PhD studentship at Bangor University

Applications are invited by the Graduate School of Arts and Humanities at Bangor University for an AHRC PhD Studentship in Translation Studies beginning on 1st October 2012. 

We welcome applications for research on any aspect of Intercultural Studies and Translation (preferably with the language combination of English and Chinese; other possibilities may combine English or Welsh with Spanish, German, French or Italian) or a practice-led PhD in Translation Studies (preferably with the language combination of English and Chinese; other combinations as above). Applications for research projects on any aspect of translation in Wales, preferably from a cultural perspective, will also be welcome.

More information at http://www.bangor.ac.uk/cah/translation_scholarship.php.en 

British Centre for Literary Translation Summer School

Hi all,

A quick reminder about this - I have very happy memories of this summer school and it should be a brilliant experience for peeps (and indeed now tweeps!) with an interest in literary translation:


Call for participants: British Centre for Literary Translation Summer School
University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom
22-27 July 2012

The British Centre for Literary Translation Summer School, now in its 12th year, runs July 22-27 in Norwich (UK). This is a fabulous opportunity to work with not only leading translators, but also the best in contemporary writers from around the world. This year we are offering workshops translating into English from  Dutch, French, German, Japanese, Norwegian and Spanish.

Writers in residence: Daniel Gascón , Nino Haratischwili, Furukawa Hideo,  Martin Page, Gustaaf Peek, Kjersti Skomsvold

Workshop  leaders:   David Colmer,  Kari Dickson, Katy Derbyshire, Michael Emmerich, Adriana Hunter, Anne McLean

In each workshop, participants work with a writer-in-residence under the guidance of a workshop leader, who is an experienced literary translator. There will also be opportunities to meet editors and other guests from the publishing sector. Sessions run from 9.00 - 4.30pm each  day and are followed by plenary events and panel discussions, including the presentation of the 2012 John Dryden Translation Prizes. At the end of the week everyone comes together to present their work.

You can read more about the programme at  http://www.bclt.org.uk/index.php/summer_school/.  The closing date for applications for the Summer School is 8 May.  To apply, download the application form from http://www.bclt.org.uk/index.php/summer_school/registration/ and email it to us together with a copy of your CV.

For more information, please contact Valerie Henitiuk at V.Henitiuk at uea.ac.uk.

Valerie Henitiuk (Dr.), Director, British Centre for Literary Translation, Senior Lecturer, School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, Tel.: (44) (0)1603 592739, www.bclt.org.uk

Reminder CFP: Translating Multimodalities (special issue of Journal of Specialised Translation)

A reminder for anyone considering a submission to issue 20 of the Journal of Specialised Translation, a special issue on translating multimodality. 

"Image, Music, Text…?" Translating Multimodalities

Issue n° 20 January 2013

Edited by Margaret Clarke, Caterina Jeffcote and Carol O’Sullivan

JoSTrans is an electronic, peer-reviewed journal bringing non-literary translation issues to the fore. Published bi-annually, it includes articles, reviews and streamed interviews by translation scholars and professionals.

The Journal of Specialised Translation will publish a special issue on translation and multimodality in 2013. Translation is usually thought of as being about the printed word, but in today’s multimodal environment translators must take account of other signifying elements too. Words may interact with still and moving images, diagrams, music, typography or page layout. Multimodal meaning-making is deployed for promotional, political, expressive and informative purposes which must be understood and accounted for by technical translators, literary translators, copywriters, subtitlers, localisers and other language professionals.

Contributions are invited on any aspect of the area. Suggested topics might relate to, but are not limited to:

•        Image and text: advertising, visual communication
•        Technical writing, diagrams, layout and document design
•        Illustration, bindings, typography and paratexts
•        Comics, cartoons, graphic novels, intersemiotic translation
•        Song, opera and music in translation
•        (Poly)semiotic interferences and intertextualities
•        Written to be spoken; the audiomedial text
•        Performance, staging, movement; sign language interpreting
•        Subtitling, dubbing, surtitling, mise-en-scène, audiodescription, game localisation
•        Paralinguistic issues and non-verbal communication
•        Multimodal spaces: museums, tourist sites, the World Wide Web

We welcome a broad range of approaches to translation, including presentations with an empirical, critical, pedagogical, technological or professional focus.

We welcome contributions of full length papers and shorter, more practical pieces for the Translator's Corner section of the Journal.

The editors of this special issue are Margaret Clarke, Caterina Jeffcote and Carol O'Sullivan

All contributions, articles (up to 7000 words), reviews (500-800 words), and shorter pieces are to be sent to margaret.clarke at port.ac.uk by 1 April 2012.

The journal style sheet can be downloaded from http://www.jostrans.org/style.php

Image credit: Thanks to Randall Munroe for the citation from his cartoon 'The Voynich Manuscript' at http://xkcd.com/593/

PhD project studentship: Reading/Contexualising/Translating Herta Müller

The Graduate Centre for Arts and Humanities at Swansea University is pleased to announce a fully-funded studentship on Reading / Contextualising / Translating Herta Müller.

The research project, led by Dr Brigid Haines of Swansea University’s Centre for Contemporary German Culture, centres on the work of the 2009 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Herta Müller, who was Writer-in-Residence in Swansea in 1996. An ethnic German from Romania who migrated to Germany in 1987 as a result of political persecution, Müller is a major European writer whose unique vision of the world and distinctive style have brought forth comparisons with W. G. Sebald and Franz Kafka. Her novels, such as Traveling on one Leg (1989), The Land of Green Plums (1994) and The Hunger Angel (2009), written in German and thematising, often from an autobiographical base, the terrifying experience of dictatorship in Ceausescu’s Romania, are currently being translated into many languages worldwide and finding new readerships, particularly in the far East. Müller’s works, it seems, exceed national boundaries and defy classification. They speak to a global audience attuned to political oppression and its lasting effects. They treat the key contemporary themes of trauma, migration, exile, and memory. In the aftermath of the Arab Spring and in the light of ongoing abuses of human rights in such places as North Korea and China, in defense of whose dissidents Müller is vocal, her works have never been more relevant or this project more timely.

The PhD candidate will investigate one of the following areas:

• the global translation of Müller’s works; 
• Müller’s representation of twentieth and twenty first century Romanian, German and European history; 
• the linguistic and literary origins of her style; 
• gender politics in Müller’s works; 
• Müller’s worldwide reputation in comparison to other Nobel Prize-winning authors. 

The methodology or combination of methodologies employed may include archival, text-based, theoretical, linguistic, and computer-assisted research. There may also be some teaching opportunities in the Department.

For further details see:

http://www.swansea.ac.uk/riah/graduate-centre/fully-funded-studentships-2012-13/hertamuller/

Closing date for applications is 30 April 2012. Informal enquries to Brigid Haines at b.haines at swan.ac.uk

Reminder: EST Book Purchase grant deadline is 31 March 2012

Just a quick reminder that the deadline for the European Society for Translation Studies Book Purchase Grant is 31 March. The Book Purchase Grant of c.1000 euro is awarded annually to enable an academic institution to buy Translation Studies publications with a view to building capacity in the discipline. Open to all Universities, faculties, departments and research groups with at least one EST member on the staff.

For more details see the EST website.

Funding for postgraduate translation study and research, Leicester

Forwarded kindly by a colleague, and may be of interest to readers of this blog:


Postgraduate scholarships/ fee waivers for PhDs and MAs in Translation and MA in Film and Film Cultures (for entry October 2012) at the University of Leicester.

The DEADLINE for applications is 31 March 2012.

http://www2.le.ac.uk/study/research/funding/modern-languages

http://www2.le.ac.uk/study/research/funding/translation-studies

http://www2.le.ac.uk/study/research/funding/film