Centre for Translation Studies

In this workshop, the Anglistik V team will come together to discuss translation at the interface of ecocriticism and postcolonialism. What, we will ask ourselves, are the ethical implications of translating nature and how are literary descriptions of nature interwoven with colonial histories? What are strategies to make visible the colonial routes of ‘natural’ environments and what affordances do translations offer in this endeavour? 

Guest Lecture by Dr. Sharon Deane-Cox (Strathclyde) as Part of the Interdisciplinary Lecture Series “Translation 2.0”
Moderation: Dr. Hannah Pardey (HHU)

Drawing on the concept of 'mediated witnessing', this paper aims to set out the often complex ways in which translation and digital technologies come together in French memorial museums, shaping how lived experiences of the Second World War are communicated to English-speaking visitors. Selected case studies will illustrate how translated audio-guides in the physical museum space, as well as subtitled videos and other multilingual content in the virtual museum space, function to (re)position visitors in relation to the past on display. Particular attention will be paid to immediate questions of translation quality, voice and empathy, and to contextual issues of ideology and economics, in order to demonstrate how translation is entangled in and central to visitor engagement on cognitive and affective levels. 

Read more in the archive.

We congratulate Tasun Tidorchibe on the successful disputation of his dissertation "Revisiting formalism from a West African perspective: Konkomba folktales across generations and cultural contexts". His research explores the form-​content correlation in Formalism from an Afrocentric perspective by employing (a) the explorative technique of foreignized translation (Venuti) and (b) a culturally-​sensitive New Formalist criticism of folktales of the Konkomba people of northern Ghana. Additionally, his research project makes available a corpus of Konkomba folktales, their translations, and further information via Translating Minor Forms. Find more information on his research here.

Imogen Taylor studied German and Romance studies and obtained her doctoral degree with a study of 18^th-century French literature at Humboldt University Berlin. She has worked as a literary translator for English and French for more than ten years and has translated books by Alfred Döblin, Dana Grigorcea and Sasha Salzmann. Currently, she is working on an English translation of Julia Francks’ autobiography Welten auseinander.

We congratulate Hypolite Kembeu on the successful disputation of his dissertation on the topic: "Politisch korrekt übersetzen? Zum Einfluss von sozialhistorischen und -politischen Faktoren auf das Übersetzen von postkolonialen afrikanischen Literaturen ins Deutsche."
Read more in German