OCCT MT Week 8 Updates
In the last Discussion Group session of term, Sowon Park (UCSB) was in conversation with Matthew Reynolds (Oxford) about the neglected issue of script as a key factor in preventing the existence of a more diverse literary canon.
The Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize 2021 opened for submissions on 1 December 2020. The closing date for entries is 31 January 2021. The entry requirements are available here: https://www.occt.ox.ac.uk/oxford-weidenfeld-prize.
OCCT invites submissions for a one-day virtual workshop, Fictions of Retranslations: Retranslating Language and Style in Prose Fiction. The workshop will be hosted online, on 12 March 2021. We encourage doctoral students and early careers researchers working on retranslations of prose to send an abstract (350 words) and a brief bio (150 words) by 14 December 2020 to rowan.anderson@ell.ox.ac.uk and anna.saroldi@ell.ox.ac.uk. For the full CFP see here: https://www.occt.ox.ac.uk/fictions-retranslations-retranslating-language-and-style-prose-fiction.
EVENTS AND CFPs
1. The Centre for Translation and Interpreting Studies, University of Leicester
Presents Over Land, Over Sea: Journeys in Translation Revisited
Thursday 3 December 2020
Time: 4.00pm - 5.30pm (London GMT)
Book your ticket via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/over-land-over-sea-journeys-in-translation-revisited-tickets-130581236995.
The Centre for Translation and Interpreting Studies, University of Leicester, invites you to a special event of the 20-21 seminar series: Over Land, Over Sea: Journeys in Translation Revisited.
The seminar will appeal to people interested in poetry, migration and translation as well as those who are following the ongoing efforts to translate poems from Over Land, Over Sea: Poems for those seeking refuge (Five Leaves Publication, 2015) into other languages.
The seminar will hear from Journeys in Translation coordinator, Ambrose Musiyiwa, who will give an overview of the initiative; Monica Manolachi, who is coordinating translations into Romanian; and Pietro Deandrea, who translated Over Land, Over Sea into Italian to give us Per terra e per mare: Poesie per chi è in cerca di rifugio which was released from CivicLeicester in September this year.
A number of featured poets will also read their work and respond to the translations. The poets taking part are: Joanne Limburg who contributed “Backscatter Song” (Over Land, Over Sea, p.8) and “So Many Set Out” (p.63); Laila Sumpton who contributed “Landing on Lampedusa” (p.40) and “Please look after this bear” (p.101); and, Sibyl Ruth who translated her great aunt Rose Scooler's poem, from its German original,“Vale Terezin”, into "Goodbye to Theresienstadt" in English for Over Land, Over Sea (p.57).
The readings and discussion will be followed by a Q&A.
Also speaking at the event are: Phil Horspool, Director of the English Language Teaching Unit (ELTU) and Chair of the Leicester University of Sanctuary Steering Group; Chiara Denaro of Watch the Med Alarmphone which runs a self-organized hotline for people in distress in the Mediterranean Sea; and Yagoub Kibeida, Executive Director of Mosaico: Azioni per i Rifugiati, a non-partisan association founded in Turin in 2006 which supports refugees, promotes human rights and disseminates knowledge and information on forced migration.
The event builds on the Journeys in Translation seminar that was held at the University of Leicester in November 2017 which looked at poetry, migration and translation and featured contributions from a number of poets and translators involved with the initiative and University of Leicester staff and students.
2. Titled Axis Press has launched a call for essays on the topic, "What does it mean to decolonise translation?"
In recent years, there has been a growing conversation re-evaluating the way literature is written, published and read in the Anglophone world, pushing for a dismantling of the idea of a Western canon, and questioning the dominance of English-language writing in representing places and communities. Where do we go from here, and what are the implications for literary translation? What happens when we cast a critical eye over what is and isn’t considered literature, what is translated into which language and why, how translation is carried out, by whom and for whom? Most professional translators and editors in the anglosphere remain white — but is it enough to call for more diversity in this area, especially if the intended readers remain white, and given that the very concept of professionalisation is entangled with imperialism? Is the idea of decolonising translation, particularly into English, a contradiction?
These are some of the questions editors Kavita Bhanot and Jeremy Tiang will be asking in this anthology to be published by Tilted Axis Press in 2022, with the support of the National Centre for Writing’s Visible Communities programme. We are calling for pieces with an emphasis on practice that discuss, explore and question what, if anything, it might mean to decolonise translation, by those who engage with literary translation in any form. These may take the form of essays, or may be more generically varied — feel free to surprise us. We envision the pieces mostly falling in the range of 3,000 to 5,000 words, but don’t let this constrain you.
Please send a proposal of up to 300 words and a 500-word writing sample (from the proposed essay OR from another relevant work) to guesteditors@tiltedaxispress.com by 31 January 2021. Notifications will be sent out about two weeks after submissions close, and full pieces will be due by 30 April 2021. Tilted Axis Press will pay each contributor a fee of up to £500, depending on the length of the piece.
More about tiltedaxispress.com.
