This looks an interesting event, for readers within hollering distance of London: 

‘Affective Translations’
A CCWW Cross-Cultural Seminar
Saturday 10 May 2014, 2-4 pm, room G21a, Senate House, University of London

Organiser/Chair: Michela Baldo (CCWW/IMLR)

Round-table participants:
Aoi Matsushima (Translator/Writer, Japanese-English)
Sian Reynolds (French Scholar/Translator, French-English)
Isabel del Rio (Bilingual Writer/Linguist, Spanish-English)
Cristina Viti (Translator, English-Italian)

The aim of this translation seminar is to investigate the role of affect in translation, looking at how translating affects translators in the same way that translators affect translations. In the last 15 years, Translation Studies as a discipline has witnessed an increased interest in the agency of translators, from Venuti’s (1995; 1998) advocacy of the visibility of translators in the late '90s to the more recent sociological turn in the discipline which sees translators as ethical actors. However, more research needs to be carried out on the role of affect in translation. Translator and scholar Carole Maier (2002; 2006) identifies the visceral effect that translation might exert on translators and how translation can affect the translator’s body as a disease, a contamination that the translator is not immune to.

On the other hand the analysis of affect has recently emerged in a number of other disciplines. According to Latour (2004) to have a body is to learn to be affected, to be put into motion by other entities, human and non-human, to shift one’s affect into action. Affect arises in the in-betweeness, in the relationships between bodies and objects. Given these points, this seminar aims at understanding how translators are emotionally affected by their translations (and their translation tools) and capable of affecting others, of creating networks of affection.

The format of the seminar will be a round-table discussion, comprising female translators/authors living in the UK, who will introduce their work and answer questions on the above issues. For further info, see here.

All welcome. If you plan to attend, please advise gill.rye at sas.ac.uk

Professor Emerita Gill Rye,
Director, Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women’s Writing,
Institute of Modern Languages Research,
School of Advanced Study,
University of London,
Senate House,
Malet Street,
London WC1E 7HU,
U.K.