Tuesday, 10 May 2011

CFP: Conference on non-professional interpreting and translation, Italy, May 2012

This looks like a good conference, on a very interesting topic which is dear to all our hearts... :)

The First International Conference on Non-Professional Interpreting and Translation
17-19 May 2012 Forlì

The Advanced School of Modern Languages for Interpreters and Translators (SSLMIT) and the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies in Translation, Languages and Cultures (SITLeC) of the University of Bologna at Forlì present the First International Conference Logo - npit1 {2012} on Non-professional Interpreting and Translation. The aim of this conference is to provide a forum for discussion in a relatively recent and often neglected field of language and cultural mediation. The conference will take place from 17th to 19th May 2012, in the city of Forlì, Italy.

More information available here.

Monday, 9 May 2011

ITI Wessex Trados workshop at Portsmouth, Friday 10 June 2011

Dear all,

Our friends at ITI Wessex are organising another one-day Trados workshop on Friday 10 June. Details are below. There is a discounted rate for students. Please note that the deadline for deposits is 20 May. Registration is by email to Wendy Rees at wendy at intoenglish.net. Further enquiries to Wendy on 023 8074 0770 or Katie Santos on 07748093770. 

Event:                    ITI Wessex Trados Workshop

Venue:                  University of Portsmouth, Park Building, PO1 2DZ

Date & Time:       Friday 10 June 2011, 1000-1700

Course trainer:    Mrs Daniela Ford (MITI), official Trados trainer

Lunch:                   Please bring your own packed lunch.

Programme:
10 to 11am:            Introduction (presentations and workshop summary).
11 to 1pm:              Theory (discussion points, Q&A) and practice.
1 to 2pm:                Lunch break & networking.
2 to 5pm:                Hands-on workshop 

Cost:                     £40 per person. Student rate: £30.

Payment:             A deposit of £20 must be deposited in the ITI Wessex bank account by 20 May. Please note that this deposit is non-refundable except in the event of cancellation of the workshop. Details can be obtained from Wendy or Katie.

Certificates of attendance will be handed out. ITI members should bring their ITI CPD record booklets.

Sunday, 8 May 2011

Poems about translation 8: Twm Morys, 'To My Translator'

Les Murray is a very difficult act to follow, so it's been an (a)eon since we had a Poem About Translation. But lo, here is the Welsh poet Twm Morys with a series of poems, all of them presented as being in some way concerned with translation. First is Morys' poem 'CV' in Welsh, French and two different English versions. Then follows a number of poems with literal and more 'polished' English translations, and notes by Morys.

'To my Translator' is the one which caught my eye. In his notes, Morys says of the poem that:
This is a poem about a poem about to be translated! By the time it lands on the translator’s desk, it will have been prepared already for the operation by being put into English. The poem in English is like a note for the surgeon attached to the (dead) body. But in the original language, this hasn’t happened yet, of course! The poem in Welsh tells us what the surgeon will do to it, after it’s been “prepared.”
So it's a poem about translation which is first presented in a literal translation, in order that it can be translated by some eager-beaver non-Welsh-speaker, and then actually translated. (I think). The prickly literal translation, which I hope Mr Morys will not mind us reproducing in full, reminds us by its strangeness how much interpretation and rewriting takes place between the poem and its translation. Is it just me, or does it also act as a mischievous reminder to those of us who don't read Welsh that we have to take it on trust that this is actually a translation at all...?
To the One Who is in My Translating

By to him my receiving,
my brain and my insides
after going, without blood (any) more,
without breath, in ice,
this one will-be-able, like a surgeon,
to my opening without nausea.
And without mess, transplant,
put himself into the hole black.
After doing (of) the needlework,
Not you-will-see trace (of) his hand, either.
May-put the doctor then
On me the name which he-wishes.
Click here to read Morys' more fluent English translation, and wonder. Click here for another piece by Morys on Welsh prosody (but be warned that it may make your head chime).

For more information on the EmLit project, of which these translations were part, click here.


(Btw the workshops run by the Poetry Translation Centre at SOAS also work by means of literal translations into English. Their excellent site has lots of poems in the original, juxtaposed with the working literal and the polished 'final' draft, for your reading enjoyment.)

Translation Live event, London, 19 June 2011

Just heard about a forthcoming Live Translation event, organised by the London Review Bookshop, with two translators talking about 'competing' translations of the same work. Sounds like fun!

Live Translation: Shaun Whiteside, Mike Mitchell, Daniel Kehlmann and Daniel Hahn
Sunday 19 June at 11.00 a.m.
Venue: Stevenson Room, British Museum

This event is about cracking open the process of translation and taking a look at its inner workings. Two translators – Shaun Whiteside and Mike Mitchell – go head to head with their versions of a previously untranslated work; with the help of the author and chair, the variations and nuances of the text, in both languages, are brought to light. Novelist Daniel Kehlmann will be providing the challenge, and our chair is Daniel Hahn, interim director of the BCLT and chair of the Translators Association. Shaun Whiteside’s translations from German include works by Bernhard Schlink, Freud, Schnitzler and Musil. Mike Mitchell’s translations include works by Goethe, Adolf Loos, and Oskar Kokoschka. Both translators’ work has won the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for German translation.

Thursday, 5 May 2011

guest lecture at Portsmouth on corpus linguistics

UPDATE: Unfortunately this lecture will not now take place; we will be rescheduling for later in the year.

The Language Across Borders research cluster of the Centre for European and International Studies Research at the University of Portsmouth is delighted to announce a guest lecture by Dr Ramesh Krishnamurthy of Aston University. Dr Krishnamurthy has twenty years of experience as a corpus linguist and lexicographer. He will be speaking on the topic

'Accessing All Areas: corpus analysis methods in interdisciplinary applications'

Venue: Park 2.09
Date/time: 5pm-6.30 pm, Thursday 12 May 2011

Abstract: Every human activity and every academic discipline generates texts. Applying corpus analysis methods to these texts can often generate new insights into the underlying themes and threads in various fields, and discover aspects that are often missed by qualitative approaches. This talk will describe and discuss a wide range of applications in pedagogy, translation, literature, forensics, sociology, politics, computer science and the natural sciences.

The talk is open to all and will be accompanied by drinks. MA and research students are warmly invited.

Wednesday, 4 May 2011

CALL FOR PAPERS: Translation and Memory (11th Portsmouth Translation Conference)


We are delighted to announce the call for papers for this year's conference. It will be a workshop conference in collaboration with the British Comparative Literature Association. 


'Translation and Memory' 
Saturday 5 November 2011

 
Date: Saturday 5 November
Venue: Park Building, University of Portsmouth. 
Keynote speakers:

Professor Bella Brodzki (Sarah Lawrence College, New York)
Dr Siobhan Brownlie (Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies, University of Manchester)
Dr Ayman El-Desouky (School of Oriental and African Studies)

There are many points of contact between memory and translation. They 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 form of translation, a form of carrying across of meaning from one time and place to another. The movement of written and spoken texts across cultures, and the agents who make that possible, have a major role to play in cultural contact and renewal. Translation is fundamental to how we remember and represent the past. In translation and interpreting, text and speech are disarticulated and reconstituted, re-membered, in a different form. The translator's own memory is a key tool in the task of translating or interpreting. For the past decade or more, professional translators have been increasingly under pressure to engage with Translation Memory (TM) tools such as Trados, Déjà Vu or MemoQ, a relocation of the translator's memory with major implications for professional practice and the future of the industry.

The British Comparative Literature Association and the University of Portsmouth are delighted to announce the collaborative conference 'Translation and Memory'. We invite contributions on any aspect of the conference theme. It is our hope that, as in previous years, the conference will bring together scholars and translators in a mutually enriching dialogue. Topics might include, but are by no means limited to:

·         Translation and cultural memory; translation as remembering
·         Translating the past; translation history
·         Translated selves: exile and memory
·         Translating biography and memoir
·         Translation, trauma and memorial
·         Translators' lives and stories
·         Memorable and forgotten translations
·         Translation and forgetting
·         Translation memory tools
·         Translation memory, copyright and ownership
·         Memory in consecutive interpreting
·         Memory in translator and interpreter training

We welcome a broad range of disciplines, including Translation Studies, comparative literature, cultural studies, film and media studies and history, and approaches to translation. Presentations may have a theoretical, empirical, critical, pedagogical, technological or professional focus. Proposals for practical workshops are warmly welcomed, e.g. for instance, workshops on translating memoir and autobiography; interpreting exercises; TM software workshops.

Enquiries and/or abstracts of 300 words should be sent to Dr Margaret Clarke at margaret.clarke at port.ac.uk by 30 June 2011. A refereed publication will follow the conference. For more information and a downloadable copy of the CFP, click here.