The president, Prof Dr Claudia Olk, cordially invites to the Spring Conference of the German Shakespeare Society. This year's conference topic is 'Shakespeare and Translation' (programme).

In collaboration with the community of Willstätt, the Center for Literary Museums, Archives and Memorials in Baden-Württemberg (DLA Marbach) and the Grimmelshausen Society, Sylvia Brockstieger and Dirk Werle are organizing the interdisciplinary and international conference “Johann Michael Moscheroschs Textwelten” on the occasion of the 350^th anniversary of his death (programme).

At the conference “Paradoxes and Misunderstandings in Cultural Transfers” Prof Dr Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink (project: encyclopaedism) gives a keynote entitled "Penser l'échec d'un transfert culturel - malentendus, résistances, réinterprétations" (programme).

The members of the research team of the project ‘Translating into Welsh’ present results of their work at the 16th International Congress of Celtic Studies and discuss their research with colleagues attending the conference.

(Programme)

1^st annual conference of the SPP 213

At the first annual conference of the SPP 2130, the participating individual projects address concepts and practices of translation in the Early Modern Period and present initial results. Peter Burke will give the evening lecture 'Translation as Transposition in Early Modern Europe'.

More about the programme here.

To the report.

The lectures making up this conference form a colourful bouquet of SPP-compatible topics and backgrounds, with sections on such topics as “competitive migration and mission practices in the context of the Halle Pietists in the 18^th century” and “educated competitions: rivalry and marginality in the knowledge history of the Early Modern era”. Our SPP project director Mark Häberlein (project ‘Salomon Negri’) will moreover offer an economic history section.

(Programme).

At this year's Germanistentag, the SPP is represented with its own panel. Regina Toepfer and Jörg Wesche begin by presenting the content and methodology of the SPP 2130 with regard to translation practice and epoch formation. Jennifer Hagedorn and Astrid Dröse then examine the category of ‘time’ as illustrated by their individual German studies projects. Finally, in her didactic contribution Kerstin Brix  talks about how the ‘Early Modern Translation Cultures’ can also be integrated into German lessons at school (programme).

The Devision of Intercultural German Studies in the Department of Translation, Linguistics and Cultural Studies at the JGU Mainz invites you to this year's conference of the Society for Intercultural German Studies (GIG) in Germersheim. The conference will take place with a special focus on translation.

›World literature as translated Literature‹: This postulate perhaps best expresses a transnational and global approach to literature, in which the figure of the translator – as a nomad of multilingualism – plays a central role in the dissemination of literature. The DLA Marbach houses the unpublished documents and manuscripts of numerous translators and archive holdings directly related to literary translation. On this background the aim of the conference in Marbach is to systematically investigate documents left behind by (literary) translators and to explore their value for research.

The conference is conceived as a double event. Immediately following the conference at Marbach, there will be a corresponding conference at the IMEC in Caen. The latter will focus on the translation of texts from the social sciences and humanities. 

Please address registrations to forschung@dla-marbach.de.

Funded by Robert Bosch Stiftung

The international conference of the project “Lost and Found in Translation” is organized by Andrew Hopkins (L'Aquila/ZKI München) and is part of the interdisciplinary Dipartimento di Eccellenza di Scienze Umane on translation and transcoding, which is located at the University of L'Aquila (Programme).

In the context of the conference “Mediävistik intersektional. Research Approaches and Concepts in Interdisciplinary Approaches” at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Jennifer Hagedorn represents the SPP project ‘Translational Anthropology’ with her research results on the analysis of Simon Schaidenreissers early modern Odyssey translation (“Translated Identity. Power, Gender and Divinity in Schaidenreissers Odyssey Translation”).

(Programme)

Astrid Dröse (SPP project ‘Song Culture’) organizes together with Sara Springfeld and Sabine Ehrmann-Herdorf (DHI, Rome) an international and interdisciplinary working meeting. Project director Dirk Werle (SPP project ‘Moscherosch’) as well as Jörg Wesche (Programme Committee of the SPP 2130) are also represented.

Second annual conference of SPP 2130

The second annual conference of the SPP takes place in hybrid form organized by Antje Flüchter, Andreas Gipper, Susanne Greilich and Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink. The starting point is the central question of why certain texts, images and sign complexes are translated while others (have to) remain untranslated. Keynote speaker is Naoki Sakai (Cornell University), "The Individuality of Language -Translation and Internationality".

Programme and report.

Conference of the International Andreas Gryphius-Gesellschaft (IAGG): 24.–26.09.2020, Augsburg.

Entitled “Engelländisch to and fro!”, the conference is devoted to the German-English translation cultures of the early modern period.

Registration via Jörg Wesche.

Conference of the research group “Ottoman Europe: Methods and Perspectives of Early Modern Studies on Southeast Europe”.

Information and programme can be found here.

Third annual conference of SPP 2130

To the preliminary program.

Translation and Transfer

Practices of translation between languages and the pragmatic transfer of translated texts into actual usage have emerged as the topic central to the majority of the sixteen research projects in the SPP 1981 “Transottomanica: Eastern European-Ottoman-Persian Mobility Dynamics”, that looks at social and (trans)cultural ties between the Muscovite Tsardom and/or Petersburg Empire, Poland-Lithuania, the Ottoman Empire, Central Asia and Iran from the early modern period to the beginning of the twentieth century.
For more information see the full CfP.

Please send a description of your proposal, including the topic, the specific approach, and the sources used (one page) and a short academic CV by 31 January 2021 to Florian Riedler.

The late 17th century is generally regarded as the beginning of modern European encyclopaedism and thus of a development that reached a temporary climax with the spread of the encyclopaedic dictionary in the 18th century. Starting in France, the Netherlands, the German-speaking world and England, the genre of the encyclopaedic dictionary spread in the form of translations and adaptations to Russia and Poland, to Italy, the Iberian Peninsula and northern Europe. Conversely, some of the important French encyclopaedias cannot be thought of without translation and transfer processes from other languages and genres. The encyclopaedism of the Enlightenment is thus always to be thought in the categories of the network and the collective, of dialogue, translation and adaptation. [read more…]

Linguistic, intertextual and cultural translation processes played a central role for the genesis of important universal and specialized encyclopaedias as well as for the spread of the genre of encyclopaedia in Europe and America during the long 18th century. Until now, however, these processes have only been studied in a limited way by research. Organized by Susanne Greilich (Regensburg) and Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink (Saarbrücken) as part of their joint SPP project “Translational Dimensions of French Encyclopaedism in the Age of Enlightenment”, the conference aimed to outline translation as a ubiquitous, multi-layered practice that had been central to encyclopaedic writing. [read more…]

The new international and interdisciplinary network is open to all scholars with an interest in the history of translation and interpreting. The aim is to enhance the visibility of translation and interpreting history and to promote dialogue between all scholars with such research interests, regardless of their disciplinary background (more on the network and its aims).

The inaugural conference invited contributions in which translation is both a constitutive category of historical analysis and a historically specific practice. Here you will find the programme.

We are happy to reveal that the SPP will be present with two panels:

Concepts and Practices of Translation in the Early Modern Period

• Regina Toepfer: ‚Early Modern Translation Cultures‘. Concepts and Methods of a German Priority Programme
• Irina Saladin: Translation as a Cartographic Practice. The Working Sketches of the Parisian Geographers Claude and Guillaume Delisle (c. 1700)
• Annkathrin Koppers: Translation is Power. Science Communication via and with Early Modern Translations

Scientific Translations in France in the Classical Age (17th–18th centuries)

• Andreas Gipper: On the role of translation in the formation of national scientific cultures
• Garda Elsherif: Translation, Commentary and the Differentiation of Production and Reproduction
• Robert Lukenda: Scientific Translations between the Classical and Modern Age in Italy. The Importance of France as a Cultural Model and of Italian Scientific Journals as Translation Agents.
• Caroline Mannweiler: Translation and the Formation of the Scientific Press – with Particular Focus on French, German and English Examples from the 18th Century
• Diego Stefanelli: Towards a Prosopography of Scientific Translators in Early Modern France: French scientific translators from German and Italian (17th and 18th century)

The symposium examines transnational relations between Japan and (Counter-) Reformation Europe through the lens of translation. The translation concept adapted includes linguistic as well as cultural translations. Contributors analyze various translation processes including the translation of European religious thought into Japanese, the translation of Japanese and European images and artefacts and the translation of Jesuit letters from Japan. [read more…]

The Priority Programme 2130 ‘Early Modern Translation Cultures’ of the German Research Foundation is pleased to announce its 4th annual conference on the subject ‘Translation Spaces – Spaces in Translation’, to take place at the University of Göttingen Observatory from 14 to 16 September 2022. In order to give as much scope as possible to personal exchange after two years of pandemic conditions, the conference will take place as an in-person-only event. All interested parties are cordially invited to register with Jutta Gilles (jutta.gilles@phil.uni-goettingen.de) by 25 July 2022. The aim of the conference is methodological reflection on and historical examination of the connection between the translational and the spatial turn in research settings devoted specifically to the Early Modern period. [read more…]

‘By directing the focus to language as a fundamental medium of human communication, the working conference in Bamberg has set out to examine communicative practices, translations, and multilingualism in the Early Modern era. What were historical actors’ motives for gaining language skills and how did they use those skills. [read more…]

According to a common diagnosis, the present is a time characterized by uncertainty. New, sometimes diffuse threats challenge familiar perspectives and interpretations. Especially encounters with people, phenomena and narratives that are perceived as foreign are believed to cause uncertainty. Translations, one might assume, can minimize such insecurities by making the unfamiliar understandable. The conference Unstable Translations – Uncertainty as a Poetic Function in Multilingual and Translated Texts, however, proposes a different approach. Its starting point is the moment of uncertainty which is inscribed in every translation. Translations inevitably bear the traces of the process of their creation, including the interpretative choices that can neither be ultimately decided nor perfected. [read more…]

In February, scholars of various disciplines and nationalities come together in Würzburg to discuss their projects and research in the area of Early Modern translations of classical texts. Persons engaged in research in the fields of classical, German and Romance philology present their approaches, projects, and results: Malika Bastin-Hammou, Alexia Dedieu, and Louisa Laj of the Université Grenoble introduce their research on translations of Greek dramas as well as [read more…]

Missionizing is widely perceived as a form of oppressive power-relations: one side is active and hegemonic, while the other is either passive and submissive or entirely oppositional. This all-too-tidy understanding of the relationship between Christian missionaries and their religious others dovetails with the scholarly tendency to adopt a one-dimensional approach, focusing almost exclusively on Christian attitudes towards the objects of their missionary endeavours. [read more…]

Anja Wolkenhauer and Julia Heideklang invite: “Based on our research in context of the DFG project Versio Latina, we aim to decidedly change our perspective and to focus particularly on early modern Latin translations, looking, as Peter Burke once articulated ‚into the wrong direction‘ (Burke 2007). What are their functions? Who translated and for what kind of readership; which expectations were placed on these translations by translators, editors, and printer-publishers? Were they successful, reprinted or overruled by rival products, or was their efficiency augmented by being intermediary versions for translations into other languages? [read more…]

Fifth annual conference of the SPP 2130 ‘Early Modern Translation Cultures’

Fifth annual conference of the SPP 2130 ‘Early Modern Translation Cultures’

Geographical and anthropological knowledge of both Europe and the non-European world was of particular importance in the long 18th century. Beyond the Enlightenment’s general interest in knowledge, this has to be viewed against the background of political, colonial and trade interests on the one hand, and, on the other hand, with regard to the importance that non-European cultures had for philosophical reflection on the world’s order and on one’s own, European societies. [read more…]

“The work of translation, which is a central component of intercultural exchange and international knowledge circulation, is commonly regarded as a lonely business. Recently, however, work has been done on many levels to strengthen the exchange among translators. [read more…]

The significance of translations of literary and non-literary source texts from the early as well as neighbouring vernaculars for Early Modern writing cultures can hardly be overestimated. On the strength of contemporary imitation poetics, translation practices exerted a far-reaching influence on various literary-historical subdomains, for example the emergence and development of genres. Yet in view of the ubiquity of translational text production in the Early Modern era, it appears all the more astounding that contemporary comments and reflections on translating are rather hard to come by. [read more…]

“Women have always written and translated. Whether or not they published their works (anonymously, under a pseudonym, or under their real name), had them privately circulated, or kept them under lock and key depended on historical contexts, social framework conditions, and their own individual situations. [read more…]

In the context of the various Early Modern evangelizing endeavours within and outside of Europe, which aimed to propagate (competing) varieties of Christianity for religious or power-political reasons, catechisms played an important role. [read more…]

Sixth annual conference of SPP 2130 For six years now, the Priority Programme 2130 launched by the German Research Foundation in 2018 has been inquiring into general social principles, perception patterns, and communication forms established by translation practices from approximately the mid-fifteenth century onwards and still of definitive significance today. [read more…]

Medieval European literature crosses linguistic and cultural boundaries alike, making interdisciplinary work in the field of medieval studies a virtual necessity. [read more…]