Study

Each year our doctoral students benefit from a series of training sessions on career development in academia with specific reference to Translation, Interpreting and Intercultural Studies. These include sessions on:

• Publishing journal articles;
• applying for academic roles;
• best practice for interviews;
• marking and grading assignments in Translation and Interpreting Studies.

The Centre regularly contributes to The University of Manchester and external events on research training to support PGRs, ECRs and staff in planning, collecting and analysing data and writing up research that involves an element of translation and/or interpreting in the process.

We are happy to advise individual researchers informally on this topic and/or arrange bespoke training for small groups. Please contact Dr Rebecca Tipton in the first instance if you are interested at rebecca.tipton@manchester.ac.uk.

The art of governing rests on the central paradox of caring and killing. Because the modern state considers it its duty to care about individuals, but only insofar as they can reinforce or weaken its strength, it is also entitled to isolate, expel and kill individuals, if it deems it necessary to do so. Nowhere is this Foucauldian postulate as evident as in the treatment of asylum seekers.

Regulated by international law for signatories to protect the persecuted, asylum functions as a technocratic procedure that sorts asylum applicants into the few to be protected and the large majority to be expelled. Asylum seekers are thus prompted to speak within a fictional juridical procedure that conceals the very mechanisms through which their narratives of threats and fears are mediated, translated, objectified and resolved.

Given the oral and translational nature of the asylum procedure, I argue that interpreting in this context functions as a ‘technology’, in the Foucauldian sense of a technical rather than a juridical relation of power that controls individuals while creating the conditions for their subjectivation, that is, for the making of who we are and what we ought to do in context.

Focusing on the French asylum procedure, I will examine the legal, institutional, spatial and temporal arrangements of interpreting, as well as interpreters’ practices in the asylum hearing. I will show that while interpreting coerces the asylum seeker (and the interpreter) into fragmenting and condensing their narrative of exile in an expedited and highly monitored procedure, it also enacts resistant interventions that, however limited, cast light onto an obliterated mediational and translational space where the ethics and politics of interpreting for asylum seekers dwell.

It is hoped that this study on the transgression of rights and morality can elicit a reflection on the paradox of caring and killing in modern state institutions, both medical or legal, and wherever the wounded and the traumatized are prompted to speak across language barriers.

The session will be divided into two parts: a presentation based on Dr Boéri’s current research followed by a guided discussion on topics arising from the presentation with a focus on the development of conceptual frameworks in academic research. Students will be encouraged to reflect on and articulate the relevance of the discussion to their own research projects.

Julie Boéri is a translator-interpreter, a sworn translator registered at the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She holds a BA and a MA in translation and interpreting, from the University of Granada (Spain), and a PhD in Translation and Intercultural Studies from the University of Manchester (UK). She holds a Hispanic Language & Culture Agrégation, a highly competitive national examination which warrants erudition in the field and awards tenure in the French Higher Education System. Certified as Associate Professor in Information and Communication Sciences by the French National Council of Universities, she is tenured at the French Ministry of Higher Education. Her academic work focuses on the role of narratives, actors and ICTs in mediating and mediatizing communication flows across languages, cultures and media. She has published extensively across disciplines on social engagement, online communities, narrative, ethics and politics, with a particular interest in addressing the changing landscape of corpora and discourse analysis.

In this masterclass I will reflect on a research journey in Translation Studies which started at a time when the field was sketching its disciplinary boundaries, prior to the ‘turns’ and changes of ‘paradigms’ which help us to map the development of the field and the different disciplinary contributions and agendas which have expanded its boundaries over the last few decades.

I will focus on two more recent research projects (an anthology of Arabic discourse in translation situated in translation history, and the role of language and translation in the development of animal rights and animal welfare within the new context of eco-translation)) which have presented a number of methodological and theoretical challenges and unpacked points of departure and motivations when undertaking academic research.

Two overall questions will be debated:

• Is translation studies/practice the point of departure or is your research anchored in other disciplines?
• To what extent is it possible to articulate motivations other than ‘academic’ which underpin the selection of a research area or topic as a site of inquiry?

References

• Bachmann-Medick, D. (2009). Introduction. The Translational Turn. Translated by Kate Sturge. Translation Studies. Vol 2(1). 2-6.
• Cederholm, E. et al. (2014). Exploring the Animal Turn – Human-Animal Relations in Science, Society and Culture. Pufendor finstitutet. Lund
• Shamma, T. and M. Salama-Carr (eds) (2021). Anthology of Arabic Discourse on Translation. London & New York: Routledge.
• Salama-Carr, M. (2021). Negotiating Asymmetry. The Language of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare. In Translating Asymmetry - Rewriting Power, edited by Carbonell I Cortés, O. and E. Monzo-Nebot.Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.           

Myriam Salama-Carr is a retired Professor of Translation Studies and Honorary Research Fellow at The University of Manchester.

Ji-Hae Kang, Ajou University

In recent decades translation in institutional settings has become a vibrant area of study in Translation Studies. Topics that have been addressed by researchers are diverse, ranging from the ways in which translation and translators are embedded within the processes through which institutions govern and control to the use translation as a way to uphold equality, justice, transparency, and the right to information. Research findings have also enriched our understanding of how translators’ agency may affect the ways in which institutions operate and function. Although researchers acknowledge the growing complexity of institutional translation, research in this area mostly remains driven by assumptions and concepts that have been developed to account for professional translation taking place in international/supranational organizations or government bodies. This approach raises problems in accounting for the diverse forms of translation that takes place within and across institutions, public and private alike, in various parts of the world, and the changes in the ways in which institutions approach, carry out, and use translation as a result of more recent political, economic, and technological developments.

The masterclass is an interactive session which will include discussions of issues and challenges for research on institutional translation. Drawing on a body of interdisciplinary scholarship, this session will problematize some existing approaches to institutional translation and will argue that institutional translation cannot be conceptualized merely in terms of international organizations or government agencies. It will engage with conceptual issues such as whether the range meaning associated with institutional translation needs to extended or delimited. The masterclass will also consider the connection between the changes in the function and operation of institutions within which the planning, implementation, regulation and evaluation of translation takes place on the one hand, and the ways in which institutions approach and use translation on the other. Issues related to the recent use of volunteer translators and machine translation systems by institutions will be discussed, and participants will be invited to reflect on the ethical and professional implications of these developments.

Ji-Hae Kang is Professor of Translation Studies at Ajou University in South Korea and Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies (CTIS) at the University of Manchester in the UK. Her research focuses on translation and interpreting in institutional settings, issues of power, identity and discourse in transnational exchanges, and the interplay between translation and digital culture. She is co-editor of Translating and Interpreting in Korean Contexts: Engaging with Asian and Western Others (in press, Routledge, with Judy Wakabayashi) and guest-editor of a special issue of Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice on Translation in Institutions (2014). She is author of many articles that have been published in such leading journals as The Translator, Target, META, Perspectives, Korean Association of Translation Studies (KATS) Journal.

Sara Sullam, Milan University/University of Reading

As latest research has demonstrated, in the twentieth century the “mediation of publishing” became as relevant an institution as literary criticism in the definition of a literary canon, be it domestic, national, or transnational. Over the last decade, therefore, benefitting from the increasing availability of material preserved in publishers’ archives, scholars have started to investigate the crucial nexus between the history of a text and the history of a book to understand how a work of literature takes shape.

In this perspective, investigations on literary translation have proficiently integrated cultural translation studies and book history. For scholars working at the intersection between these two disciplinary fields, publishers’ archives have become a crucial site of investigation and research. Yet the complex methodological framework underpinning this kind of research is still being fully elaborated.

After introducing the problem, the masterclass will address issues and challenges related to research on translation in publishers’ archives. In particular, it will focus on the diverse materials available and on their function for an integrated study of literary transfer. To do so, the masterclass will present relevant case studies concerning the evaluation, translation and promotion of Italian fiction by British publishers in the period 1945-1965.

Sara Sullam is Assistant Professor of English Literature at Milan University and British Academy Visiting Fellow at the Department of Modern Languages and European Studies of the University of Reading. She has authored a number of articles on the reception of Modernism within the Italian literary field. She is also active as professional reader and translator for major Italian publishers. Her most recent translations include Joyce’s Lettere e saggi (with Enrico Terrinoni, 2016) and Joan Didion’s After Henry (2017) and Where I Was From (2018).

Theo Hermans, UCL

Translation history received only intermittent attention in past decades, but is currently popular again. Several substantial historical surveys have appeared in recent years, including some multi-volume works. Methodological reflection, however, has lagged behind. Anthony Pym’s Method in Translation History (1998) is still the only book-length treatment of the subject, although various scholars have addressed individual issues in a range of essays. In the seminar I will begin by setting out my own stake in this discussion, before going into some of the standard questions concerning periodization, agency and the possibility of a transnational translation history. The main part of the seminar will involve an invitation to think about the relation between translation and history in more comprehensive terms. Perhaps the history of translation is the easy part? What about the translation of history? How much history tends to go into particular translations? In thinking about the role of translation in history, are we thinking primarily about history or about translation? The aim is to address questions like these interactively.

Theo Hermans is Professor Emeritus in Translation Studies at University College London (UCL) and an Honorary Research Fellow in CTIS. Until recently he was Director of the UCL Centre for Translation Studies. His main research interests concern the theory and history of translation. His monographs include Translation in Systems (1999) and The Conference of the Tongues (2007).

Michaela Wolf, University of Graz

In the past decade or so, translation history has emerged as a distinct sub-discipline of translation and interpreting studies. A great and still increasing number of publications, along with large-scale academic activities such as conferences or graduate programmes, testify to the importance attached to the topic today – yet the methodologies adopted in translation history research still seem to be an under-charted field.

In this masterclass, I will first discuss some general problems inherent to the study of the history of translation. I will then focus on two research models: “histoire croisée” (as developed mainly by Bénédicte Zimmermann and Michael Werner) and Erving Goffman’s “dramaturgical model”. A case study on military translation cultures in German prisoner-of-war camps in Finland during the Second World War will elucidate these models’ potential and allow us to critically assess their use.

Maria Tymoczko, University of Massachusetts

Maria Tymoczko is a Professor of Comparative Literature and an eminent translation theorist who has published widely on many topics in translation studies. She is author of Translation in a Postcolonial Context (1999) and Enlarging Translation, Empowering Translators (2007), among other works, and editor of several volumes, including Translation and Power (2002, with Edwin Gentzler) and Translation, Resistance, Activism (2010). The masterclass will draw on some material from her forthcoming book, Translation, Multilingualism, and Neuroscience.

Adi Kuntsman, Manchester Metropolitan University

The masterclass will address ethnical issues in carrying out research on the Internet and in other digital environments such as social media.

The masterclass will cover several key ethical issues (entering the field; privacy and anonymity; and representation of findings) and the ways they are challenged and transformed in on-line environments; differ according to specific platforms (forums, blogs, social networks) and political and cultural contexts; and change over time.

Theo Hermans, UCL and University of Manchester

Among students of translation Schleiermacher’s 1813 lecture ‘On the Different Methods of Translating’ has become famous for contrasting domesticating with foreignising translation (‘bringing the foreign author to the reader’ versus ‘taking the reader to the foreign author’).

In my opinion, however, Schleiermacher’s lecture is not about this dichotomy at all. I argue that the lecture is neither more nor less than the application of the principles of hermeneutics to translation, and that Schleiermacher developed his hermeneutic theory largely as a result of translating Plato.

This masterclass invites you on a journey of rediscovery and transformation. During the class we look at Schleiermacher’s Plato and go on to explore the connection with his hermeneutics. We end with a re-reading of the 1813 lecture with a focus on two key passages.

Initial reading

The original German text of Schleiermacher’s 1813 lecture is available online.

English translations are available in:

• Translating Literature. The German Tradition, ed. André Lefevere. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1977.
• Western Translation Theory, ed. Douglas Robinson. Manchester: St Jerome, 1997, 2002.
• The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Lawrence Venuti. London & New York: Routledge, 2000, 2004, 2012.

Étienne Wenger

Learning is often viewed as something individuals do as they acquire information and skills. It is usually associated with some form of instruction.

I will present a different perspective on learning, one that starts with the assumption that learning is an inherent dimension of everyday life and that it is fundamentally a social process. From this perspective, a living “body of knowledge” can be viewed as a collection of communities of practice. Learning is not merely the acquisition of a curriculum, but a journey across this landscape of practice, which is transformative of the self.

Achieving a high level of "knowledgeability" is a matter of negotiating a productive identity with respect to the various communities of practice that constitute this landscape.

This interactive masterclass will review the main elements of this learning theory ways as well as more recent developments. Then we will explore the implications for the research of participants.

Kaisa Koskinen (University of Eastern Finland)

Sociology of translation has been one of the success stories in contemporary translation studies. However, it is not always clear how it is understood among those who identify themselves within this label and how it differs from an earlier – and still existing – trend of historical research.

In my talk I will discuss these blurred divisions and then focus on one clear differentiating factor between sociological and historical research: the possibility of gaining first-hand experience and gathering information on the site of research by doing fieldwork. To demonstrate the many faces and degrees of personal engagement available for researchers interested in doing fieldwork, I will briefly introduce three case studies in which I have been involved.