The course description for Bad Translation: Expanded Typography and Publication opens with a quote from Walter Benjamin's essay “The Task of the Translator”: “it is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language that is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work.” The concept behind the class is that this reflects the experience of typographic designers.

Taught by Bo-Won Keum, a designer and educator based in New York, the class, both a visual language study and a workshop, explores the concept of translation as “method and practice for typographic experimentation.” It teaches students basic typographic rules and typesetting techniques.

Gloria Zhu '26, an alumna from the DesignPlus First-Year Learning Community already had significant design experience before taking the course in the Spring of 2024. For one of her recent projects, Sixty Sixty One, she and other students designed, laser cut, and assembled a variety of metal garments and accessories inspired by nature that illustrated the tension between the ephemeral and immortality. These included a corset, purse, skirt, finger cuffs, necklaces, wings, etc.

For this typography study project, she created the book “Conversations for Beginners” in an attempt to parody, pick apart, and find comfort in the patterns of everyday conversation.

Modeled after language-learning pamphlets such as “101 Spanish Conversations for Beginners,” it includes a set of ten “translated” conversations whose rules, contents, and usage are laid out visually and instructionally.

The book was made in MIT's Metropolis makerspace, assembled from laser-cut and spray-painted chipboard. It is meant to be taken apart, overlaid on top of itself, and reassembled by the user.