Dates: October 20-21, 2006

A conference sponsored by the departments of philosophy and modern languages at the university of Hartford and by a grant from the Esperantic Studies Foundation.

THE TRANSLATOR AS MEDIATOR OF CULTURES was a day-and-a-half-long symposium on the uses, motives, and effects of translation and their implications for the theory and craft of translation, both written and oral. The event brought together professional translators as well as philosophers, literary scholars, sociolinguists, and other academics to investigate the increasing importance, in an era of unsettling globalizing forces, of translation and its power to influence literary traditions and shape cultural identities. 

 

Program

Friday, October 20, 2006

Opening Session

Maria Esposito Frank (Associate Professor of Italian Language and Literature, University of Hartford)
Welcome

Probal Dasgupta (Indian Institute of Statistics; formerly Professor of Linguistics, University of Hyderabad)
Introductory Comments

Rosanna Warren (Emma MacLachlan Metcalf Professor of the Humanities, Boston University)
“Tears for Things: Translating Marceline Desbordes-Valmore”

Setting the Scene

John Edwards (Professor of Psychology, St. Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia)
“The Treason of Translation”

Mark Fettes (Assistant Professor of Education, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia)
“Language As Sharp as a Knife: Translation in Ecological Context”

Timothy Reagan (Visiting Professor of Education and Linguistics, Central Connecticut State University)
"Setting the Scene? How About Just Locating the Audience?": The Problematic Case of Sign Language Translating and Interpreting.”

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Marcia Moen (Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of Hartford)
Introduction

Michael Henry Heim (Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature, University of California, Los Angeles)
“The Role of Foreignization in Conveying Cultural Difference: From a Translator's Notebook”

 

The Invisible Translator: Conveying the Message

Nancy Schweda Nicholson (Professor of Linguistics, Cognitive Science, and Legal Studies, University of Delaware)
“Interpreting at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY): Linguistic and Cultural Challenges”

Klaus Schubert (Professor of Computational Linguistics and Technical Communication, Flensburg University of Applied Science)
“Culture as a Controlling Factor in Multilingual Technical Communication”

Jonathan Pool  (President, Utilika Foundation)
“Translators in a Global Community”

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University)
“The Ethics of Translation”

 

Translating Experience: The Poetics and Philosophy of Translation

Vincent Colapietro (Professor of Philosophy, Pennsylvania State University)
“The Poetics of Translation: Tropes, Treacheries, and Felicities”

David Jackson (Professor of Portuguese and Brazilian Literatures, Yale University)
“Transcriação / Transcreation: The Brazilian Concrete Poets and Translation”

Marie-José Tramuta (Associate Professor of Italian Literature, Université de Caen Basse-Normandie, France)
“Expression and Translation of Philosophy : Giorgio Colli, a master of time”

 

The Translation of Culture: Convergence and Divergence

Thomas Cooper (Assistant Director, Center for Comparative Literature and Society, Columbia University)
“Translation and the Rediscovery of the Multinational Central European”

Humphrey Tonkin (University Professor of the Humanities, University of Hartford)
“Hamlet in Esperanto”

Werner Sollors (Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot Professor of English Literature and Professor of African and African American Studies, Harvard University)
“Translating American Literature into English”

 

Discussion and Conclusion

Lawrence Venuti (Professor of English, Temple University)