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TRANSLATION
SEMINAR CO-DIRECTORS:
Richard Pine, FRIAM
Anthony Hirst, PhD
SEMINAR PARTICIPANTS:
Ireland
Nuala ni Dhomhnaill
Gerald Dawe
Greece
Apostolos Doxiadis
Yiorgos Yatromanolakis
Hungary
Gyula Kodolanyi
Istvan Geher
Laslo Geher
India
Suneeti Singh
CORFU IS BEAUTIFUL, AFFORDABLE AND SAFE!!
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TRANSLATION
CREATING AND COMMUNICATING MEANING
BETWEEN CULTURES
will be a major theme of the first week of
the Durrell School of Corfu (14-18 June).
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Jorge Luis Borges: No problem is as completely concordant
with literature and with the modest mystery of literature as
is the problem posed by a translation.
Martin Heidegger: Man acts as if he were the shaper and master
of language, while it is language which remains the mistress
of man.
George Steiner: To translate is to descend beneath the exterior
disparities of two languages in order to bring into vital play
their analogous and, at the final depths, common principles of
being.
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In order to explore these ideas, we have invited writers and critics from
Greece, Ireland, Hungary and India to discuss the following topics:
- translation/metaphor as interpretation: all speech infers an act of
translation;
- creation and transfer of meaning between cultures, between genders,
classes, religions, faiths;
- the relation of language to time: the re-inscription of ancient
texts; [1]
- bringing previous texts into our contemporary world;
- the relation of language to space: writing the landscape, reading the
landscape, transference of meaning/mindscape from north to south or from
east to west;
- transfer of meaning from an original identity to a translated identity;
- can we ensure that a translation respects the locality of original meaning?
- how does a civilisation use its language and grammar to create its texts �
constitutions, histories, epics, love lyrics, comedies? And how can those
texts be interpreted to other civilisations?
- are there words or grammars that are untranslateable?[2]
[1] - cf George Steiner, After Babel: 'The totality of
Homer, the capacity of the Iliad and the Odyssey to serve as
repertoire for most of the principal postures of Western consciousness ... point
to a moment of singular linguistic energy ... We have [no histories] of metaphor.
We cannot accurately conceive what it must have been like to be the first to
compare the colour of the sea with the dark of wine, or to see autumn in a man's
face'. [Back]
[2] - cf. Salman Rushdie, Shame: 'To unlock a society,
look at its untranslateable words'. [Back]
contact: durrellschool@gmail.com
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