24 May 2022, European perspectives on the Renaissance

Dans le cadre du programme de recherches « Renaissance(s) » (Université Paris Lumières), deux tables rondes sont organisées en partenariat avec la Maison Française d’Oxford et avec le soutien de l’Institut Universitaire de France.

Elles auront lieu en présentiel (matin : Bâtiment Ida Maier, salle VR14, Université Paris Nanterre / après-midi : MFO, Oxford) et seront également accessibles à distance via Google Meet (meet.google.com/rxx-cvbo-crc pour le matin et l’après-midi).

  • 10h-12h : Le travail par mots-clefs (à Nanterre)

Contributions de Richard Scholar (Durham University), Marta López Izquierdo (Université Paris 8), Jean-Louis Fournel (Université Paris 8), Véronique Ferrer (Université Paris Nanterre)

  • 14h-16h : ‘The Renaissance’ in UK academia (à Oxford)

Contributions de Wes Williams (University of Oxford), David Lines (University of Warwick), John O’Brien (Durham University), Raphaële Mouren (The Warburg Institute), Alice Roullière (University of Oxford), avec la participation de Raphaëlle Errera, Raphaële Garrod, Jonathan Patterson (University of Oxford) et Sara Miglietti (The Warburg Institute)

Organisation : (matin) Mathilde Bernard, Mathieu de La Gorce, Corinne Manchio, Laetitia Sansonetti; (après-midi) Tristan Alonge, Véronique Ferrer, Jean-Louis Fournel

Plus d’informations sur le site du programme : https://www.renaissances-upl.com/

Si vous souhaitez assister à ces tables rondes à Nanterre, merci d’écrire à Mathilde Bernard (bernardm@parisnanterre.fr) d’ici le 18 mai prochain en précisant matin et/ou après-midi.

23 May 2022, Richard Scholar and Thomas Constantinesco on translating *Je-ne-sais-quoi*

  • 23 mai 2022, 17h-19h

Séance de séminaire en partenariat avec le groupe « Confluences » (CREA, Paris Nanterre) et avec le soutien de l’Institut Universitaire de France, dans le cadre de notre projet sur le multilinguisme en traduction (https://xlingtransl.hypotheses.org/):

Rencontre avec Richard Scholar (Durham University) et Thomas Constantinesco (Sorbonne Université) autour de l’ouvrage de Richard Scholar, Le Je-ne-sais-quoi. Enquête sur une énigme, traduit par Thomas Constantinesco (2010, PUF)

Discutante : Laetitia Sansonetti (Paris Nanterre)

Organisation: Claire Hélie (Lille), Julie Loison-Charles (Lille) et Laetitia Sansonetti (Paris Nanterre)

La séance (en anglais) aura lieu en présentiel : Bâtiment Ida Maier, salle VR14, Université Paris Nanterre

Elle sera également accessible à distance via Zoom :

https://univ-lille-fr.zoom.us/j/98796438060?pwd=UXpweGJIUGFIeVNBL2NEZFZNVXpMUT09 ID de réunion : 987 9643 8060 ; Code secret : 386529

Multilingualism in translation

A series of events will be organised by Laetitia Sansonetti (Université Paris Nanterre & IUF), Julie Loison-Charles (Université de Lille) and Claire Hélie (Université de Lille) at Université Paris Nanterre & Université de Lille in 2022, 2023 and 2024, including two conferences in 2023 and 2024.

See our website for more information: https://xlingtransl.hypotheses.org/ and follow the project on Twitter: https://twitter.com/multilingtrans.

Over the past 500 years, English has gone from a marginal language hardly spoken by anyone outside of England to a global lingua franca with speakers, native and non-native, all over the world. This has created situations of multilingualism both within countries where English is the main language and elsewhere, as many people who speak English on a regular basis are not native speakers, and the language itself has come into contact with other languages in the course of processes of colonisation, immigration, and globalisation. Beginning in the sixteenth century, these processes have broadened the contact zone of English, redefined its relations with the classical languages of humanist communication as well as with modern European languages (some of which have developed varieties outside Europe), and ultimately led to a questioning of the majority/minority-language binary. Literature and the verbal arts, be it to give a realistic description of the world or to experiment with language and form, have reflected, registered and contributed to such plurilingual practices. 

Evolutions in the status of English as a communication language in everyday lives and in artistic productions go hand in hand with evolutions in translation techniques and strategies, with the development of translation into English as a necessary means of worldwide communication as well as the acknowledgment of varied linguistic and cultural skills in target audiences. More generally, traditional social constructs applied to analyse language use and cultural productions in translating, such as the “foreign/native” or the “source/target” opposition, are in need of redefinition. Likewise, the concept of lexical borrowing needs to be reexamined if English is considered a multilingual language from the start, with its elaboration relying on words and structures taken from Saxon, but also Latin and Romance languages – as the lexicographers (and the translators) from the Renaissance already knew.

This two-part conference welcomes both synchronic and diachronic approaches to the interplay between multilingualism and translation involving English as source or target language and at least one other language in works of literature, the performing arts and audio-visual productions, from the sixteenth century to the present. Multilingualism will be taken in the broad meaning of the co-presence of several languages within the same work, thus including neighbouring concepts such as heterolingualism, and such phenomena as code-switching and multi-ethnolects. Papers that combine methodologies from linguistics, literary/film studies and translation studies will be particularly appreciated.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the study of:

  • Strategies of translation that deal with multilingual sources, or that turn monolingual sources into multilingual translated works
  • Editions of texts with their translation(s)
  • Cases in which the target language also features in the source
  • Comparisons of translation strategies in various target languages for English sources
  • The rendering of phonetic specificities in both text and performance
  • The translation of metadiscursive comments/elements in multilingual contexts
  • The specific issues raised by dubbing and subtitling/surtitling
  • Multilingualism and forms of expanded / contrapuntal / prismatic translation
  • The technologies developed/adapted to facilitate the translation of multilingual texts

The first part will take place at Université Paris Nanterre (30-31 March 2023), and will focus more specifically on literary works in print (and the issues related to translating and publishing multilingual texts) from the sixteenth century to the present. Keynote speaker: Dirk Delabastita (Université de Namur).

The second part will take place at Université de Lille (February/March 2024), and will focus more specifically on the performing arts, films and TV series (and the challenges set to translators by aural effects dependent on multilingualism). Keynote speaker: Charlotte Bosseaux (The University of Edinburgh).

Advisory board.

Please send abstracts (300 words) and a short bio-bibliography in English or in French for either conference to Laetitia Sansonetti (l.sansonetti@parisnanterre.fr), Julie Loison-Charles (julie.charles@univ-lille.fr) and Claire Hélie (claire.helie@univ-lille.frby June 1, 2022.

6 May, A. Keener seminar, “Theatres of Translation”

Andrew S. Keener (University of Santa Clara)

“Theaters of Translation: Dictionaries, Drama, and Shakespeare’s World of Words”

Thursday 6 May 2021

6-7.30pm (CEST)

Andrew S. Keener specializes in early modern literature, theater and drama, book history, and digital approaches to the humanities. He is currently writing a book entitled Theaters of Translation: Cosmopolitan Vernaculars in Shakespeare’s England. Based on his doctoral thesis, which was awarded the 2019 J. Leeds Barroll Dissertation Prize by the Shakespeare Association of America, Theaters of Translation examines how bilingual and multilingual dictionaries, grammars, and conversation guides published in Renaissance England shaped and were shaped by cosmopolitan dramatic works by playwrights such as William Shakespeare, Mary Sidney Herbert, and Ben Jonson.

This session is a collaboration between Modernités Britanniques (COMOD / ENS de Lyon), the research group Confluences (CREA, Paris Nanterre), and the “Translation and Polyglossia in Early Modern England” project (https://tape1617.hypotheses.org/ – Institut Universitaire de France). 


Please use this link to enter the meeting: https://meetings.ringcentral.com/j/1449947517

The time indicated above is French summer time. 

Contact:

Sophie Lemercier-Goddard (ENS de Lyon) sophie.lemercier-goddard@ens-lyon.fr

Laetitia Sansonetti (Paris Nanterre & IUF) l.sansonetti@parisnanterre.fr

Polyglot Encounters in Early Modern English Narratives of Distant Travels, 9 and 11 Nov. 2020

Join us for two virtual evening sessions (5-6.30pm – UK time) on 9 & 11 November 2020 – you can watch the two sessions here: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/yibuf0ab/1 (click on “schedule” to switch from the first to the second session) (courtesy of the Society of Renaissance Studies – many thanks to Rachel Willie)

Organisers: Nandini Das (TIDE, Exeter College, Oxford), Ladan Niayesh (LARCA, University of Paris; Visiting Fellow, Exeter College, Oxford)

In an age of geographic discoveries and colonisation, easier communication, and international trade growing steadily from the mid-16th century, England gradually established itself as an Atlantic and global power, as a prelude to the formation of the British empire. English records of this era of expansion offer multiple examples of linguistic contacts with the wider world, with translations, lexical borrowings, and records of multilingual exchanges between travellers and the peoples they encountered.

These two online evening seminar sessions, jointly organised by TIDE (University of Oxford, ERC) and LARCA (University of Paris, CNRS), aim at exploring some of the practices and strategies underpinning polyglot encounters in travel accounts produced or read in England. Drawing on linguistic, lexicographic, literary and historical methodologies, we will look into some of the contexts and significances of these textual contact zones. Particular attention will be paid to uses of polyglossia in processes of identity construction, defining and promoting national or imperial agendas, appropriating and assimilating foreign linguistic capital, or meeting resistance and limits from linguistic and cultural others refusing to lend themselves to subaltern status.

The event is supported by ERC-TIDE (Oxford), the “Early Modernities” programme of LARCA (UMR 8225, CNRS, University of Paris), the “Translation and Polyglossia” project (Université Paris Nanterre & Institut Universitaire de France), IHRIM (UMR 5317, CNRS, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon), and the EMRC (University of Reading). Session 1: Global Threads and Tangles 9 November, 5:00-6.30PM

Chair: Laetitia Sansonetti (Université Paris Nanterre & Institut Universitaire de France)

5:00-5.30PM Andrew Hadfield (University of Sussex): “The Madoc Legend, Language and Race at the Dawn of The First British Empire”

5.30-6:00PM Sarah Knight (University of Leicester): ” ‘Their Garments variegate like ye fishes in ye Euxine sea’’: fashion, languages and perceptions of the Ottoman world at the early modern English universities”

6:00-6.30PM: Question and discussion time

Session 2: Communications and Miscommunications 11 November, 5-6.30PM Chair: Sophie Lemercier-Goddard (IHRIM, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon)

5:00-5.30PM Donatella Montini (University of Sapienza Rome): “Travel and Translation in John Florio’s Two Navigations”

5.30-6:00PM Matthew Dimmock (University of Sussex): “Ylyaoute! English Engagements with the ‘Strange Tongues’ of the Far North”

6:00-6.30PM: Question and discussion time

TAPE at the RSA – April 2021

The Translation and Polyglossia project will co-organise a double panel at the 2021 RSA virtual conference (April 2021). Organisers: Agnès Lafont and Laetitia Sansonetti: https://www.rsa.org/blogpost/1860861/352358/Figures-of-Polyglossia-in-British-Early-Modern-Culture

The programme will be out soon: https://www.rsa.org/page/Virtual2021

Here is our lineup of speakers:

Panel “Figure of Polyglossia – 1”

1. Doomsday and language learning: John Clerk’s De Mortuorum Resurrectione (1545)(Presenter: Michele Piscitelli)

2. French Political Satire and the Textual Presence of the Commedia dell’Arte in Sixteenth-Century England (Presenter: Tom Roberts)

3. Polyglossia and Nonsense (Presenter: Hugh Roberts)

 

Panel “Figures of Polyglossia – 2”

1. English polyglot dramatic manuscripts and theatrical bookkeepers: what can be learned from their scribal practices? (Presenter: Daniel Yabut)

2. ‘Textual representations of foreign accents in early modern comedies’ (Presenter: Josefina Venegas Meza)

3. Passports to the Past? Polyglossia in Latin translations of Chaucer and Spenser (Presenter: Katherine Mennis)

 

 

Translation and Polyglossia in Early Modern England

 

The aim of the ‘Translation and Polyglossia in Early Modern England’ project is to analyse the evolution of literary polyglossia, i.e. the co-presence of several languages within one printed text, whether those languages are set in parallel or intertwined, in works printed in England over the 16th and 17th centuries. A study of translation practices will shed light on this history of polyglossia in order to show how, through the circulation of texts and people, the humanist exercise of translation recommended to learn languages shaped the English literary production of the period. This study will help understand better the ways in which a feeling of national identity was built on a common vernacular, at a time when linguistic exchanges with countries on the Continent and beyond became more intense.
This blog will record the meetings of the ‘LLCT 16-17’ seminar (‘Linguistic, Literary, Cultural Transfers, 16th-17th centuries’), which will take place four times a year, chaired by Laetitia Sansonetti (junior fellow at Institut Universitaire de France, 2018-2023), gathering French and international researchers who study linguistic, literary, and cultural transfers between the British Isles and the rest of the world in the 16th and 17th centuries.