IASH seminar and fellowships, Edinburgh

The University of Edinburgh is organising a seminar on 22 April which may be of interest especially to Germanists:

Thursday, 22 April
3.00 - 5.00 pm, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, Hope Park Square

Iain Galbraith (Independent Scholar; Visiting Fellow of IASH): The translation of 20th-century Scottish poetry into German: Cultural Aporiai and the negotiatory strategies of translation
Abstract: Identifying specific instances of impasse encountered in German translations of Scottish poetry since 1900, and reviewing typical benchmarks of translation criticism such as gain/loss, betrayal, metaphor, equivalence and rewriting, this paper will argue that the task of translation invites the more or less inventive re-negotiation of the terms of cultural, historical and linguistic discontinuity, reconstituting the parameters of poetic coherence in new media and contexts. In so doing, translations not only evince historical and cultural incongruities, but may also stimulate exemplary reflection on the conditions of knowledge acquisition, transformative resources, and the evolution and modification of traditions.

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Dr Sheila Dickson (Senior Lecturer in German and Adviser of Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Glasgow): The Creative Imperative. German Romantic Translation
Abstract: "In the final instance, all poetry is translation.” (Novalis) German Romantic theorists and writers recognised all narrative mediation as an act of subjective transformation and enrichment. Translation as a second level of mediation could therefore add a further layer of individual creativity and so become not just a metaphor for poetry but also a practical modality. The paper will briefly characterise the Schlegel/Tieck Shakespeare translation before concentrating on the international folk literature source base of later Romantic works. As epitome and impasse of German Romantic translation it will examine Goethe’s Correspondence with a Child, the English translation of Bettina von Arnim’s work, which she undertook herself, without any previous knowledge of the English language.

I see that the IASH has a special running theme at the moment on 'Translations, Adaptations and Modalities' and funds visiting fellowships which may be of interest to post-doctoral researchers in translation.