HomeThe Translator Unveiled: Cartography of a Voice
The Translator Unveiled: Cartography of a Voice
Le traducteur dévoilé : cartographie d'une voix
Published on Thursday, June 06, 2019
Abstract
The Conference will focus on the discursive role of the translator within the spatial categories Gérard Genette (1987) defines as the paratext, i.e. the peritext (translator’s notes, footnotes, forewords, afterwords, back covers), and the epitext, in which the translator ‘speaks’ from outside the ‘space’ of the volume.
Announcement
University of Calabria Department of Humanities
Rende, 29-31 October 2019
Presentation
*Je loge ici sous cette fine barre noire. Voici mon lieu, mon séjour, ma tanière [...]. Bienvenue à toi, cher lecteur, franchis donc le seuil de mon antre. Ce n’est pas aussi spacieux que chez mon voisin d’au-dessus, mais en son absence j’accueille ici ses visiteurs déroutés par cette désertion inexpliquée (B. Matthieussent).
At the crossroads of human and social sciences, Translation Studies has recently displayed a growing interest in ‘unveiling’ translators as «maîtres cachés de notre culture» (Blanchot 1971: 71). Indeed, for a long time translators have been deemed invisible (Venuti 1995, 2013) and relegated to the margins of what has been considered an ancillary activity to authorial writing and the circulation of knowledge and culture (Berman 1984).
As Jean-Yves Masson argued in his inaugural address at the 2017 First World Congress on Translation Studies in Paris, diminishing the translator’s role results in denying the enunciative, creative, social, and ideological dimension of translation as a discursive practice as well as its functions within cultural systems (Bourdieu 1971, Toury 1981, Hermans 1999, Sapiro 2012).
Besides emphasizing the importance of the history of translation (Ballard 2013, Chevrel, Masson 2015) and of translators as cultural mediators (Bassnett 2011), the Conference aims at promoting a debate on the translator’s voice as social practice connecting all the agents of the translation process and as evidence of translation as theoretical practice (Meschonnic 1999). The translator’s voice (Hermans 1996, 2014), as a matter of fact, does not resound only within the translated text but also within the paratextual spaces that originate from the constant interplay between publishers and translators, who, in turn, provide readers with a translation in the widest and deepest sense of the term (Elefante 2012).
In particular, the Conference will focus on the discursive role of the translator within the spatial categories Gérard Genette (1987) defines as the paratext, i.e. the peritext (translator’s notes, footnotes, forewords, afterwords, back covers), and the epitext, in which the translator ‘speaks’ from outside the ‘space’ of the volume.
Such textual spaces perform several functions (Sardin 2007), as it emerged in the critical debate on the poetics of archives and in the in-depth investigation the journal Palimpsestes devoted to translation paratexts in 2018 (Stephens, Génin 2018). They ‘unveil’ translation strategies and metatranslation discourse; the psychological dimension of the translation act; the issue of untranslatability; the relations with the publishing world; the perspectives of textual genetics; the cultural and ideological aspects of the ethics of translation; the subversive power of translation in postcolonial (Bassnett, Trivedi 1999) and feminist (Simon 1996, von Flotow 1997) contexts; the intertextual debate within the communauté des traducteurs (Bonnefoy 2000) also for what concerns re-translations; the complexity of self-translations and multilingualism; manipulation strategies in the transmission of knowledge and the role of the reader in the reception of translated texts.
As an intersection and meeting place for translators, authors, publishers, and readers, the paratextual apparatus turns the translated text into a work in progress aimed at revealing the concealed relations between professionals and the publishing world, cultural systems and potential – and often unspoken – ideological conflicts (Spivak 1993, Guillaume 2016).
Topics
Proposals are welcome on the translator’s paratextual presence in literary, scientific, and pragmatic texts within the domains of human and social sciences. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Forewords, translator’s notes and all peritextual elements revealing translation practices and metatranslation discourse;
- Correspondence and interviews with authors, reviewers, publishers, and other translators;
- The paratextual apparatus, especially with regard to readers and their reception of translated
- works;
- Paratextual elements as discursive space of postcolonial and/or feminist translation;
- Textual traces of the genetic phases of the translation process.
Plenary speakers
Chiara Elefante, University of Bologna Jean-Marie Klinkenberg, University of Liège Luise von Flotow, University of Ottawa
Proposal submission
Proposals must be sent to traduttoresvelato@gmail.com by 15 June 2019
Proposals must include title, abstract of about 250 words, bibliographical references, institutional affiliation and contact information. The languages of the conference are Italian, French and English. Acceptance will be notified by 30 June 2019. The allotted time for each paper is 20 minutes. A selection of papers will be published in an edited volume.
Scientific Committee
- Mirko Casagranda, University of Calabria
- Annafrancesca Naccarato, University of Calabria
- Oriana Palusci, University of Naples “L’Orientale”
- Gisèle Vanhese, University of Calabria
Organising Committee
- Mirko Casagranda, University of Calabria
- Annafrancesca Naccarato, University of Calabria
Subjects
- Language (Main category)
Places
- Département d'Études Humanistes - Université de la Calabre
Rende, Italian Republic
Date(s)
- Saturday, June 15, 2019
Keywords
- traducteur, paratextes, sociologie de la traduction
Contact(s)
- Gloria Branca
courriel : gloria_branca [at] hotmail [dot] com
Information source
- Gloria Branca
courriel : gloria_branca [at] hotmail [dot] com
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« The Translator Unveiled: Cartography of a Voice », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Thursday, June 06, 2019, https://calenda.org/630599
