OCCT HT Week 1 Updates

Join Queen's Translation Exchange and OCCT for an engaging evening of translation and literature with celebrated German author Clemens Meyer this Thursday 23 January. Register for the event here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/translation-workshop-and-reading-with-clemens-meyer-tickets-90117928149?aff=erelexpmlt. In Hilary Term, the Discussion Group will continue with the format: Comparisons Across and Beyond Genres. In our first meeting, on 27 January, Yeogeun Kim (Oxford) will discuss with translations of a 17th century Korean Buddhist romance and their visual renditions. Lunch provided; no preparation necessary.

Don’t forget to register for OCCT’s postgraduate and early-career conference, Translational Spaces: Language, Literatures, Disciplines Conference, taking place on 22 February 2020 at St Anne’s College. The conference programme and registration link is available here: https://www.occt.ox.ac.uk/translational-spaces-language-literatures-disciplines-conference. The conference will culminate with André Naffis-Sahely reading from The Heart of a Stranger: An Anthology of Exile Literature (Pushkin Press, 2019).

We are proud to announce that our very own Adriana X. Jacobs has been awarded a prestigious 2020 NEA Translation Grant to support her translation of Tahel Frosh's debut poetry collection AVARICE!

EVENTS

1. Queen’s Translation Exchange

International Book Club - Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

The next meeting will take place on Tuesday 3 March, 5-6:30pm in the Memorial Room at Queen's College.
 

For this meeting we’ll be reading Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk. Antonia Lloyd-Jones, the translator, will be joining us for the discussion. First published in Polish in 2009, the novel was translated into English by Antonia Lloyd-Jones in 2018 and shortlisted for the International Man Booker Prize in 2019. No knowledge of Polish is required and new attendees are welcome! Drinks and snacks will be provided.

Olga Tokarczuk won the Man Booker International Prize 2018 for her novel, Flights, and the 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature. Find out more about the book and sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/international-book-club-tickets-89245982135

As always, all are welcome and the event is free, just sign up here to let us know if you plan to come.

Blackwell's is offering a 30% discount for attendees of the Book Club. Simply quote the following code when purchasing the book online or in person: BSTPLOW20

2. TRANSLATING ILLNESS

What do medicine and translation have in common? In what sense, and to what extent, is translation used in contexts as different as the transfer of meaning from one language (or medium) to the other, the concept of knowledge translation, and the process of protein synthesis? How will a nuanced understanding of translation help us advance in literary and linguistic studies as well as in clinical research? In a newly-launched seminar series taking place at The Queen’s College, Oxford, we will explore these questions in an interdisciplinary way, with the aim to endorse, promote and even inspire translation outside our area of expertise, and our common understanding. 

Everyone is welcome and no preparation is required.  

The following seminars will be presented at 5.15pm on Mondays in the Shulman Auditorium, The Queen’s College, Oxford. Tea and coffee will be served. 

20 Jan            Chas Bountra, Professor of Translational Medicine, Oxford

                       Pro Vice-Chancellor, Innovation

                       ‘We Are Not Good at Translating Lab Science into New Medicines for Patients’

17 Feb            Trish Greenhalgh, Professor of Primary Care Health Sciences, Oxford

4 May              Banafshe Larijani, Director of the Centre for Therapeutic Innovation, Bath

11 May            Charles Forsdick, James Barrow Professor French and AHRC Theme Leadership                           

                        Fellow for ‘Translating Cultures’, Liverpool

1 June             Jean-Marc Dewaele, Professor in Applied Linguistics and Multilingualism, Birbeck

8 June             Matthew Reynolds, Professor of English and Comparative Criticism, and Leader

                         of the ‘Prismatic Translation’ Research Project, Oxford

15 June           Ross White, Reader in Clinical Psychology and Leader of ‘Mental Health in                                     

                        Context’ Research Group, Liverpool

Please note that the seminars will be recorded. 

For queries please contact: marta.arnaldi@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk

3. INSTITUTE OF MODERN LANGUAGES RESEARCH
School of Advanced Study | University of London

Thursday, 5 and Friday, 6 March 2020

BOOKING NOW OPEN: https://modernlanguages.sas.ac.uk/events/event/21985

This two-day conference aims to recover and put across the voices of women in France, Italy and across Europe who defied the existing order and the rules of society. It intends to recover the forgotten voices and experiences of these women, who might not have had a prominent role in their world during their lifetimes, but, nevertheless, contributed to shape our present. For centuries, concepts such as infirmitas, imbecillitas and levitas were considered key characteristics of women. Therefore, the construction of the identities of both women and men was framed by the dichotomy between the private and the public sphere, and by the opposition between obedience, a woman’s virtue, and command, the prerogative of men.
Beyond the conceptualisation and idealisation of the female sex, however, a close investigation of everyday realities questions this long-standing, stereotyped notion of women, uncovering a different scenario, including women who did not passively accept their status. In a static, hierarchical, male-dominated society, some of these women reacted against the constraints imposed upon them and challenged their family, their society, their worlds. Theirs were small, but powerful acts of resistance against and disruption of the status quo.

Full programme: https://modernlanguages.sas.ac.uk/events/event/21985

Keynote Speakers: Alberto Mario Banti (Pisa) and Helena Sanson (Cambridge).
Conference Organisers: Sara Delmedico (Cambridge) and Katia Pizzi (IMLR).

Advance registration essential. Fees are as follows and include refreshments and lunch:
Both days: £35 (standard rate) | £30 (Friends of Germanic Studies/Friends of Italian at the IMLR) | £25 (students)
One day: £25 (standard rate) | £20 (Friends of Germanic Studies/Friends of Italian at the IMLR) | £15 (students)

4. INSTITUTE OF MODERN LANGUAGES RESEARCH
School of Advanced Study | University of London

Tuesday, 25 February 2020, 5.30 – 7 pm

Venue: Room G35, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

BOOKING NOW OPEN: https://modernlanguages.sas.ac.uk/events/event/21503

Jeremy Adler (King’s College London), Jim Reed (Oxford) and Dan Wilson (Royal Holloway, London) discuss Adler’s new critical biography of German novelist, playwright and poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Goethe has often been called the last Renaissance man; this biography shows that Goethe was in fact the first of the moderns – a maker of modernity. The book offers fresh, thought-provoking interpretations of The Sorrows of Young Werther, The Elective Affinities, Egmont, Iphigenia in Tauris, and Faust, and analyses his life, including his love affairs and his meetings with the great people of the age, such as Napoleon Bonaparte. Adler shows how Goethe’s encyclopedic interest in many fields influenced later thinkers such as Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud, Émile Durkheim and Susan Sontag.

Refreshments | Attendance free, but advance online registration required.

This event is organised in conjunction with Reaktion Books.