The Lafayette Experience: Marc Ampaw ’02 Translates Articles on Austrian Theater and Culture

Marc Ampaw ’02 of Accra, Ghana, improved his language skills by helping translate scholarly articles from German to English with Margarete Lamb-Faffelberger, associate professor of German in the department of foreign languages and literatures.

As an EXCEL Scholar, Ampaw worked on translating articles about Austrian theater and culture submitted to Lamb-Faffelberger for two volumes she is editing, Post-War Austrian Theater: Text and Performance and Literature, Film and the Culture Industry in Modern Austria.

A double major in International Affairs and economics and business who was invited this spring to join Phi Beta Kappa, Ampaw used his near-native proficiency in German to translate the two works.

“Marc is an excellent student, extremely reliable. Translation is one of the most difficult skills, and he works like a true professional,” says Lamb-Faffelberger, who won Lafayette’s Thomas Roy and Lura Forrest Jones Faculty Lecture Award for superior teaching and scholarship in 1999.

The work was demanding but rewarding, agrees Ampaw, the recipient of Lafayette’s Eugene P. Chase Phi Beta Kappa Prize, awarded annually to a sophomore who has demonstrated scholarship as a first-year student, last spring.

“In translation, you really have to pay attention to diction and meaning do the material justice. It was good for me, because even though I speak German at home, I never did any composition courses. This helped me keep pace with more scholarly German,” Ampaw says.

“EXCEL is a good program, and I was pleased and flattered when Professor Lamb-Faffelberger approached me to take part,” he says. “It’s a great opportunity.”

Lamb-Faffelberger’s research interests include 19th and 20th century German literature and culture; modern Austrian literature and film; Austrian theater; feminist and minority discourse; and multi-media for foreign-language teaching. She joined the Lafayette faculty in 1992. She holds master’s and doctoral degrees in German literature from Rice University and another master’s degree from the University of Illinois.

She edited and wrote an introduction for Out from the Shadows. A Collection of Articles on Austrian Literature and Film by Women Since 1945, published by Ariadne Press in 1997. She is the author of the book Valie Export und Elfriede Jelinek im Spiegel der Presse. Zur Rezeption der feministischen Avantgarde Österreichs in the Austrian Culture Series, published by Peter Lang in 1992.