OCCT TT2021 Week 6 Updates
Don’t forget to book your tickets for Oxford Translation Day, which will take place NEXT WEEK as a series of virtual events, including recordings of the shortlisted Oxford-Weidenfeld translators discussing their work. These recordings will be made available on the OCCT website on 12 June.
On 11 June, Ros Schwartz discusses her translation of A Long Way from Douala. This novel is the first publication in English of a work by Max Lobé, a Cameroonian writer hailed as an important new voice in African writing. On 12 June, join Adriana X. Jacobs to discuss and read poems from her translation of Vaan Nguyen’s The Truffle Eye. Vaan Nguyen has been described as "a veritable juggler of Hebrew," a poet whose work radically remixes world classics and pop culture, the personal and the political, past and present. Also, on 12 June, Abdilatif Abdalla and Annmarie Drury read from Abdalla’s poetry collection Sauti ya Dhiki (Voice of Agony), one of the most important Swahili poetry collections of the twentieth century, and discuss its art and the story behind it.
All events are free but require registration. Register here by 10 June: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Z_z4PhIy-DZzYWGLdKU-iXJDpJwZEoWdnVNwtKOx458/viewform?edit_requested=true.
The Fiction and Other Minds seminar is hosting an online conference entitled I and We: Literary Texts and the Constitution of Shared Identities. Programme and registration details here: https://www.occt.ox.ac.uk/fiction-and-other-minds-14.
On Monday, together with Queen’s Translation Exchange, we ran the first of Oxford Translation Day’s extended programme of events. We welcome Anton Hur, the English translator of Bora Chung’s Cursed Bunny. In this event, Hur describes “the curse of knowledge” in translation, or the various ways an otherwise learned and well-meaning translator can inadvertently sabotage their own work.
EVENTS
1.Rabelais's 'Radical' Farce Reconsidered: What did Dindenault do to Deserve This!?
Seminar
8 June 2021
12:00-13:00 BST
https://modernlanguages.sas.ac.uk/events/event/24401
Speaker: Zak Eastop (IMLR)
As part of a wider project exploring the character Panurge’s long-nineteenth-century musico-theatrical primacy, the seminar will re-examine the ovine-oriented episodes of François Rabelais’s Quart Livre. In these chapters (V-VIII), Panurge tosses an overpriced sheep into the sea causing its entire flock to leap to their deaths, dragging their loud-mouthed shepherd Dindenault with them. By situating the episode within a late-Medieval farcical genre paradigm (though one dislocated from its popular roots by Rabelais’s appropriation) in which transgressing societal norms – being guilty of démesure – is met with degrading punishment, Rabelais uses Dindenault, his sheep, and their murder, to restate and reinforce socio-economic hierarchies. In this context, Dindenault’s drowning constitutes a farcical punishment, handed down by Panurge for transgressing the socio-economic status quo by attempting to pass his ‘moutons à la grande laine’ off as luxury goods and take part in a trade from which the rural poor were economically precluded. Thus, it is not just the instantly recognisable reference to les moutons de Panurge – the French idiomatic equivalent of English ‘lemmings’ – which contribute to the scene’s persistence on the musico-theatrical stage of the long-nineteenth century, but the scene’s socio-economic critique as well.
All are welcome to attend this free online event, starting at 12:00 BST. You will need to register in advance to receive the online joining link: https://modernlanguages.sas.ac.uk/events/event/24401
2. The Translation Memoir/Translation as Memoir
A Symposium
July 9th, 2021
Keynote Q&A with Kate Briggs
9 - 9h15: Introduction and welcome, settling in.
9h15 – 9h45: Jen Calleja – ‘Fair: an introduction and reading from an experimental translator memoir in progress’
[Breathing break – 2 min]
9h45 – 10h15: Janani Ambikapathy – ‘Thinking Critical, Translating Desire’
[Coffee break – 15 min]
10h30 – 11h: Erin Elizabeth Nickalls – ‘Mathematics Lessons: Translation and the Remainder’
[Stretch break – 2 min]
11h – 11h30 Elsa Court – ‘Erik Orsenna’s Deux étés (1998): Auto-fiction as Playful Memoir on the Stakes of Literary Translation in Contemporary France’
[Movement break – 2 min]
11h30 – 12h00: Chantal Wright – ‘Hafermilchfrau OR She puts oatmilk in her tea: Some reflections on translating class’
[Lunch break]
13h30 – 14h00: Daria Chernysheva – ‘A Kinship of Processes: Translating the Lost Love Poetry of Cécile Sauvage’
[Digestion break – 2 min]
14h00 – 14h30: Bendetta Cutolo – ‘Portrait of a writer in translation: A study of Jhumpa Lahiri’s memoir In Other Words’
[Eye exercise break – 2 min]
14h30 – 15h: Alexandru Matei – ‘Translating theory in Romania after 1990: from national humanist campaigns to sparse individual workshops. The Case of Bogdan Ghiu’
[Coffee break]
15h15 – 15h45: Yan Wu – ‘Neutrality Affected: Revisiting Identity and Empathy in Two Women Interpreters’ Memoirs’
[Stretching break]
16h00 – 17h00: Response and Q&A with Kate Briggs
Use the link below to join on the day:
https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_ZDZhOGExMDgtYmNiNi00NWRiLWI3NGItM2Q4OWFlMjNmMThl%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%229c9bcd11-977a-4e9c-a9a0-bc734090164a%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%2205c0b62c-0891-4feb-9607-11eddc9af5dd%22%7d
For more info: https://multilingualcreativities.wordpress.com/blog/
Organisers/contacts:
Delphine Grass & Lily Robert-Foley
