Translation research seminars, CTIS, Manchester

Had a quick email reminder today of the excellent translation research seminar series organised by the Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies at the University of Manchester. Those of you within reach of Manchester should check these out. The next seminar is given by Lorna Hardwick. It will take place on Monday 15 February at 2 p.m. in room A101, Samuel Alexander Building, at the University of Manchester.

Lorna Hardwick
Writing in English: how Classics and Translation Studies can learn from each other

This paper explores how translation can go beyond communication between ancient Greek and Latin and modern language contexts and can play a central role in creating new literary texts. It identifies some contemporary Anglophone literary contexts in which classical texts and translations have met and examines the implications for all three spheres. I will discuss the expectations brought to this activity by writers, translators and different kinds of readers and will consider how translation, rewording, rewriting and creativity overlap and diverge. I plan to use examples drawn from recent poetry and drama in English. Some of these have the primary aim of providing translations of Greek or Latin texts while others include excerpts from the ancient authors embedded in new work. The discussion will investigate how these relate to the literary, classical and translation traditions in which they are situated and will pose some questions about the extent to which these traditions are subverted and reshaped. Translation is one of the literary practices that interact to create cultural spaces. The result is to question settled assumptions about artistic and cultural identities and to allow new ones to develop. The examples also raise questions about how and why some conventional assumptions in translation theory can be revised.

Ancient writers referred to include: Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Vergil, Ovid.
Modern writers include: Seamus Heaney (with translator Richard Jebb), David Greig (with translator Ian Ruffell), Christopher Logue, Michael Longley, Frank McGuinness (with translator Fionnuala Murphy), Timberlake Wertenbaker (with academic advisor Margaret Williamson).

Lorna Hardwick teaches at the Open University, where she is Professor of Classical Studies and Director of the Reception of Classical Texts Research Project. Her publications include Translating Words, Translating Cultures (2000), Reception Studies (2003) and the edited collections Classics in Post-Colonial Worlds (2007, with Carol Gillespie) and Companion to Classical Receptions (2008, with Christopher Stray). She is editor of the new Classical Receptions Journal.