Transfiction: The Fictional Eye of Translation Studies NEMLA 2022

deadline for submissions: 
September 30, 2021
full name / name of organization: 
Northeast Modern Language Association

ABSTRACT

Fictional texts focusing on translators and translation have proliferated in world literature during the last few decades. Thanks to the recent “fictional turn” in Translation Studies, fictional translators have been studied and analyzed much more and made ever more visible. This visibility serves to consider translators not as mere interlingual photocopiers but as social beings that operate in particular sociocultural contexts. Recent fictional portrayals of translators and interpreters display characters with traits that define them socially, emotionally, and psychologically as complex individuals. Fiction often introduces translators who are uncomfortable with having to occupy a second-rate space and often usurp a territory that is conventionally assigned only to writers/authors of a text. The clear-cut hierarchical relationships between writer/author and translator are therefore often questioned, and/or reversed, to unveil the struggle for power that exists between the figures of author and translator. Transfiction; that is, the use of translation as both as a topic and a motif, and the presence of translators and interpreters in literature and film, can serve as invaluable pedagogical tool to discuss the intricate world of Translation Studies.

 

The purpose of this session, then, is to explore how fiction can be used as a source to approach translation theory. Topics may include: how fictional views of translators/translation provide an opportunity to explore preconceived notions of translation; the role/task of the translator as it relates to culture, and society; power struggles between authors/editors/publishers and translators; ethical issues (such as fidelity/infidelity, visibility/invisibility, translator intervention) and translator’s gender.

 

DESCRIPTION

This session explores how fiction can be used as a source to approach translation theory. Topics may include how fictional views of translators/translation provide an opportunity to explore preconceived notions of translation; the role/task of the translator as it relates to culture and society; power struggles between authors/editors/publishers and translators; ethical issues (such as fidelity/infidelity, visibility/invisibility, translator intervention) and translator’s gender.

 

DEADLINE

September 30