“Translational Hermeneutics as a Research Paradigm”

Call for Papers

The Third Hermeneutics and Translation Studies Symposium

“Translational Hermeneutics as a Research Paradigm”

1st Call for Papers

The objective of this series of symposia is to study how Hermeneutics and Translation Studies can complement each other. The first symposium in 2011 opened up the main avenues of enquiry, while the second, in 2013, focused on new areas of research in Translational Hermeneutics. The papers presented covered a wide range of topics, including literary and specialized translation, the role of hermeneutics in the Muslim tradition of exegetics, and the importance of translation in the interpretation of postcolonial texts. In particular, questions concerning the proper place and definition of “subjectivity,” “phenomenology,” and “method” within Translational Hermeneutics emerged as the primary points of scholarly debate.

The objective of the third symposium is to frame Translational Hermeneutics as a research paradigm capable of engaging both the theory and practice of translation. In terms of theory, hermeneutics broaches a wide field of philosophical enquiry, inasmuch as it draws upon phenomenology and deconstruction, on theology, and on aesthetic, ethical, and political philosophy. In terms of practice, hermeneutics offers a useful framework in which to elaborate concrete research agendas in translation studies. There will also be a discussion session held during the symposium geared to foster research in Translational Hermeneutics: We hope to discuss concrete, collaborative research projects and how to get them financed. We therefore invite you to bring your research interests and ideas with you to Cologne. Hopefully these discussions will lead to the submission of a few concrete research proposals for funding.

We invite participants to consider the relationship between hermeneutics and translation studies both as a practical methodology informing specific (empirical) research projects as well as a philosophically rigorous investigation into the (cognitive) processes involved in the mediating activities surrounding translation.

One outcome of this symposium on hermeneutics and translation, we hope, will be a map for the future of research in translation studies. But since there is no future without a past, this symposium will – as did the last two – endeavor to deepen the sense of the roots of hermeneutics, be they in e.g. Schleiermacher, Heidegger, Gadamer, Schütz, or Steiner. Because this can be regarded as an exercise in reminding hermeneutics of its own intellectual debts, it is appropriate to declare one debt in particular: one of the great proponents of the hermeneutic approach to translation studies in Germany was Fritz Paepcke. He would have celebrated his 100th birthday on the 6th of June, and the symposium accordingly invites all participants to join in a celebration of his life and work.

The third conference will take place over two days, the 30th of June and 1st of July 2016, at the Technische Hochschule in Cologne, Germany. A selection of papers presented at the conference will be published in association with Zeta Books. Participants might wish to view Translational Hermeneutics: The First Symposium, edited by Radegundis Stolze, John Stanley and Larisa Cercel (Zeta Books, 2015). The proceedings of the second symposium is forthcoming in 2016.

The keynote speaker is Anthony Pym. He will be speaking on the “Modes of Erlebnis within translation knowledge” and will be dealing with the ways practice, involvement, commitment and activism all produce special kinds of knowledge specific to translation (and why empiricism is still mostly better).

The following three distinguished scholars will be speaking as well:

1. Philippe Forget
2. Radegundis StolzeZur Anschlussfähigkeit der Hermeneutik in der Übersetzungswissenschaft”

SUGGESTED TOPICS

We are inviting papers on new research areas relevant to Translational Hermeneutics. The topics include – but are not limited – to the following:

1. Using hermeneutics to define the object (the Sache) of translatory enquiry
2. Using hermeneutics and phenomenology to describe the implications of subjectivity in the translator
3. Deploying hermeneutics to mediate ‘translation’ to both philosophy and the empirical sciences
4. The relevance of hermeneutics for media translation
5. Theological hermeneutics and the task of translating sacred texts
6. The hermeneutical approach in translational didactics
7. The place of individual knowledge and experience in practical translation
8. The role of historical and/or cultural “fore-understanding” in the process of interpreting and translating

 More here: http://www.phenhermcommresearch.de/index.php/conferences/16-call-for-papers

Review: Barbara Cassin, editor DICTIONARY OF UNTRANSLATABLES A philosophical lexicon

The philosophy of translation by TIM CRANE

This extraordinary book, a huge dictionary of philosophical terms from many languages, is a translation of Vocabulaire européen des philosophies: Dictionnaire des intraduisibles, originally published in 2004, the brainchild of the French philosopher Barbara Cassin. If the original project was paradoxical, then the present version is doubly so: not just a dictionary of untranslatable words, but a translation of that dictionary. Rather than despair at the self-undermining self-referentiality of the whole idea, the editors rejoice in it. Indeed, moving the word “untranslatable” to the beginning of the English title proudly asserts the paradox even more forcefully than the original French title does, and forms what the English-language editor Emily Apter calls “an organising principle of the entire project”.

More here:
http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article1512220.ece