Deadline: 13 March 2013
Bearing Across: Translating
Literary Narratives of Migration is an international conference
organised by the Centre for Literary Translation at the Erasmus
University College of Brussels in cooperation with the Centre for
Literature, Intermediality, and Culture at the Free University of
Brussels (VUB).
Bringing together scholars from
different disciplines such as cultural studies, translation studies,
area studies, comparative literature, and anthropology, this conference
aims at providing a new understanding of migration as a theoretical
concept, analytical category, and lived experience in the study of the
translation of migration literature, be it by the authors themselves, or
by professional translators.
Through issues such as
dwelling and displacement, monolingualism and multilingualism,
transnationalism and national identity, this conference seeks to
investigate how the translation of narratives of migration – e.g. in
German-Turkish, Dutch-Moroccan, French-Algerian, British-Indian
literature – engages with and shapes the ongoing redefinition of
cultural identities.
In Imaginary Homelands, Salman
Rushdie describes the relationship between migration and translation as
follows: “The word ‘translation’ comes, etymologically, from Latin for
‘bearing across’. Having been borne across the world, we are translated
men.” (Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism
1981-1991. London: Penguin, 1992. 17) The condition of the modern
subject as a ‘translated man’ indeed seems to be that of geographical
and linguistic border-crossing, between the local and the global.
Translation can thus be regarded as a sequence of language practices and
an existential situation of migrants dealing with dislocation.
Accordingly, this conference focuses, on the one hand, on translation of
literary narratives of migration as intralingual transaction – as
cultural translation – that reformulates and reassesses cultural
specificities in a new and often alienating way and, on the other hand,
as interlingual transaction that applies processes of mediation to
issues of agency and communication (cf. Doris Bachmann-Medick).
Therefore, this conference focuses basically on two strands: 1.
literature by migrant authors, either written in their own language, but
‘translating’ their unfamiliar surroundings, or written in the language
predominant in their ‘unfamiliar surroundings’; and 2. literature,
written by migrant authors, translated into the language of their actual
place of residence or into any other language.
Submissions for 20-minute papers may include, but are not restricted to:
- Theoretical approaches to the concept of ‘migration’ in translation
- Political commitment and translating migration literature
- Transmission of identity and belonging in translation
- Translation of linguistic hybridity (creolisation, multilingualism, ungrammaticality)
- Self-translation and the question of migrant authors writing in adopted languages
- Significance of the literary translator in the reception of
migration literature and the emergence of (alternative) literary canons
- Relationship between translator’s poetics and author’s poetics
- Translation as aesthetic and ideological adaptation
Registration: 250 word abstracts and a 150 word bio should be
submitted by 13 March, 2013 to Arvi Sepp and Philippe Humblé. For
further information, please contact Gys-Walt Van Egdom. Graduate
students are also welcome to submit their proposals and participate in
the conference.
Please note there will be a conference fee of 60 Euro.
The
language of the conference is English, but we encourage the use and
visibility of other languages in multilingual handouts, slides, etc.
A publication of the proceedings with selected contributions in a refereed volume is planned.
CONTACT INFORMATION:
For queries:Gys-Walt.Van.Egdom@vub.ac.be
For submissions: arvisepp@vub.ac.be philippe.humble@vub.ac.be
Website:
http://www.erasmushogeschool.be
