Call for Papers: Re-Configuring “Central” Europe in Its Way towards Modernity. Language, Knowledge and Ideology Transfer through Translations of Secular Texts in Pre-Modern Times (1770-1830). November the 5th-6th 2021, online.

 

Aim: The conference aims to bring together interdisciplinary contributions from various fields of research (philology, history, translation studies), regarding the translation process of secular texts in Central-Europe in the time-frame 1770-1830.

Format:

A section with key-note speakers that aims to enlarge the general theoretical framework, through contributions regarding the process and mechanism of translation in the time-frame 1770-1830.

Keynote Speakers:

C.S. I Dr. Eugenia Dima, Iaşi

Prof. Dr. Eugen Munteanu, Iaşi

Prof. Dr. Alin Mihai Gherman, Alba-Iulia

Specialized sections that will focus on particular aspects and case studies, reflecting the central theme. Focus points: linguistics, history and translation studies.

Theoretical concept: This conference aims to open  the concept of translation to an interdisciplinary approach rooted in the new methodological horizon propagated by the postcolonial studies and cultural anthropology, because the old descriptors that defined the history of culture, such as “influence”, “reception”, “acculturation”, “amalgamation”, “assimilation”, “diffusion” etc can no longer be applied in their traditional sense defined by the comparative studies, but are opened now to revision under the principles and methodology of the cultural anthropology and by a “constructivist” school of thought that regards the “cultural difference” as a relative, fluid and unstable category, as a category that exists only at the discourse level of the political, social and cultural signifiers. Applying Homi Bhabha’s concept of “hybridization”, we can regard the translation as an act of displacement of the cultural elements, of appropriating new signs and altering significations in a certain social space, a patchwork defined by the co-existence of the Self and the Other. This “trans-cultural” approach of the communicational space, in which the senders and receivers have interchanging roles in the networks they created, deconstructs the idea of a “national culture” and focuses on the individual and/or collective intermediates (the translators, patrons, publishing houses etc.), with their particular motivation, necessities, interests, social roles etc., with everything they brought for the appropriation and reconfiguration of “specific” contents and values. This dynamic and fluid representation of the “cultural translation” will help us overcome the linearity of the relation between two or more linguistic and cultural spaces and highlight the context, the mechanism and the agents of the exchange process of information, symbols, codes, texts etc. that produce permanent mutations for the collectivities that come in contact. The phenomenon of “cultural transfer” (described by Michael Werner and Michel Espagne as the transaction of cultural goods on the intellectual market of a given time, a two-way exchange that means reformulation, adaptation and re-ideologisation of the textual artefact) will serve us as methodological and interdisciplinary foundation for the analysis of texts and translation processes from different perspectives (of history, philology and translation studies), in order to illustrate  the way in which this artificial space called “Central Europe” positioned itself in the Pre-Modern times (1770-1830) towards an Enlightened Western world.

 

The conference aims to bring together various contributions regarding the translation process of secular texts from a historical, linguistic and translation perspective, but also from the larger approach of cultural studies (the migration of ideas, the book and manuscript circulation  within the European space).

Language of the conference: English and Romanian

For registration, please fill in the form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdlxpdpm600gAI2suntUDDNBls-ErkOX3tnTa4kZCxIOhN3yQ/viewform?usp=pp_url

Deadline for registration:  September the 30th 2021.

The results of the conference will be published in English in a collective volume printed in the first half of 2022.

This conference is supported by a grant of the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitization, CNCS/CCCDI – UEFISCDI, project number  PN-III-P1-1.1-TE-2019-0721 within PNCDI III.

Contact Info: 

Lect. Dr. Iulia Zup (iuliazup@gmail.com), Lect. Dr. Alexandra Chiriac (axychiriac@gmail.com), Lect. Dr. Alina Bruckner (bruckner.alina@gmail.com); CS Dr. Ana Catanã-Spenchiu (anaspenchiu@gmail.com), Lect. Dr. Augustin Guriţã (augustingurita@yahoo.com)