We’re thrilled to announce that Professor Piet Van Poucke (Ghent University) has kindly accepted to strengthen our teaching staff during the 2020 edition of the CETRA Research Summer School in Translation Studies.

Piet Van Poucke…

The paper ‘Multilingual consultations in urgent medical care’ by A. Cox & K. Maryns (in Working Papers in Urban Language and Literacies, King’s College London, Centre for Language Discourse & Communication, 2019) explores multilingual strategies used in the absence of professional interpreters based on data from real-life consultations in a linguistically diverse Emergency Department. It finds that despite their efforts, the participants in the analysed case-studies lacked the linguistic and interpreting subtleties needed to perform complex linguistic-interactional tasks, and in this way, a form of ‘false fluency’ was created. Ad hoc multilingual solutions, significant as they are, require additional language support to avoid diagnostic insecurity. The paper recommends that at the level of patient management, a ‘linguistic assessment’ of patients could potentially be integrated into the triage process, and clinicians should be trained on how to recognize and remediate communication problems under the specific conditions of the emergency department.

Abstract

More than half of the world’s displaced population has moved to urban or per urban areas, and in Brussels, the superdiverse Belgian and European capital, the emergency care sector provides an important setting for analyzing the multilingual challenges faced by health practitioners. To gain a better insight in the interactional dynamics of emergency department consultations with immigrant patients, this paper focuses on multilingual strategies that include ‘ad hoc’ communicative solutions used in the absence of professional interpreters(lingua franca use, non-verbal communication, medical translation software, language mediation through companions or hospital staff). Despite their efforts, the participants in our two case-studies lacked the linguistic and interpreting subtleties needed to perform complex linguistic-interactional tasks, and in this way, a form of ‘false fluency’ was created. Ad hoc multilingual solutions, significant as they are, require additional language support to avoid diagnostic insecurity. At the level of patient management, a ‘linguistic assessment’ of patients could potentially be integrated into the triage process, and clinicians should be trained on how to recognize and remediate communication problems under the specific conditions of the emergency department.

You can read or download the paper via the following links on Academia and Researchgate:

• https://www.academia.edu/40230641/WP255_Cox_and_Maryns_2019._Multilingual_consultations_in_urgent_medical_care?auto=download
• https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335691199_Multilingual_consultations_in_urgent_medical_care

Our colleagues from the University of Antwerp, Department of Translation and Interpreting, are seeking to fill a full-time vacancy for a research professor (TTZAPBOF) in the area of Translation and interpreting in the global, digital age. All necessary information can be found on their website via https://www.uantwerpen.be/en/jobs/vacancies/ap/2019zapflwex262/.

Retranslating the Bible and the Qur’an

Tensions between Authoritative Translations and Retranslations in Theory and in Practice

KU Leuven, Belgium, 23-25 March 2020

CETRA – Centre for Translation Studies at KU Leuven, in collaboration with United Bible Societies, presents a three-day conference dedicated to the theme of retranslating the Bible and the Qur’an. Its aim is to bring together Translation Studies scholars and translators working with sacred writings, in particular Biblical and Quranic texts, and to stimulate the dialogue between theory and practice.

Over the last two decades, research on retranslation has greatly expanded, partly under the influence of the so-called Retranslation Hypothesis (Chesterman 2000), based on the ideas by Berman (1990), claiming that retranslations tend to be more source-text-oriented than previous translations. The idea that translation is a process of improvement over time, from one translation to the next, coming closer and closer to the source text, has lately repeatedly been challenged and even undermined (Paloposki & Koskinen 2004). It is striking that research on retranslation has mainly focused on translations of literary source texts with a ‘canonized’ or ‘canonical’ status such as Shakespeare (e.g., Hanna 2009), Joyce (e.g. Alevato do Amaral 2019, Peeters 2016, Peeters & Sanaz Gallego 2019) and Dostoevsky (e.g., Boulogne 2018). Drawing on recent theoretical insights into retranslation (e.g., Deane-Cox Sharon 2014, Alvstad & Assis Rosa 2015, Peeters 2016, Van Poucke 2017) and on concrete case-studies, this conference wants to explore the theoretical and practical implications of the field of tension that exists between translations and retranslations when ‘canonized’ or ‘canonical’ writings in the literal sense of the word are at stake.

In doing so, the conference wants to shed light on the complex triangular relationships between a given sacred source text, its previous translations and new translations. Special attention will be given to the opportunities, pitfalls and challenges of retranslating a Biblical text or Quranic text (Abdel Haleem 2005, Allaithy 2014) – typical examples of highly sensitive texts (Simms 1998) – in the present time. A key issue that we propose for discussion in this respect concerns retranslations of canonical texts for which authoritative or indeed canonized translations already exist. Taking into account insights of narrative theory (Baker 2006, Brownlie 2006), we want to investigate which opportunities retranslation offers to counter, undermine or strengthen the existing narratives in the case when not only the source text, but also a given pre-existing translation has been attributed canonical status. How, for instance, can translators challenge the King James Version of the Bible, the Revised Standard Version, the Roman Catholic version, or the Jehovah Witnesses Version? On the other hand, in the case of the Qur’an, it seems that there is no such thing as an established or authoritative translation, let alone a canonical translation. What then is the historical and/or contemporary status of the numerous existing interlingual and intralingual translations of the Qur’an, both in and outside of the Islamic world? Are they merely pragmatic solutions to make the source text more widely or more easily accessible, or do they fulfill other functions (literary, ideological, theological, explanatory and other) as well?

The main issues we would like to discuss are related, but not limited, to the following topics:

• Motives for the retranslation of sacred texts. How do issues such as ageing, changing contexts of reception, and reinterpretation impact on retranslations of the Bible, the Qur’an and other sacred writings? To what extent does the practice of retranslating sacred texts confirm or undermine the above mentioned retranslation hypothesis?
• Strategies for retranslating sacred texts. How does the canonized nature of a given text (original or translation) influence the adopted retranslation strategies? How does the canonical nature of an already existing translation influence retranslation strategies? Which concrete retranslation strategies do translators of the Bible, the Qur’an and other sacred writings adopt? Which micro-textual (syntax, lexicon, terminology, etc.) and macro-textual choices are made? How can translators of the Bible and the Qur’an deal, both theoretically and in practice, with, among others, problems of sensitivity, intralingual translation, modernization versus archaisation, explicitness versus implicitness, denotation versus connotation, literarity versus functional equivalence?
• The reception of retranslations of sacred texts. How can we evaluate the success of a given retranslation of the Bible, the Qur’an or other sacred writings? What makes some retranslations more successful than others? What role do various agents play in the canonization process of retranslations of sacred writings? What functions do the intralingual and interlingual retranslations or sacred writings fulfill in the different receiving contexts? How can the assumed lack of authoritative translations of the Qur’an be explained and challenged? How is it possible to compete with established translations of the Bible and the Qur’an? How to account for the unsuccessful reception of some retranslations? What paratextual and other strategies are used to put a retranslation in the market?

Admission procedure

Scholars and/or translators with relevant expertise are invited to submit a methodologically and/or theoretically motivated abstract of maximum 300 words for a 30-minute lecture (including 10 minutes discussion), as well as a short bio-bibliographical note. The conference language will be English. Please note there will be a flat-rate participation fee of € 100,00 to cover catering expenses during the three day-conference.

Please send your abstract and bio-bibliographical note to both pieter.boulogne@kuleuven.be and jos.verheyden@kuleuven.be before 1 December 2019. The notification of acceptance is 1 January 2020.

Selected contributions from the conference will be published in an edited volume or special issue of a journal in the field of Translation Studies, after a peer review procedure.

Confirmed keynote lectures

• The Iranian-Dutch writer Kader Abdolah: ‘Retranslating the Qur’an into Dutch. A conversation with Helge Daniëls’ (KU Leuven)
• Ahmed Allaithy (American University of Sharjah): ‘Found in Translation ‒ The Untranslatable Qur’an’
• Paraskevi Arapoglou (Hellenic Bible Society): ‘The curious case of LXX in Greek Orthodoxy: Retranslating within linguistic “dimorphia”’
• Alexandra Assis Rosa (University of Lisbon): ‘Retranslating Theory and Canonical Texts’
• Henri Bloemen (KU Leuven): ‘Retranslating the Bible and the Qur’an as Sensitive Texts’
• Ralph Cleminson (University of Oxford): ‘Perpetual Translation and the Quest for the Canonical: the Holy Scriptures in Slavonic’
• Sameh Hanna (Leeds University): ‘Retranslation and the re-definition of an ‘authoritative translation’: sociological insights from the Arabic translations of the Bible’
• Lourens De Vries (VU Amsterdam): ‘The retranslation of holy texts in Christian traditions: questions of authority, actualization and intertextuality’
• Alexey Somov (Institute for Bible Translation, Russia, Moscow): ‘The Authority of the Old for producing the New: Bible Translations in Russia in the 21st Century’

Organizing committee

• Pieter Boulogne (CETRA, KU Leuven)
• Marijke De Lang (United Bible Societies)
• Kris Peeters (UAntwerpen)
• Piet Van Poucke (UGent)
• Jos Verheyden (CETRA, KU Leuven)

Scientific committee

• Abied Alswlaiman (CETRA, KU Leuven)
• Pieter Boulogne (CETRA, KU Leuven)
• Marijke De Lang (United Bible Societies)
• Kris Peeters (UAntwerpen)
• Piet Van Poucke (UGent)
• Jos Verheyden (CETRA, KU Leuven)
• Andy Warren (United Bible Societies)

Selected references

• Abdel Haleem, Muhammad A.S. (2005). The Qur’an, A New Translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Alevato do Amaral, Vitor. (2019). Broadening the notion of retranslation. Cadernos de Traduçao 39:1. 239-259.
• Allaithy, Ahmed. (2014). Qur’anic Term Translation: A semantic Study from Arabic Perspective. Antwerp: Garant.
• Alvstad, Cecilia and Alexandra Assis Rosa. (2015). Voice in retranslation. An overview and some trends. International Journal of Translation Studies 27:1. 3-24.
• Baker, Mona. (2006). Translation and Conflict. A Narrative account. London and New York: Routledge.
• Berman, Antoine. (1990). La retraduction comme espace de la traduction.Palimspsestes 4 (Retraduire, edited by Paul Bensimon and Didier Coupaye). 1-7.
• Boulogne, Pieter. (2019). And now for something completely different … Once again the same book by Dostoevsky: A (con)textual analysis of early and recent Dostoevsky retranslations into Dutch. Cadernos de Tradução. Edição Regular Temática – Retranslation in Context. 39:1. 117-144.
• Brownlie, Siobhan. (2006). Narrative Theory and Retranslation Theory. Across Languages and Cultures 7:2. 145-170.
• Chesterman, Andrew. (2000). A causal model for translation studies. In: Intercultural Faultlines. Research Models in Translation Studies I : Textual and Cognitive Aspects, edited by Maeve Olohan. Manchester: St. Jerome. 15-27.
• Collombat, Isabelle. (2004). Le XXIe siècle : l’âge de la retraduction. Translation Studies in the New Millennium 1-15.
• Deane-Cox, Sharon. (2014) Retranslation: Translation, Literature and Reinterpretation. London: Bloomsbury.
• Desmidt, Isabelle. (2009). (Re)translation revisited. Meta 54:4. 669-683.
• Gambier, Yves. (1994). La retraduction, retour et détour. Meta39:3. 413-417.
• Gambier, Yves. (2011) La retraduction: ambiguïtés et défis. Autour de la retraduction. Perspectives littéraires européennes, edited by Enrico Monti & Peter Schneyder. Orizons. 49-66.
• Gürçağlar, Şehnaz Tahir. (2009). Retranslation. In: Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, 2nd ed., edited by Mona Baker & Gabriela Saldanha. Routledge. 233-236.
• Hanna, Sameh. (2009). Othello in the Egyptian Vernacular: Negotiating the ‘doxic’ in Drama Translation and Identity Formation. The Translator: studies in intercultural communication. 15: 1. 157-178
• Izutsu, Toshihiko. (2001). Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qur’an. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press.
• Koskinen, Kaisa. (2019). Revising and retranslating. In: Routledge Handbook of Literary Translation, edited by Kelly Washbourne & Ben Van Wyke. Routledge. 315-324.
• Koskinen, Kaisa & Paloposki, Outi. (2015). Anxieties of influence. The voice of the first translator in retranslation. Target 27:1. 25-39.
• Leutzsch, Martin. (2019). Übersetzungstabus als Indikatoren normativer Grenzen in der Geschichte der christlichen Bibelübersetzung. In: Übertragungen heiliger Texte in Judentum, Christentum und Islam. Fallstudien zu Formen und Grenzen der Transposition, edited by K. Heyden & H. Manuwald, Hermeneutische Untersuchungen zur Theologie Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. 33-62.
• Liss, Hanna. (2019). Wort – Klang – Bild: Zur (Un-)Übersetzbarkeit heiliger Texte im Judentum. In: Übertragungen heiliger Texte in Judentum, Christentum und Islam. Fallstudien zu Formen und Grenzen der Transposition, edited by K. Heyden & H. Manuwald, Hermeneutische Untersuchungen zur Theologie Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. 19-32.
• Long, Lynne. (2005). Translation and Religion: Holy Untranslatable? Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd.
• Paloposki, Outi & Koskinen, Kaisa. (2004). Thousand and One Translations: Retranslation Revisited. In: Claims, Changes, and Challenges, edited by Gyde Hansen et al., John Benjamins. 27-38.
• Peeters, Kris (2016). Traduction, retraduction et dialogisme. Meta61:3, 629-649.
• Peeters, Kris & Sanz Gallego, Guillermo (2019, to appear). Translators’ creativity in the Dutch and Spanish (re)translations of “Oxen of the Sun”: (re)translation the Bakhtinian way. In: European Joyce Studies, edited by Erika Mihálycsa & Jolanta Wawrzycka. (Re)Translating Joyce in/for the 21^st-Century.
• Pink, Johanna. (2019). Text, Auslegung, Ritus. Kontroversen um die richtige und falsche Übersetzung des Korans am Beispiel Indonesien. In: Übertragungen heiliger Texte in Judentum, Christentum und Islam. Fallstudien zu Formen und Grenzen der Transposition, edited by K. Heyden & H. Manuwald. Hermeneutische Untersuchungen zur Theologie Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. 63-89.
• Simms, Karl. (1997). Translating Sensitive Texts: Linguistic Aspects (Approaches to Translation Studies 14). Brill/Rodopi.
• Topia, André. (2004). Retraduire Ulysses : le troisième texte. Palimpsestes 129-151.
• Van Poucke, Piet. (2017). Aging as a motive for literary translation. A survey of case studies on retranslation. Translation and Interpreting Studies. 12:1. 91-115.
• Venuti, Lawrence (2004). Retranslations: the creation of value. Bucknell Review 47: 1. 25-38.

Now that the 31st edition of our Summer School lays behind us, it is our pleasure to announce that the Board of CETRA – Centre for Translation Studies at KU Leuven has chosen the next CETRA Chair Professor:

Brian James Baer, Professor of Russian and Translation Studies at Kent State University and Leading Research Fellow at National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow, will be the CETRA Chair Professor of our 2020 Research Summer School in Translation Studies. The Summer School will take place at our Leuven campus from 17 until 28 August 2020.  A detailed provisional program and information about the application procedure (two rounds) will be made available in due time on our official web page and our blog.

Brian James Baer is the author of the monographs Other Russias: Homosexuality and the Crisis of Post-Soviet Identity (2009), winner of an ALA Choice Award, Translation and the Making of Modern Russian Literature (2016), and Queer Theory and Translation Studies: Language, Politics, Desire (forthcoming). He is founding editor of the journal Translation and Interpreting Studies (TIS) and co-editor, with Michelle Woods of the book series Literatures, Cultures, Translation (Bloomsbury). He has also edited a number of collected volumes, such as Contexts, Subtexts and Pretexts: Literary Translation in Eastern Europe and Russia (2011), Russian Writers on Translation. An Anthology, with Natalia Olshanskaya (2013), and Researching Translation and Interpreting, with Claudia Angelelli (2015). He is also the translator of Juri Lotman’s final book-length work, The Unpredictable Workings of Culture (2013), and of a forthcoming collection of essays by Lotman on cultural memory. He is currently working on an annotated translation of Andrei Fedorov’s 1953 Introduction to Translation Theory, for which he won the 2014 EST Translation Prize.

Baer is the current president of the American Translation and Interpreting Studies Association (ATISA), president of the Midwest Slavic Association, and a member of the advisory board of the Shanghai Jiao Tong Mona Baker Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies.

 

Our two alumni, Hanna Pięta & Laura Ivaska, and a former member of our Summer School teaching staff, Yves Gambier, are organizing a special issue of Target (2022) on indirect translation. Submissions are now welcome!

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Call for Papers

Special Issue of Target (2022)

What can indirect translation research do for Translation Studies?

Guest-edited by Hanna Pięta (University of Lisbon), Laura Ivaska (University of Turku) and Yves Gambier (University of Turku & Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University)

Call for papers
Indirect translation — understood broadly as a translation of a translation (Gambier 1994), and encompassing also relay interpreting — is an age-old practice (e.g., translation of the Bible, I Ching, Shakespeare, or the activity of the so-called Toledo School). It was and still is practiced in all four corners of the world and in myriad areas of society (Gambier and Stecconi 2019). What is more, the practice seems to be here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future. For example, increasing global connectivity and transnational mobility of people and commodities often lead to situations where there is a sudden need to translate from a given language but there are not enough qualified translators working from this language to meet the demand. In such situations, translators are often expected to translate specifically for the purpose of further translation or from an already translated text, thereby actively engaging in the indirect translation process (Leppänen 2013; Davier 2014; Ustaszewski 2018). As a subfield of research, indirect translation is still relatively young. As shown in a recent bibliometric survey (Pięta 2017), systematic studies specifically focused on indirect translation date back to the mid-2000s. Most published studies are historically oriented (e.g., hardly ever covering the 21st century) and limited to literary translation (and to a far lesser extent, conference interpreting). They cover only a handful of linguistic and geographic areas (mostly in Europe, Asia and South America), look mainly at one platform, mode and medium through which indirect translation is carried out (the book), and are often heavily anchored in the equivalence or cultural turn paradigms. The opportunities for growth of indirect translation research are therefore vast, as is the potential of what is still a niche subfield to contribute to the development of Translation Studies in general. First, while looking into the complex source-mediating target text/language/culture situations, indirect translation research stresses the complex tripartite nature of many translation processes (Ivaska and Huuhtanen[submitted], Maia et al. 2018), thereby challenging the “exclusive, binary and unidirectional relationship between source text and target text” that characterizes the standard Western model of translation (Delabastita 2008, 239). Second, as instances of indirect translation can be found in many different forms and manifestations of translational phenomena, it can be conveniently used as a bridge concept that enhances the interconnection between different branches of the largely fragmented Translation Studies and, as such, promotes the ideal of consilience (Chesterman 2017). Third, since indirect translation research inquires into issues like the genealogies and circulation of texts and ideas, power struggles among dominant and dominated cultures and groups, or the implications of central language/culture mediation (to mention just a few key issues, cf. Assis Rosa et al. 2017), it may open up useful entry points for interaction with other disciplines that also ask questions about these matters. Last, research on indirect translation is likely to add complexity to ongoing debates in Translation Studies related to some of the main concerns of the world we live in — such as inaccessibility, inequality, language domination, migration crises — as they often imply or employ indirect translation in one way or the other (Pięta 2019).

This special issue wants to unleash and showcase this potential. The guest-editors therefore welcome conceptual and empirical contributions that work towards this aim. Potential topics include but are not restricted to:

• rethinking basic concepts of Translation Studies through the lens of indirect translation (e.g., source text and target text, author and translator, original and translation, center and periphery, equivalence, direct translation)
• core features or patterns of indirect translation verifiable across different translation domains (e.g., audiovisual, machine, specialized translation; community interpreting, audio-description, localization, transcreation,
  transediting)
• indirect translation in other fields and disciplines (e.g., adaptation studies, forensic linguistics, gender studies, development studies, multilingual studies, international business studies, etc.)
• indirect translation and hot topics in Translation Studies (e.g., social media, big data, multilingual crisis communication, etc.).

Preference will be given to contributions that address the abovementioned aim by tapping into recent methodological and theoretical developments in Translation Studies, covering present-day instances of indirect translation, and/or providing insights into still largely unexplored platforms, modes, media, geographic areas (e.g., Africa, Australia, the Middle East) or language mediation settings (e.g., the marketplace, international trains, museums, language classrooms).

To propose a paper, please send your abstract (700-800 words, excluding references) by email to all the guest-editors of the Special Issue:

• Hanna Pięta (University of Lisbon): hannapieta@campus.ul.pt
• Laura Ivaska (University of Turku): laura.ivaska@utu.fi
• Yves Gambier (University of Turku & Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University): yves.gambier@utu.fi

 

References

• Assis Rosa, Alexandra, Hanna Pięta, and Rita Bueno Maia, eds. 2017. Indirect Translation: Theoretical, Methodological and Terminological Issues. Special issue of Translation Studies 10 (2). London: Routledge.
• Chesterman, Andrew. 2017. “Towards Consilience.” Reflections on Translation Theory: Selected Papers 1993–2014, 35–41. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• Davier, Lucile. 2014. “The Paradoxical Invisibility of Translation in the Highly Multilingual Context of News Agencies.” Global Media and Communication 10 (1): 53–72.
• Delabastita, Dirk. 2008. “Status, Origin, Features: Translation and Beyond.” Beyond Descriptive Translation Studies: Investigations in Homage to Gideon Toury, edited by Anthony Pym and Miriam Shlesinger, 233–246. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• Gambier, Yves. 1994. “La retraduction, retour et détour.” Meta 39 (3): 413–417.
• Gambier, Yves, and Umberto Stecconi, eds. 2019. A World Atlas of Translation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• Ivaska, Laura, and Suvi Huuhtanen. (submitted). “Beware the Source Text: Five (Re)translations of the Same Work, But from Different Source Texts.” Meta.
• Leppänen, Saara. 2013. “A Case in Translation Archaeology: Explanatory Peritexts in Finnish Translations of Japanese Literature.” New Horizons in Translation Research and Education 1, edited by Nike Pokorn and Kaisa Koskinen, 45–59. University of Eastern Finland: Joensuu.
• Maia, Rita Bueno, Hanna Pięta, and Alexandra Assis Rosa. 2018. “Unleashing the Potential of Indirect Translation.” Poster presented at the International Conference on Publishing in Translation Studies. September, KU Leuven, campus Antwerp.
• Pięta, Hanna. 2017. “Theoretical, Methodological and Terminological Issues in Researching Indirect Translation: A Critical Annotated Bibliography.” Translation Studies 10 (2): 198–216.
• Pięta, Hanna. 2019. “Indirect Translation: Main Trends in Practice and Research.” Special issue of Slovo.ru: baltijskij accent 10 (1): 21–31.
• Ustaszewski, Michael. 2018. “Tracing the Effect of Pivot Languages in Indirect Translation.” Using Corpora in Contrastive and Translation Studies Conference, Louvain-la-Neuve, 12–14 September, 2018, edited by Sylviane Granger, Marie-Aude Lefer and Laura Aguiar de Souza Penha Marion, 174–176. CECL Papers 1. Louvain-la-Neuve: Université Catholique de Louvain.

For more information, see this link.

Many thanks to all our participants and staff members for an unforgettable 31st edition of our research summer school in translation studies. Have a save trip back home, and, if applicable, a beautiful journey to your PhD defenses!

Some say all good things must come to an end, we say all good things must be passed along. Today, after countless years of loyal service to our participants, Professor Christina Schaeffner is more than deservedly retiring from our Summer School teaching staff. We will remain with vivid memories, deep gratitude and look forward to meeting her on different occasions.