CFP Bucknell University Translation Conference (undergrad/grad) (10/7/07; 11/9-10/07)

Translation: Comparative Perspectives (A Conference for Emerging Scholars)

For its second annual undergraduate/graduate conference, the Bucknell University Comparative Humanities Review wants to examine translation as an emblem of a larger set of relationships that play a vital role in mediating between multiple subjectivities. The effect of the 21st century's heightened globalization is making phrases such as "the global marketplace", "the global classroom", or "the global village" part of our everyday lexicon, and we are witnessing the rise of the international university as an enclave of academia. It is timely to reflect upon meaningful and responsible ways of mediating the wide array of voices that are being put into dialogue. In the age of globalization, universities are offering a comparative or interdisciplinary element to their undergraduate curriculum. From an emerging scholars' perspective, negotiating these multiple disciplines requires acts of translating various perspectives into an integrated whole. By analyzing translation and the set of issues that it raises, we hope that through this conference undergraduate and graduate scholars can gain a sense of what it means to be a responsible comparativist. In an attempt to understand elements of a culture different from one's own, intellectuals from the ancient to the modern and the postmodern have addressed the theory and practicalities of the process of translation. Papers should be comparative in nature and may deal with issues relevant to Translation Studies including inter-lingual, inter-historical, inter-semiotic and inter-cultural translation.

Papers on any aspect of translation theory or practice are welcome, possible topics include:

1. Translation ‘After Babel '

The purpose of such a panel will be to examine the purpose/function/accomplishments of translation and the logistics of its practice. Papers can address questions of fidelity, foreignizing vs. nativizing, and skopos. We ask that panelists who will be speaking primarily about their own experience as translators submit here.

2. Intersemiotic Translations
Roman Jakobson defines intersemiotic translation as an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems. Possible paper topics include film adaptation as translation, aesthetic expression through art an act of translation, text to opera or music translation, etc.

3. Cultural, Historical, and Global Translations
This panel will focus on the theory and practice of translating an aesthetic object into a cultural moment that has different aesthetic standards, whether this difference is conditioned by cultural, historical, or geographic variables.

4. Translation and Mechanical Reproduction
The emergence of the information age is largely responsible for the polyphony of voices available to the citizen of the 21st century, and as such, the democratization of information, expression, and art via the internet has made Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" a landmark study in negotiating value between original and copy.  Papers on this panel should consider the effect of technology on the value or reception of artistic/economic/political endeavors and address how the paradigm of translation relates to or is able to illuminate issues relevant in an age of mechanical reproduction.

Guidelines for Submitting an Abstract
1. A cover page including:
                 a. Tentative Paper Title,
                 b. Author's Name,
                 c. University,
                 d. Degree and Majors,
                 e. Postal Address,
                 f. Phone Number and E-mail,
                 g. (optional) Preference for Panel Placement Selected from the List Above

2. An abstract of 200-500 words describing the focus and methodology.

Papers are to be approximately 20 minutes long.

Send Proposals and Questions to The Comparative Humanities Review (comparative.humanities.review@gmail.com) by
Sunday, October 7, 2007

Accepted papers have the possibility of being published in Translation: Comparative Perspectives CHR 3.1, the third issue published by the Comparative Humanities Review, a scholarly journal created and produced by Bucknell University students that supports and distributes comparative, undergraduate scholarship in the humanities and examines the space between those who receive knowledge (the Student) and those who produce it (the Scholar).

Please visit our website at http://www.orgs.bucknell.edu/comp_hum_rev/journal.html and browse our first issue Conversation/Conversion: The Comparative Humanities Review 1.1 or search for us on Facebook—the group name is Comparative Humanities Review (CHR).