Call for Papers: Word and Text – A Journal of Literary Studies and

Linguistics, II, 2 (2012)
 

THE PLACE OF TRANSLATION

`A language is a place' Elias Canetti once noted, thus intimating that languages are anchored in a bounded space, determined by the place(s) they inhabit. If language is place, one may suggest that place is also language. This apparently natural equation is necessarily complicated and questioned through translation. Crossing the territories of languages is inherent to the task of the translator as experiences must be communicated in other languages, transplanted and ultimately `displaced'.
Drawing on the notion that translation is a practice carrying both ethical and aesthetic imperatives, this special thematic issue invites contributions which explore the role of translation and the function of translators particularly in relation to the notion of `place'. How are the singularities attached to "place" (i.e. supposedly `essential' and idiosyncratic notions linked to the identification of one's territory, space, city, origins, roots, identity) imported, adopted, adapted, appropriated and reconfigured as they cross boundaries and trespass cultural and linguistic borders? Is translation somewhat limited to superficial and media-fuelled representation of place(s) copied uncritically? Does translation remove (`displace') the particularities of place in order to conform to the homogeneous discourse of a uniform global world or, on the contrary, do certain translation practices insist on remarking the existence of `difference' through place? Does translation simply neutralize and `re-place', or does it negotiate alternatives? Do utopian, hybrid, nostalgized, idealized, nonexistent (`placeless') places (ultimately, what kind of places?) emerge through translation?
Prompting critics to engage with the trans-disciplinary paradigm which underlies the field of translation studies, the issue seeks contributions that will broaden our understanding of the relation between translation and place through a variety of critical and cultural frameworks, also applied to language, discourse and literature, that have shaped our contemporary academic agendas (translation theories, post-modernism, post-colonialism, feminism, diaspora, globalization studies, place studies etc.).