Congratulations to Andria Spring, a recent graduate of the Master’s in Translation and Interpreting program (Class of 2024), for receiving the Flag Bearer award! Recently, the MS in Translation and Interpreting program invited Andria to share what receiving the award meant to her and talk with Assistant Director of Programs Darius Phelps about her experience matriculating through the online degree program. Learn more in the interview below.
Q: What brought you to the program initially and caught your interest?
A: When I first arrived in New York in the summer of 2020, I had a visa that allowed me to study, but not work. I had worked since I was 17 so it was a daunting scenario. I was on the roster for a position in the UN as a verbatim reporter, having completed the competitive language exam in 2008, but I had no formal training in translation or foreign languages, so I decided to look into the possibility of studying languages or translation in New York. When I came across the MSTI at NYU, I immediately applied. It was a no-brainer. I wanted to learn more about the art of translation rather than just relying on instinct. I was very excited by the courses on offer, like the Audiovisual Translation course with Ana Salotti, the Translation for Intergovernmental Organizations course with Bin Liu, and the Literary Translation course with Jenny McPhee. The in-person course in New Media with Elizabeth Lowe that was offered during the J-term 2024 was phenomenal.
Q: Tell me a little about your capstone project and its background.
A: I translated 10,000 words of Le goût des garçons by a Lebanese writer named Joy Majdalani. I translated the first 1,500 words during the Literary Translation course. It deals with the sexual and feminist coming of age of a young girl in Lebanon in the early 2000s. Jenny McPhee was extremely encouraging of my initial translation, and my classmates were overwhelmingly positive when we workshopped our pieces together online. I got in touch with the author (via Instagram) and her publisher in France, and they were also really supportive of my translation. The publisher asked if I could translate a few more chapters so I proposed to pick up where I had left off as my thesis project, and thankfully, Annelise Finegan, the department head, and Sandra Smith, my thesis supervisor, both agreed.
Q: What does receiving this award mean to you?
My acceptance of this award is a way for me to give back to this program. It has been very good to me and everyone has been incredibly supportive. I feel that it’s a program that has raised me up, and I would like to recognize that. I want to accept, acknowledge, and appreciate the support that I've been given. This is a program that recognizes that it can be tricky to find the time while you're working to complete a master’s. The MSTI team does everything it can to make sure its students succeed and benefit from everything it has to offer.
On behalf of the NYU SPS Center for Publishing and Applied Liberal Arts, we are extremely proud of all that Andria has accomplished and look forward to what she achieves next.