Translation lecture by Lawrence Venuti, Nottingham, 17 November

A surprising coincidence! 17 November, date of Professor Sherry Simon's lecture in London on cities of translation, is also the date for an inaugural lecture by Professor Lawrence Venuti of Temple University, Philadelphia, on

Genealogies of Translation Theory: Locke and Schleiermacher

University of Nottingham

Thursday, 17 November 2011, 5.15pm, A48, Clive Granger Building, University Park

This event will mark the launch of the University’s new Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies

Professor Venuti is a leading authority in translation studies, whose ground-breaking research into the issues of translating cultures has illuminated the impact of power relations - economic, political, and intellectual - on the exchange of ideas and words . His publications include The Translator's Invisibility: A History of Translation (2nd ed., 2008) and The Scandals of Translation: Towards an Ethics of Difference (1998). Professor Venuti also translates from Italian, French, and Catalan; his translations have won numerous prizes, including from the Guggenheim Foundation in 2007 and the Robert Fagles Translation Prize in 2008.

The Lecture will be followed by a reception, after which the prize-winning Moroccan-Dutch writer Abdelkader Benali will speak about his own experience of “being translated”. His novels Bruiloft aan zee (Wedding by the Sea, 1996), De langverwachte (2002) ,and De stem van mijn moeder (My Mother's Voice, 2009) have all been translated in numerous languages.

Dr Maike Oergel

Associate Professor in German

Co-Editor of Comparative Critical Studies

Director of the Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies

Director of Teaching

School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies

University of Nottingham

NG7 2RD

Tel. 0115 951 5819

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/clas/research/centre-for-translation/

http://www.euppublishing.com/journal/ccs

Nominations for the SFF translation awards

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Translation Awards seem to be going from strength to strength. Nominations are open for the 2011 award. If you have suggestions, or if you just want to go and look at other people's suggestions for good sff to read (from more than a dozen languages) check out their nominations page.

Sherry Simon lecture, London, 17 November

Thursday 17 November 2011, at 4pm, Room G22/26, Senate House, University of London, Malet St.

PROFESSOR SHERRY SIMON (CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY)

will give a talk entitled

'Cities in Translation: Intersections of Language and Memory'

Sherry Simon is Professor in the Department of Etudes françaises at Concordia University, Montreal. She is the author of several books, including: Gender in Translation: Cultural Identity and the Politics of Transmission (1996), Translating Montreal: Episodes in the Life of a Divided City (2007), and the latest, published by Routledge in September 2011: an analysis of Calcutta, Barcelona, Trieste and Montreal which shares a title with this seminar.

The talk will be followed by a drinks reception generously funded by the Quebec Government Delegation in London.

Dr Katia Pizzi
Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies
School of Advanced Study
University of London
Stewart House
Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU.
Tel. n. 02078628962
Fax. n. 02078628672
Email: katia.pizzi at sas.ac.uk

Two lectures this week at Roehampton

Two lectures coming up this week at the Centre for Research in Translation and Transcultural Studies of the University of Roehampton:
Monday 31st October 2011, 5.30-6.30 Room QB253

Alex Romeo and Michael Waring (freelance stage surtitlers)
"Live Captioning for the Stage"

Tuesday 1st November 2011, 6-7 pm Brunyate Room

Nadia Rahab (London Metropolitan University)
"Reflecting on Translation Strategies"

More information about the Centre's activities here. 

Call for Papers: Rome in Translation

I thought this looked like a great idea - and personally topical, since I recently attempted to sit through Tinto Brass's Caligula (an attempt only foiled by the DVD which self-destructed in horror). If I were a little nearer Rhode Island I would totally go to this.

CFP: Decline and Fall: Rome in Translation, Translation in Rome
ACLA 2012 Conference, Rhode Island, March 29th to April 1st, 2012
Deadline: November 15, 2011

Papers should be submitted through the ACLA's website (http://acla.org/acla2012/)

Rome was an empire built on translation. She developed a literary tradition through a deliberate Latinization of Greek forms and incorporated art, culture and technology from across her vast empire. Consequently, Rome has often served as a symbol for translation and its dangers, a flashpoint for investigating the perceived perils of incorporating foreign cultures and texts. This seminar seeks to explore the topic of Rome in translation from both ancient and modern perspectives, asking how translation, broadly defined, has contributed to Rome's historical - and retrospective - rise and fall. We welcome papers that explore ancient Roman translation as well as papers that examine how translations have been mobilized to rethink and refashion Roman antiquity since the Roman empire's historical collapse: How did translation contribute to the evolution of Latin literature? How did ancient authors use translation to consolidate - and contest -evolving social and political identities? How was translation used during periods of political crisis or social collapse? On the modern side,
relevant questions might include: How has Rome's collapse been interpreted as a sign of the dangers of translation? How have modern translations been used as a tool for contesting Latin literary canons and creating modern ones? How have modern translators of Latin texts constructed particular images of Rome - or dismantled pre-existing representations? How has Rome been reinterpreted for modern audiences
through literature and other media?

We welcome paper proposals from scholars working in any period or field. Our hope is that the panel will prompt a dynamic interchange among scholars who focus on Roman antiquity and those who study ways in
which Rome has been repurposed or reimagined in later periods.

Organizers: Elizabeth Young (Wellesley College) and Siobhán McElduff (University of British Columbia)

posts in translation

Two job ads which may be of interest to readers:

One is a call for independent language contractors for the European institutions. The competition is for translators as contractual agents into all 23 official EU languages.  Deadline for applications is 29th November.  Candidates should have a BA degree, be native speakers of one official EU language and have a perfect knowledge of two other EU official languages out of which they can translate.  One of these languages has to be among the working languages of the EU institutions, that is English, French or German.  This means that English native speakers should have French or German among their source languages.

 

For more information and how to apply, please see

http://europa.eu/epso/apply/today/contract_en.htm

The second is for a Japanese-speaking translator/reviser with English as mother tongue

Ref.: TRAJAEN-09/2011
Company profile:
euroscript International is a leader in providing customers with global solutions in content lifecycle management. The euroscript divisions deliver comprehensive solutions that help customers design, build and run content management operations of all sizes. Thanks to its employees' expertise in the fields of consulting, system integration, language services as well as content and document management, euroscript is able to help businesses around the world to manage content more efficiently.

With a market presence in over 16 countries, euroscript serves customers in a variety of business sectors including the public sector, aerospace, defense and transport, manufacturing, life sciences, financial services and energy and environment.

euroscript Luxembourg S.à.r.l. is part of euroscript International S.A.

Your role:

As part of the translation team, you will revise and translate documents from Japanese into English.

Your responsibilities:

* Translation/revision, terminology research, and other related activities (set-up of glossaries, style guides, etc);
* Insuring the quality of the translations;
* Act as back-up team leader for the project (liaising between Project Manager and the team of project translators);
* Working with CAT tools on a daily basis.

Your profile:

* Diploma (university degree) or equivalent qualification in the field of translation;
* Excellent knowledge of Japanese is a must, knowledge of other languages are an asset;
* Perfect command of the mother tongue (written and spoken);
* User-level IT literacy (MS Office);
* Good teamwork and communication skills;
* Excellent self-organization skills;
* Experience translating intellectual property texts is a plus

* Willingness to work under pressure in order to meet deadlines.

If you are seeking a new challenge in an international, dynamic and deadline-driven environment, please send your full application, indicating the reference TRAJAEN-09/2011, to careers at euroscript.com.

pro-bono ES-EN translators needed for Kiva

I see from Translation Times that the microlending organisation Kiva is seeking Spanish to English volunteer translators. Working pro-bono for an organisation that you believe in can be a good way of getting worthwhile experience (and I agree with the Jenners that it's better than working for peanut-sized rates).

Registration open for 'Translation and Memory', the eleventh Portsmouth translation conference.

Dear all, 

I am delighted to announce that online registration is now open for our eleventh translation conference:

Translation and Memory

In collaboration with the British Comparative Literature Association

Saturday 5 November 2011

Park Building, University of Portsmouth

Plenary speakers: Professor Bella Brodzki (Sarah Lawrence College, New York)

Dr Siobhan Brownlie (CTIS, University of Manchester)

Dr Ayman El-Desouky (School of Oriental and African Studies)

Memory and translation exist in a set of metaphorical relationships. Translation is how works live on, how they transcend borders and are remembered by subsequent generations. Memory itself can be considered a kind of translation inasmuch as it carries meaning across from one time and place to another. In translation and interpreting, text and speech are disarticulated and reconstituted, re-membered, in a different form. The translator's own memory, and its prosthesis in TM software, are key tools in the task of translation. These and other aspects of translation and memory are the topic of this year's Portsmouth Translation Conference.

The programme, abstracts and online registration link are at www.port.ac.uk/translationconference. Enquiries should be addressed to translation@port.ac.uk. Undergraduate students and teachers at secondary level may attend without charge (supported by the National Network for Translation, a Routes into Languages initiative).

subtitling round-up

Some interesting pieces about subtitling have appeared recently on the www so I thought I'd do a bit of a round-up.

My favourite, (not just because of the kind acknowledgement!), has to be Samuel Bréan's excellently-titled

godard     english     cannes: The Reception of Film Socialisme‘s “Navajo English” Subtitles in Senses of Cinema. Samuel is also a contributor to the ATAA blog, which is well worth reading (in fact I stole the idea of the press round-up from there). 

There's interesting work out there on orality in subtitling. You probably already know Pierre-Alexis Mével's article on subtitling La Haine and Marie-Noëlle Guillot's piece 'Oral et illusion d’oral : indices d’oralité dans les sous-titres de dialogues de film'. See also Claire Ellender's article 'Transporting the Aquarium: Overcoming the Challenges of Subtitling Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank into French'.

So far, so very French-centric, but see also an interesting piece on the audiovisual translation scene in Egypt, a short piece on the work of the subtitling company Anis Ebeid and an amusing piece from an Indian site which explains how 1789 can be the obvious and only translation for 1776 (dammit, more French - but definitely one for the next numbers post!).

On the SDH subtitling side, the Guardian points out that finding a theatrical screening with SDH subtitles isn't always easy (a spirited debate follows in the comments) and the Telegraph complains about the quality of live subtitling on the BBC (typical, grumble, chunter).

Lastly, but not leastly, I was overjoyed over the summer to find that the folks at Orange had released a new 'Don't let a mobile phone ruin your movie' ad: don't let a mobile phone ruin your subtitles...



There's a nice interview here with Sionann O'Neill, the other subtitler of Potiche.

Btw the image is from Umbrellas of Cherbourg. For more charming translation-and-film-related screenshots see this post on Les Piles Intermédiaires.

translation seminars in Edinburgh

Readers in Scotland may be interested in this year's excellent line-up for the joint series of translation seminars run by Heriot Watt University and the University of Edinburgh. The seminars are free and all are welcome.

Seminars on the Translation Profession

Liisa Muinonen, freelance translator

Things can only get better? Working as a freelance translator

Wed., 5 Oct. 2011, 4.00-5.30pm, University of Edinburgh

Jonathan Downie, freelance translator

tbc

Wed., 30 Nov. 2011, 4.00-5.30pm, Heriot-Watt University

Andrea Joyce, Associate Rights Director, Canongate Books

Selling Foreign Rights

Wed., 1 Feb. 2012, 4.00-5.30pm, University of Edinburgh

Annette Schiller, Schiller Translations

The business of translation and interpreting

Wed., 29 Feb 2012, 4.00-5.30pm, Heriot-Watt Universit

Venues, unless indicated otherwise

§  at University of Edinburgh: George Square,07 Psychology Building, Room  F21

map at: http://www.ed.ac.uk/maps/buildings/david-hume-tower

§  at Heriot Watt University: Lecture Theatre 3

map at: http://www.hw.ac.uk/maps/detailed-campus-map.pdf

Research Seminars:

Angela Kershaw, University of Birmingham

Irène Némirovsky and Suite française – Issues of Translation and Reception in Holocaust Literature

Wed., 28 Sept 2011, 4.00-5.30pm, Heriot-Watt University, Lecture Theatre 3

Frederic Chaume, Universitat Jaume I

Dubbing in Europe: Professional Issues and Norms

Wed., 19 Oct. 2011, 4.00-5.30pm, University of Edinburgh

Valerie Henitiuk, University of East Anglia

The Bones of the Stuff: Translation and the Worlding of Literatures

Wed., 16 Nov. 2011, 4.00-5.30pm, Heriot-Watt University, Lecture Theatre 3

Denise Merkle, Université de Moncton

Translation: Compliance, Conversion, Assimilation

Wed., 23 Nov. 2011, 4.00-5.30, University of Edinburgh

Julie Boeri, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Exploring the Sociology of Translation and Interpreting: A Narrative Model of Analysis and a Case Study of Interpreting

Wed., 25 Jan. 2012, 4.00-5.30pm, Heriot-Watt University, Postgraduate Centre G.01

Susan Hunston, University of Birmingham

Phraseology and Evaluative Language: Issues in Corpus Linguistics

Wed., 8 Feb. 2012, 4.00-5.30pm, University of Edinburgh

Yvonne Fowler, Aston University

Interpreting into the Ether: Prison Video Link in the Multilingual Courtroom

Wed., 21 March 2012, 4.00-5.30pm, University of Edinburgh

Adam Kilgarriff, Lexical Computing Ltd.

Corpus Methods and Corpus Tools in Linguistics, Lexicography and Translation

Wed., 28 March 2012, 4.00-5.30pm, Heriot-Watt University, Postgraduate Centre G.01

Venues, unless indicated otherwise

§  at University of Edinburgh: Psychology Building, George Square 07, (F21)

map at: http://www.ed.ac.uk/maps/buildings/psychology-building

§  at Heriot Watt University: Sem 1: Lecture Theatre 3, Sem 2: Postgraduate Centre G.01

map at: http://www.hw.ac.uk/student-life/campus-life/edinburgh/edinburgh-campus-map.htm

Literary translation events in London (9 October, 18 October)

Two events which might interest readers in the vicinity of London:

Firstly, Anthea Bell talks about Translating Asterix for the BD and Comics Passion Festival in London, 9 October. Secondly, a free event:

British Comparative Literature Association Graduate Welcome Reception 2011/12

Date: Tuesday, Oct 18, 2011

Location: Senate House (University of London), Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU, Room G35

Starting time: 5.30 p.m.

To celebrate the beginning of a new academic year, we would like to invite all postgraduate students and other enthusiasts of translation and comparative literature to our BCLA Graduate Welcome Reception.

Please join us for a welcoming address by Professor Duncan Large and short papers by three young researchers in the field, to be followed by a glass of wine. The programme includes the following talks:

-         Prof. Duncan Large (Swansea): ‘Translation Studies vs. Comparative Literature?’

-         Geraldine Brodie (UCL): ‘Translating for performance: the power of images for (in)visible stage translations’

-         Rashi Rohatgi  (SOAS): ‘Hindi Translation in Multilingual Mauritius: Amargeet and Beyond’

-         Dr Patricia Novillo-Corvolan (Kent): ‘“Infinitely Richer”: Jorge Luis Borges, Translator of Ulysses’

 

The event, hosted jointly by the British Comparative Literature Association and the Reception of British and Irish Authors in Europe research project, is free and open to all. If you have any queries, please contact Dorota Goluch at d.goluch.09@ucl.ac.uk.

                                  

Workshop: Interrogation in War and Conflict, Reading, 29 November 2011

This looks very very interesting: may be of particular interest to MA students planning to take the Translating History unit next year.

INTERROGATION IN WAR AND CONFLICT: BETWEEN LIBERTY, SECURITY AND JUSTICE
A Workshop supported by the Leverhulme Major Research Programme 'The Liberal Way of War'

Professor Hilary Footitt and Dr Simona Tobia, will be holding a one-day workshop on Tuesday, 29
November 2011, at the University of Reading. The event is free but registration is obligatory. There is more information here.

Programme:

09.00 - Coffee
09.15 – Welcome – Alan Cromartie
09.30 – 11.10 Military interrogation: the questioning of enemies
Chair: Heather Jones, LSE
• Keynote: David Burrill, Former Deputy Director Intelligence Corps, and Chief of Staff
Intelligence and Security Centre of the UK Armed Forces.
‘British and American Military Interrogation from 1939 to 1983 - Lessons at Risk’
• Franziska Heimburger, EHESS, Paris
‘Carrot or stick - French interpreters treading a fine line in obtaining information from German prisoners of war during the First World War’
• Huw Bennett, King’s College
‘British interrogations during the Mau Mau Emergency, 1952-56’
11.10 – 11.30 Coffee break
11.30 – 13.00 Forensic interrogation and international justice
Chair: Nigel Rodley, Univeristy of Essex
• Alice Zago, Office of the Prosecutor, International Criminal Court
‘Modalities of Questioning Witnesses and Victims at the International Criminal Court’
• Louise Askew, University of Nottingham
‘A perceived neutrality: an English woman's experience of interpreting during suspect interviews at the ICTY’
• Matt Pollard, University of Essex
‘Coercive interrogation in the jurisprudence of international criminal tribunals’
13.00 – 14.00 Lunch break
14.00 – 16.10 ‘HumInt’: interrogation, intelligence and security
Chair: Philip Murphy, Institute of Commonwealth Studies
• Keynote: Christopher Andrew, Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge
‘Interrogating spies and debriefing defectors. Some conclusions based on my research as official historian of MI5 and unofficial historian of the KGB’
• Simona Tobia, University of Reading
‘The British way to Humint in the Second World War: the case of CSDIC’
• Tomas Bouska, Charles University Prague, Political Prisoners Project
‘Czechoslovak Show Trials. Interrogation of former Political Prisoners between 1948-1953’.
• Kristyna Buskova, University of Nottingham, Political Prisoners Project
‘Life-long psychological consequences of Stalinist interrogation for the Czechoslovak ex-political prisoners from the 1950s’