International Conference “Translation as reframing”
Dates: 27-28 June, 2019
Venue: School of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of the Azores
Confirmed keynote speakers:
Edwin Gentzler (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
Margarida Vale de Gato (School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon)
The concept of reframing is widely used across different fields (sociology, journalism, film studies, business management, conflict management) to stress the idea that placing an object or situation in a new context – a new frame – changes the way it can be perceived and interpreted. Reframing emphasizes acts of decision-making that illustrate ideological constraints, identity formation processes, the manipulation of cultural images, and asymmetrical power relations at large.
In Translation Studies, André Lefevere conceptualized translation as rewriting in the wake of the Manipulation School in the 1980s, a term that is closely related to reframing. More recently, the notion of reframing has been applied to news translation and interpreting in conflict management situations (e.g. Baker, 2007). According to Mona Baker, (re)framing is “an active strategy that implies agency and by means of which we […] participate in the construction of reality” (2006: 106). Indeed, understood more broadly, reframing provides a fertile occasion to reflect on the translator’s agency, which has become a much-debated topic in contemporary Translation Studies.
Translation always introduces a text – a moving body – into a new linguistic, cultural and social context, in which a new story is built around this foreign object. Several translation agents are involved in this process of moving bodies across boundaries. Translators are the most obvious examples of such moving bodies, since they are the “rewriters [who] adapt, manipulate the originals they work with to some extent, usually to make them fit in with the dominant, or one of the dominant ideological and poetological currents of their time” (Lefevere, 1992: 6). Translation as reframing summons us to question preconceived notions of original/ity, authorship or translatorship, for that matter (Jansen and Wegener, 2013). In addition to translators, all those involved in selecting, representing, producing and receiving these moving bodies – i.e. editors, reviewers, critics, patrons, readers – act as reframing agents. Their choices and reactions add to the global/local interpretation of the foreign material in the target culture.
Reframing contributes to constructing an image of otherness that may vary when compared to its prevailing representations in the source context or in other target contexts. In fact, a translated text brings along authors, cultures, societies, often national literatures, which are reinterpreted by readers who do not usually share the same beliefs, value systems, experiences, and assumptions as the source readership. Paratexts (Genette, 1997) play an important role in this – both peritextually (dust jacket, covers, title page, preface, notes…) and epitextually (reviews, publishers’ marketing strategies for the text and its author, interviews…). They tell a story about the text, its author and originary culture, which shapes reader perceptions of, and expectations about, the literary work, the author, and his or her culture.
All these factors, along with the translation choices made by the various translation agents, build a story around the text, unique to the target context, to a specific time and place, in which readers participate and that largely dictates their interpretation of this moving body. This conference welcomes studies that underpin such stories, inviting scholars to rethink a broad range of translation issues through the lens of reframing, its devices and the agents involved in their creation.
Possible topics for presentation
– Translation agents and their role in reframing texts;
– (New) contextual stories created for translated texts and their implications;
– Paratextual choices as reframing;
– Rethinking traditional concepts of authorship, original/ity, translatorship;
– Representations of Otherness through reframing;
– Translation as rewriting and rereading;
– Reframing as a collective, collaborative process of translation;
– The functioning of reframing devices;
– Digital challenges to reframing;
– Historical and spatial variations in the interpretation of translated texts;
– Translation as manipulation: issues of power and ideology;
– Reshaping a text’s status through translation from source to target context(s);
– Translation and its reframing of world literature;
– Reframing island literature through translation.
References
BAKER, Mona (2006). Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account, London, New York, Routledge.
BAKER, Mona (2007). “Reframing conflict in translation”, Social Semiotics, vol.17, n.2, pp. 151-169.
GENETTE, Gérard (1997). Paratexts. Tresholds of Interpretation (Trans. Jane E. Lewin), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
JANSEN, Hanne, and Anna WEGENER (2013). “Multiple translatorship”, in Authorial and Editorial Voices in Translation 1 – Collaborative Relationships between Authors, Translators, and Performers (Ed. Hanne Jansen and Anna Wegener), Montréal, Éditions québécoises de l’œuvre, pp. 1-39.
LEFEVERE, André (1992). Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame, London, New York, Routledge.
Individual paper submissions should include
– Title of paper;
– Name, email address, and institutional affiliation of participant(s);
– Abstract (max. 300 words and 5 keywords);
– Language of presentation (Portuguese or English);
– Bionote (max. 100 words, mentioning main research interests, projects and selected publications).
Panel submissions should include
– Title of panel;
– Short description of the panel (max. 150 words);
– Name, email address, and institutional affiliation of participants (no more than 3 presenters);
– Individual abstract (max. 250 words and 5 keywords);
– Language of presentation (Portuguese or English);
– Bionote of each presenter (max. 100 words, mentioning main research interests, projects and selected publications).
Proposals must be submitted through email to: reframingtranslation@gmail.com
DEADLINES
Submission of proposals January 31, 2019
Notification of acceptance February 28, 2019
Registration Until May 15, 2019
Registration fee (per participant)
Faculty members of the University of the Azores 30 €
MA and PhD students 30 €
General fee 70 €
Organizing committee:
Dominique Faria (University of the Azores/CEC, University of Lisbon)
Joana Moura (CEC, University of Lisbon/Universidade Católica Portuguesa)
Marta Pacheco Pinto (CEC, University of Lisbon)
This is an activity of the MOV (Moving Bodies: Circulations, Narratives, and Archives in Translation) research project (LOCUS group) of the Centre for Comparative Studies, University of Lisbon.