“I, too, feel the need to reread the books I have already read," a third reader says, "but at every rereading I seem to be reading a new book, for the first time. Is it I who keep changing and seeing new things of which I was not previously aware? Or is reading a construction that assumes form, assembling a great number of variables, and therefore something that cannot be repeated twice according to the same pattern? Every time I seek to relive the emotion of a previous reading, I experience different and unexpected impressions, and do not find again those of before. [...]”

Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller

If reading and comparing, interpretation and translation are regular keywords in our discipline, re-reading is a concept that goes often unexplored, even though it endows them all with new and enhanced meaning. That ‘re’ necessarily asks us to position that reading and its repetition (or repetitions) within time and space: in the short term, re-reading is essential to any intensive, critical engagement with text; but re-reading in the longer term entails revisiting more than just text – it means an active comparison between now and then, necessarily locating ourselves within that action and renegotiating both cultural and personal awareness. Re-reading can take different forms as it happens over time, sometimes a seasonal or cyclical action to find something familiar – yet never quite the same – sometimes taking the shape of cumulative, palimpsestic reading. And what if we extend that act of reading outside of ourselves, and choose to read and understand with others, inscribing our own interpretive effort within a history of reading? We become part of an interpretive community where reading and re-reading – across time and space, borders and languages, cultures and media – contribute to a tapestry of meaning.

We invite contributions for posters and 15-minute papers that build on the concept of re-reading to reflect on themes including, though not limited to, the following:

• material expressions of re-reading
• comparing re-readings of the same text
• fictional representations of re-reading
• re-reading as emotion
• translation and re-translation
• adaptation and transformations of texts across media
• re-appropriation of texts, canons, histories
• intergenerational and diachronic acts of re-reading
• rewriting as re-reading
• re-reading and decoloniality
• dystopia as re-reading

Please send proposals of around 200 words to <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.;, including your name, affiliation, and a brief biography by 3 March 2025. All participants will be notified by 14 March 2025. Attendance is free and the conference will be hybrid. Our keynote speaker this year will be Professor David Damrosch (Institute for World Literature, Harvard University).

Creativity and Translation in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

University of Innsbruck, Austria, January 11-12, 2024

Organization:

Dr. Katharina Walter (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) and
Ass.-Prof. Dr. Marco Agnetta (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

In the forthcoming issue of the journal Syn-Thèses, we propose to address issues of intermediality in audiovisual and interactive contexts.  Intermedial studies stem from an interest in “interaesthetic” phenomena (Bruhn and Gjelsvik 2018). The concept has a closer connection with aesthetics and “the idea of ‘sister arts’” (Pethö 2018). Pethö, drawing on the Renaissance concept of paragone, Lessing’s famous Laocoön essay (1767), and the Wagnerian ideal of Gesamtkunstwerk (1849)—that is, a total work of art—explains that this rivalry between different art forms is one of the precursors of intermediality. The idea of the mixing of art forms was also a necessary criterion for the so-called historical avant-gardes of the beginning of the twentieth century since it helped them “achieve the highest artistic and political/spiritual goals” (Bürger 1984, quoted in Bruhn and Gjelsvik 2018). As a matter of fact, avant-garde artists proclaimed that this mixing of art forms would be very beneficial for the advancement of art and thus were fervent in engaging in intermedial experiments (Kostopoulou 2023).

This book is a collection of research papers pertaining to the theory and practice of translation.It deals with the identity of translation, translation as a process, translation and its determinants, politics and translation, and the translation of scientific terminology so on and so forth. It also discusses some translations in the light of various theoretical approaches and strategies. The examples provided here, as well as the translations discussed and the approaches adopted for analysis will definitely add to the knowledge system of Translation Studies, Comparative Literature and Applied Linguistics.

TREXTUALITY: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Translated and Multilingual Texts

University of Turku, Finland, 7–9 September, 2023

Keynote speakers

Guyda Armstrong, University of Manchester: Title tba

Esa Christine Hartmann, University of Strasbourg: Title tba

Outi Paloposki, University of Turku: "Drafts, letters, letter drafts – adventures in translation archives"

Call for papers

Deadline for proposals: 27 February 2023

We are pleased to announce that the upcoming IASS-15 conference at the University of Macedonia, August 30 – September 3, 2022, Thessaloniki (https://www.semioticsworld.com/) will be hosting a book launch concerning three new publications on translation where you have been actively involved in:

Translation, Semiotics, and Feminism: Selected Writings of Barbara Godard, edited by Eva C. Karpinski and Elena Basile. London: Routledge, 2022.

Exploring the Translatability of Emotions: Cross-Cultural and Transdisciplinary Encounters, edited by Susan Petrilli and Meng Ji. London, Palgrave-Macmillan, 2022.

Intersemiotic Approaches to Emotions. Translating across Signs, Bodies and Values, edited by Susan Petrilli and Meng Ji. London, Routledge, 2022.

The joint presentation will be held on Wednesday 31 August, 19:30 – 20:30, in Room 5 (1st floor). Those of you who will be able to attend are also warmly welcome to intervene during the launch if you so wish.

In the meanwhile, full details are available at this link, as part of the official conference program: https://www.semioticsworld.com/program/. Please feel free to circulate the invite among your colleagues who might be interested.