CULTUS 17: Back to Culture

 

Abstracts should be sent to:

Questo indirizzo email è protetto dagli spambots. È necessario abilitare JavaScript per vederlo.  by December 1st 2023

Notification of Acceptance: December 23rd 2023

Deadline for full papers: March 31^st 2024

Publication: December 2024

 

Cultus is a Journal dedicated to Intercultural communication, and this will be the theme of Cultus 16. Yet, ‘culture’, as understood in anthropological rather than ideological terms has had rather a bad press. The concept has been widely criticized for being essentialist, for pigeonholing people and peoples into straitjacketed ways of being or doing and of meaning. The late great Michael Agar, anthropologist and member of the Cultus scientific committee, openly asked: “Culture: Can you take it anywhere?”; while another anthropologist lamented “”Everyone is into culture now” (Kuper 1999), meaning that the concept has been appropriated, as well as distorted, so that now “cultural translation” is more often understood as a site of tension, of power struggles between different discursive practices than the sort of translation that practicing translators and interpreters have to deal with. Yet, as Kyle Conway mentioned (2018) in his spirited ‘Putting Translation back in Cultural Translation’: “Translators are among the most culturally aware people I know, and the way they rewrite texts is anything but mechanical”.

So, in this cultural (re)turn we would like to focus on the “cultural” and the “translation” from a cross-linguistic perspective; highlighting cutting edge research, findings and even theoretical argumentation validating the importance in practice of translating and interpreting with culture in mind.

We particularly welcome proposals focusing on new insights regarding intercultural communication and Translation Studies. For example:

• Practical research into the costs of not accounting for culture
• (The real benefits of) teaching intercultural communication in Translation and Interpreting courses
• Intercultural competences for translators/interpreters
• Contrastive grammars of culture
• How business and premium translation sectors perceive ‘culture’
• The issue of essentialism in anthropological culture
• Public service or community interpreting and the real impact of ‘culture’
• New, evolving ways of dealing with culture-bound language, discourse, such as hypertext, creative titling and the use of second screen
• Points of contact between cultural studies and language

 

 

REFERENCES

Agar, Michael. (2006). Culture: Can you take it anywhere? International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 5(2). http://www.ualberta.ca/~iiqm/backissues/5_2/pdf/agar.pdf

Conway, Kyle. (2018) Putting Translation back in Cultural Translation, Guest Post, https://bcmcr.org/culturaltranslation/. July 10.

Kuper, Adam. (1999). Culture: The Anthropologists' Account.  Harvard University Press.

 

 

Cultus: The journal of intercultural mediation and communication:

double-blind review, MLA/IATIS/TSB indexed; “A” quality rated by ANVUR

 

Chief Editor: David Katan (University of Salento, Italy);

Editor: Cinzia Spinzi (University of Bergamo, Italy)

 

CALL for PAPERS      CULTUS 16: Towards a history of translation collaborative practices and cooperation

Questo indirizzo email è protetto dagli spambots. È necessario abilitare JavaScript per vederlo. by February 28^th 2023

Notification of Acceptance: March 6^th  2023

Deadline for full papers (max. 8000 words, references excluded): May 1^st 2023

Publication: December 2023

Guest editors:

Mirella Agorni, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice: Questo indirizzo email è protetto dagli spambots. È necessario abilitare JavaScript per vederlo.

Giovanni Iamartino, State University of Milan: Questo indirizzo email è protetto dagli spambots. È necessario abilitare JavaScript per vederlo.

 

Collaboration in translation occurs when “two or more agents cooperate in some way to produce a translation” (O’Brien 2011, 17). However, most Western theories and histories of translation have focused on the translator as a solitary individual, very often establishing a link between the concepts of authorship and ownership of artistic contents. The lack of attention to cooperation has meant that historical translation studies still tend to neglect this aspect.

In spite of the fact that more recent research has been increasingly offering us a new image of translation as an essentially collaborative act (cf. Cordingley and Frigau Manning 2017; Folaron 2010; Malmkjaer 2013; O’Hagan 2013), a history more specifically focusing on the cooperative strategies of translators/interpreters/linguistic mediators has yet to be written. For this reason, starting with contemporary practices and searching through history for traces of collaborative work in translation is not just an archaeological endeavour, but a commitment of all those interested in translation.

Proposals are welcome that explore how translators/interpreters and language intermediaries have (or have not) facilitated the exchange, transfer or appropriation of ideas and texts (both oral and written) using interpersonal and intratextual strategies to ensure cooperation and produce effective communication.

 

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• theoretical and methodological aspects of collaborative practices throughout translation/interpreting/language mediation history;

• case studies focusing on the relations between translators or interpreters and other agents or intermediaries, such as printers, publishers, editors, patrons, magazine directors and collaborators, etc;

• case studies analysing teamwork experiences over history, targeting diverse translation and publishing settings (literature, religion, science, technology, etc.);

• issues pertaining to the impact of technology on collaborative practices in translation in the course of history, up to the advent of the internet and

• including new trends in audiovisual translation, as well as cooperative practices enhanced by machine and computer assisted translation.

• the diachronic evolution of activist and volunteer interpreting in conflict and emergency situations;

• the development of collaborative solutions in public service and community interpreting.

 

References

Bistué, B. (2016). Collaborative translation and multi-version texts in early modern Europe. London and New York: Routledge.   doi:10.4324/9781315572666

Cordingley, A. & Frigau Manning, C. (2017). Collaborative translation: from the Renaissance to the digital age. London & New York: Bloomsbury Academic. doi:10.5040/9781350006034

Folaron, D.A. (2010). «Networking and volunteer translators». Gambier, Y. & van Doorslaer, L. (eds). Handbook of translation studies, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 231-234. doi:10.1075/hts.1.net1

Malmkjær, K. (2013). «Where are we? (from Holmes’s map until now)». Millán-Varela, C. & Bartrina, F. (eds). The Routledge handbook of translation studies, London and New York: Routledge, 49-62.   doi:10.4324/9780203102893-10

O’Brien, S. (2011). «Collaborative translation». Gambier, Y. & van Doorslaer, L. (eds). Handbook of translation studies, vol. 2. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 17-20.   doi:10.1075/hts.2.col1

O’Hagan, M. (2013) «The impact of new technologies on translation studies: a technological turn?». Millán-Varela, C. & Bartrina, F. (eds). The Routledge handbook of translation studies, London and New York: Routledge, 521-536. doi:10.4324/9780203102893-49

 

Abstracts should be sent to: Questo indirizzo email è protetto dagli spambots. È necessario abilitare JavaScript per vederlo.  by February 28^th 2023.

Cultus: The journal of intercultural mediation and communication:

double-blind review, MLA/IATIS/TSB indexed; “A” quality rated by ANVUR.

Chief Editor: David Katan (University of Salento, Italy);

Editor: Cinzia Spinzi (University of Bergamo, Italy).