CFP: 'Transnational Modern Languages' conference, London, 2-3 December 2016

Interesting conference coming up:

TRANSNATIONAL MODERN LANGUAGES

The Italian Cultural Institute, 39 Belgrave Square, London, SW1X 8NX
Friday 2 and Saturday 3 December 2016

Teaching and research in Modern Languages are conventionally structured in ways which appear to insist on national or linguistic specificity. Work on the transnational inevitably poses questions on the nature of the underlying framework of Modern Languages: whether the discipline should be construed and practised as the inquiry into separate national traditions or as the study of cultures and their interactions. These structures seem inadequate at a time when the study of cultures delimited by the concept of the nation/national identities is becoming more difficult to justify in a world increasingly defined by the transnational and translingual, and by the material and non-material pressures of globalization. Challenging the assumption that cultures are self-contained units that correspond to sharply defined national boundaries must become an essential part of all disciplinary fields and sub-fields that make up Modern Languages, as they seek to avoid the risk of methodological nationalism and of participating in the very structures that it is their purpose to critique. At the same time, how might the transnational acknowledge the residual pull of the nation as a potent, albeit porous, container of cultural identity, and broker of citizenship?

A great deal of research within Modern Languages is already, albeit often implicitly, concerned with the transnational dimension of culture. In so doing, it poses questions about language, translation and multi-lingualism; about the set of practices that make up a sense of location and of belonging to a geographically determined site; about the notions of temporality that obtain within cultures; about modes of understanding subjectivity and alterity. All these questions are of fundamental importance for the study not only of the contemporary world, and its likely future, but for the study of the past.

The aim of the conference is to explore how the ‘cultural’ and the ‘transcultural’ cannot be studied in isolation but rather need to be seen as part of a complex system of circulation which goes beyond national boundaries, canons or linguistic discreteness. The conference aims to bring together researchers who are working on the transnational across Modern Languages and whose work poses questions both on how we study culture and how we produce a version of Modern Languages that is fully respondent to practices of human mobility and cultural exchange.


250 word abstracts should be submitted by 30 April 2016 to Georgia Wall at: G.Wall at warwick.ac.uk

Abstracts should follow this order:
author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d) title of abstract, e) body of abstract, f) bibliography

Please specify in the subject of your email: 'Transnational Modern Languages’.

We will acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in two weeks, you should assume we did not receive your proposal.

Congratulations to Juliette Scott!

Warmest and heartiest congratulations to PhD student Juliette Scott, who passed her PhD viva today with flying colours.  Her thesis is entitled

Optimising the Performance of Outsourced Legal Translation

Brava !!!!

'Cinema and Media Studies in Translation' Call for Proposals **deadline extended to 3 April 2016**

Cinema and Media Studies in Translation
Call for Proposals 2016 (**DEADLINE NOW EXTENDED**)

With courses on World Cinema (generally understood as the films and film industries of non-English speaking countries) and Global Media increasingly included in the curricula of Film and Media Studies departments, there is a need for English-speaking students and scholars to recognize the vast body of critical work published on film and media productions outside the Anglophone world. Many of those texts are written by nationals working in their language, which provide a depth of cultural knowledge and insight impossible to replicate by scholars based in a different culture, and/or who do not speak the language concerned. It is also the case that some of the best theoretical work and critical analyses of film and media are written in languages other than English; it is important that they be made accessible to Anglophone readers.

With these factors in mind, the Translation/Publication Committee of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies invites proposals for the translation of outstanding scholarly texts in languages other than English, for publication in Cinema Journal. Journal articles, book chapters, or self-contained sections of a book that focus on a particular topic in a unified, coherent way can all be appropriate for this purpose.

Proposals should include:

1. The author, title, and publication details of the work being proposed (including the place, press, and date of publication).
2. A statement identifying the significance of the work, and why it might be interesting to film and media scholars and students, SCMS members in particular.
3. A clarification of the copyright status of the original source material.
4. An indication of likely word length.
5. The name and credentials of a prospective translator.

Proposals are welcome for a work published in any language other than English. One grant-in-aid of $1,000 will be paid to the translator. The scholar leading the project should provide an introduction that lays out the importance of the author and the text. The total word count of the introduction and translated text should be between 8,000 and 10,000 words in English. In some cases, shorter projects of 5,000 words (text and translation) will be considered (in which case the grant-in-aid will be adjusted accordingly). Self-nominations will not be accepted.

The due date for the proposals has been extended to April 3, 2016.

The due date for the final submission has been extended to August 14, 2016 (for a 2018 publication date). Subsequent rounds will be announced later in the year.

The proposals should be sent to Nataša Ďurovičová, natasa-durovicova [at] uiowa.edu.

Translation/Publication Committee 2015-6:

Nataša Ďurovičová (University of Iowa), Chair 2015-6
Chris Baumann (Stockholms Universitet)
Robert von Dassanowsky (University of Colorado)
Alistair Fox (University of Otago)
Mattias Frey (University of Kent)

Poems in translation 25: Alastair Reid, 'What Gets Lost/Lo Que Se Pierde'

I was recently reading Edith Grossman's book Why Translation Matters and came across this lovely candidate for our occasional series of poems about translation.

Alastair Reid, translator of Borges and Neruda, on 'what gets lost in language itself'. From his 1978 collection Weathering, presented here through the good offices of Google Books:

Upcoming translation lectures, Bristol

We've got several very interesting speakers on translation coming up at Bristol, details below. All welcome, no charge.

**Please note that for anyone who doesn't have the door code, the entrance to the Arts Complex is via 3-5 Woodland Road.**


'Prismatic Translation'

Professor Matthew Reynolds
St. Anne's College, Oxford

Tuesday 1 March 2016, 5.15pm
LR1 (Lecture Room 1)
Arts Complex, 3-5 Woodland Road


What happens when you see translation as prismatic – i.e. when you stop looking for the best version in the given circumstances, and instead revel in translation’s power to produce multiple variants? This talk will look at various manifestations of prismatic translation: through history, across languages, in dialogue, and as a creative practice (most of the examples will be literary and in English, or rather Englishes). It will ask how far our thinking about translations, and our ways of reading them, might need to shift if we adopt a prismatic view.

Matthew Reynolds teaches at Oxford where he chairs the interdisciplinary research programme Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation (OCCT). Recent publications include The Poetry of Translation: From Chaucer & Petrarch to Homer & Logue (2011), Likenesses: Translation, Illustration, Interpretation (2013) and the novel The World Was All Before Them (2013). He has just finished writing Translation: A Very Short Introduction for OUP.

For further information, please contact Rebecca Gould (r.gould at bristol.ac.uk)



'French Atlantic Cities in Translation'

Professor Bill Marshall
University of Stirling

Tuesday 8 March 2016, 5.15pm,
LT3 (Lecture Theatre 3)
Arts Complex, 17 Woodland Rd (entrance via 3-5 Woodland Road if you don't have the door code)

This lecture takes off from Professor Marshall’s earlier work on the French Atlantic and combines this with insights by Montreal scholar Sherry Simon on 'cities in translation'. Taking the cases of nineteenth-century New Orleans and Montevideo, it will track the specific workings of translation that shed light on both the particularity of those sites and also on those aspects of transoceanic exchange and transformation which, in these urban contexts, invent new forms and question old orthodoxies. The lecture will include discussion of Sidonie de la Houssaye, Victor Séjour, Lautréamont, Julia Kristeva and Jacques Rancière.

All welcome.

For further information, please contact Martin Hurcombe (M.J.Hurcombe at bristol.ac.uk)

**Watch this space**:  more lectures coming up, inc.

**Now updated with latest event!**

'Presenting Mr Magarshack: The Story of a Russian Agent and his Classic Collection of Penguins'
 
Cathy McAteer

Thursday 17 March 2016, LR8, 21 Woodland Road, BS8 1TE (entrance via 3-5 Woodland Road except if you have the door code)

This paper will focus on Penguin's re-launch in the 1950s of classic Russian literature in English translation, with special attention given to David Magarshack, best known as Penguin's first translator of Dostoevskii, but also (unbeknownstto many) a journalist, novelist, translator, and translation theorist.

Enquiries to Ruth.Coates [at] bristol.ac.uk

'Translating Wordplay' conference, Lille, 23-24 March 2017

This looks like a really nice conference:

Call for papers:  International conference

Du jeu dans la langue. Traduire les jeux de mots / 
Loose in Translation: Translating Wordplay

23-24 March 2017
Université de Lille, France

https://www.univ-lille3.fr/recherche/actualites/agenda-de-la-recherche/?type=1&id=1271

The English version of the call is below. 

Selon la distinction établie par Bergson, le jeu de mots, en tant que comique créé par le langage, est réputé intraduisible, contrairement à celui qui est exprimé par le langage – une impossibilité qui résiste mal au fait que les traducteurs triomphent des jeux de mots au quotidien, car, composante universelle, l’humour peut toujours être traduit à l’aide d’équivalents. On pense immédiatement aux jeux sur et avec les mots (anagrammes, antanaclases, calembours, contrepèteries, paronomases…) ainsi qu’aux jeux sur le langage (création linguistique à visée humoristique : mots-valises, détournement parodique) sans oublier les jeux de mots involontaires créés par les accidents de langue.
S’il peut être tentant, et même utile, de dresser une telle typologie des jeux de mots, l’humour se moque bien des conventions, règles (qu’elles soient morales ou de grammaire), et sollicite la créativité du traducteur. Face à la polysémie du jeu de mots, le traducteur connaît parfois le rare bonheur de rencontrer une symétrie entre les langues mais, le plus souvent, l’un des sèmes originaux doit être abandonné, et lorsqu’il n’y a plus de lien polysémique, l’on est davantage dans la recréation que dans la traduction. 
Mais traduction du jeu ne saurait rimer avec liberté inconditionnée et inconditionnelle. En effet, c’est l’existence de limites qui permet la définition d’un espace de jeu et par là-même, l’activité ludique. Loin de restreindre le jeu, les règles servent de tremplin à la création au sein des limites dessinées. La traduction des jeux de langue interroge la traduction dans son ensemble tant elle signale l’existence d’un jeu dans la langue : la langue a du jeu car elle manque de stabilité et il faut donc laisser du jeu dans la mécanique du texte traduit.
Ce colloque aimerait aussi susciter une prise en compte de la dimension culturelle de l’humour et du jeu de mots. En effet, l’humour va s’imposer de façon différente selon les situations en fonction des cultures. Dès lors, le défi est double, il faut négocier le jeu de mots dans sa technicité mais également dans un contexte global.

Ce colloque interdisciplinaire invite des communications sur le jeu de mots dans toutes les langues, depuis ou vers le français et l’anglais, dans les domaines littéraire ou pragmatique : discours politique, publicitaire, audio-visuel tenant compte des supports choisis, des publics visés et des contraintes éditoriales. Les langues du colloque seront l’anglais et le français. Les frais d’inscription, comprenant pauses et repas, sont de 100 euros (50 euros pour les doctorants). Votre proposition de communication de 300 mots maximum, accompagnée d’une courte biographie, est à envoyer à traduirejdm at univ-lille3.fr jusqu’au 15 février 2016. 

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International conference
Loose in Translation: Translating Wordplay.
23-24 March 2017
University of Lille, France

According to Bergson’s definition, wordplay (the comic created by language) is untranslatable, as opposed to the comic expressed by language. This impossibility is nevertheless overcome one way or another as translators find solutions every day: humour, a universal component, can always be translated thanks to equivalence. What immediately comes to mind is play on and with words (anagrams, antanaclasis, puns, spoonerism, paronomasia…), as well as linguistic play (linguistic creations meant to be humorous: portmanteau words, parody) and linguistic accidents resulting in involuntary wordplay.

If establishing such a typology of wordplay can be tempting, and even useful, humour does not respect convention or rules (be they moral or grammatical), and it calls upon the translator’s creativity. When dealing with the polysemy of wordplay, translators sometimes find a favourable symmetrical solution between languages, but more often than not, one of the original semes must be dropped – when a polysemic link no longer exists, translation becomes more a matter of recreation.

However, translating wordplay does not mean unconditional and unrestricted freedom. Limits define the playground of translation and, therefore, make playing actually possible. Far from restraining play, rules foster creativity within these fixed delimitations. Translating play-on-words questions the translation process in general as it shows there is a lot of give and take in language itself: language has a lot of play because it is inherently unstable, and it is thus necessary to keep some leeway within the mechanics of the translated text.

This conference encourages participants to take into account the cultural dimension of humour and wordplay. Humour will occur differently  depending on context and culture. Translators therefore face a twofold challenge, as they need to negotiate the technical nature of wordplay without losing sight of a global framework.

For this interdisciplinary conference, we invite papers on translating wordplay in all languages, from or into French and English, in the literary and pragmatic fields: political, advertising, audiovisual discourses, taking into account the chosen corpus, the targeted audiences and editorial constraints. The conference languages will be English and French. The inscription fee, which includes breaks and lunches, is 100 euros per person (50 euros for PhD students).

Please send your proposal (300 words max) and short CV to traduirejdm at univ-lille3.fr by 15 February 2016.

For questions, please contact Julie Charles at julie.charles at univ-lille3.fr