and Italian thank Dr. Cazzolla and Professor Combs-Schilling for their time to meet with students, staff, faculty, and friends of FRIT and discuss these topics.

Dr. Mauro Cazzolla is an Associate Faculty member in French and Francophone Studies at The Ohio State University and is also a literary translator. He holds a PhD in Literary, Linguistic and Cultural Studies from the University of Miami and an MA in Translation from the University of Trieste. He also taught courses in French and in Translation at the University of Matera and at the Université Paris Nanterre. His research focuses on the challenges of translating autosociobiography, a literary genre in which language plays a socio-political role and is used to depict the reality of different social classes. On this topic, his latest aricle “Annie Ernaux et l’autosociobiographie en traduction : un exemple italien” will be published by the French Review in its special issue on Annie Ernaux (May 2025). As a literary translator, he has translated contemporary French authors such as Maud Ventura, Ouissem Belgacem, Vincent Almendros and Anne Godard. 

This event was sponsored by the French Center of Excellence, which receives funding from French Cultural Services in the US and the Consulate General of France in Chicago. In December of 2020, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States selected the Department of French and Italian at The Ohio State University to join its prestigious network of Centers of Excellence. OSU’s Center of Excellence has the goal of promoting French and Francophone culture in the Midwest and beyond.