University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, 22nd-23rd May 2019 & CNRS, Paris, 24th May 2019
(SELF)TRANSLATION AND THE GLOBALIZATION OF IMAGINARIES IN A REBABELIZED WORLD
This interdisciplinary conference aims to discuss the cultural and scientific issues of (self)translation in the context of the globalization of imaginaries and the rebabelization of the world. In the early days of the World Wide Web, the share of English stood at 90 percent and has now passed below the 30 percent mark, thus multiplying the sources of untranslatability and incommunication. Translation has always played a considerable role in cultural, scientific and political transfers. Today, its place is key, in a period increasingly under the sign of what Salman Rushdie called “Translated men” in Imaginary Homelands.
In the 1950s there were 25 million tourists worldwide. Today, they are more than 1.3 billion. The imaginaries of languages and cultures have, for better or for worse, come into contact with one another as never before in the history of mankind. Translating in order to understand the Other has become more necessary than ever; since it would be pointless to learn all the languages of the world, it seems increasingly self-evident, to rephrase Umberto Eco, that “the language of globalization is translation”.
The main originality of this conference is threefold. First, it shall be argued that establishing a radical separation between translation and self-translation is an artificial one. The two are inseparable, not to mention the intermediary case of translation in collaboration with the author, which are all forms of the “work with multiple versions” (G. Genette) where text genetics has a seminal role to play. Second, and more important, it shall be argued that no clear-cut border may be drawn between literary (self)translation—a full session will be devoted to Nabokov—and scientific (self)translation. In order to be disseminated far and wide, sciences (and by this word are meant all sciences, not only Humanities and Social Sciences) cannot do without (self)translation either. In today’s globalized world, academics and researchers who have never had to resort to translation or (self)translation-except if they are native speakers of English-are becoming fewer and far between indeed.
Last but not least, the new technologies of information and communication have made it less and less relevant to take the sole vector of the written word into account. The other forms of translation, and particularly their intersemiotic, multimodal dimension, must be brought into the picture, as well as the spectacular breakthroughs accomplished by “automatic” computer-assisted (self)translation. Some are now predicting the advent of a Star Trek-like “universal translator” that will make “human” translators and interpreters obsolete. The opposite is true—machines will not replace them, but will provide them with more opportunities, not less, while allowing the greater number to access texts, discourses and exchanges in foreign languages on an unprecedented scale.
Languages of the conference: English and French.
Deadline for submission of proposals: 1st January 2019
Proposals are to be sent as abstracts (400-500 words) with a short bio-biblio note, in English, French, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese or German to:
Michael Oustinoff (michael.oustinoff@unice.fr)
Anna Lushenkova-Foscolo (anna.lushenkova-foscolo@univ-lyon3.fr)
and Paul Rasse (paul.rasse@unice.fr)
