CFP: Translation in Exile

International Conference organized by the Centre for Literature in Translation of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Ghent University, in cooperation with the University of Santiago de Compostela and the Federal University of Santa Catarina.

Venue: Vrije Universiteit Brussel, December 10-11, 2015

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 exile as a theoretical concept, analytical category, and lived experience in the study of the translation of (literary) texts. 

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This conference will touch on questions of multilingualism and displacement, and on their methodological implications for translation studies, first and foremost with regard to translating literary texts as a political and cultural practice. This conference wants to plead for a less metaphorical and more empirical understanding of translation. The focus will thus be on the interlingual nature of translation and exile as an interstitial locus of enunciation. The aim of the conference is to further our understanding of the authors’ experiences of exile, their function, opportunities and problems as (self-) translators, as well as explore how these émigrés have documented and represented their stories. It aims at circumnavigating a broad spatial and temporal spectrum. The focus of the conference is neither limited to the analysis of translation in the context of European languages and cultures, nor to one specific historical period.

Submissions for 20-minute papers may include, but are not restricted to:

- theoretical approaches to the concept of ‘exile’ in translation

- translation as agency and medium of political commitment in exile (issues of freedom, resistance and human rights)

- the relation between the translator/publisher and the exiled author

- translation and diasporic communities

- ‘inner emigration’ and translation

- Samizdat and translation

- influence of translation in exile on canon formation

- postcolonial studies in relation to translation and exile

- imagology and translation in exile

- translation, censorship and persecution

- exile journals as media establishing a critical counter-hegemony of literary texts and their translations

- self-translation and the question of exiled authors writing in adopted languages

- the role of remigrés in the post-World War II professionalization of the translator

Registration:

300 word abstracts and a 100 word bio should be submitted by January 15, 2015. Please send your abstracts and bios to translation.exile@vub.ac.be. Graduate students are also welcome to submit their proposals and participate in the conference.

Please note there will be a conference fee of 100 Euro.

The language of the conference is English, but other languages (French, German, Portuguese and Spanish) will be considered. A publication of the proceedings with selected contributions is planned.

To read the full text of the call for paper please click here