Call for papers: STAGING THE LITERARY TRANSLATOR - Roles, Identities, Personalities

Theme of the Conference

With Translator Studies (Chesterman 2009) emerging as a new and vibrant field within Translation Studies, the attention has moved from product to producer and the translator has been brought into sharp focus. The death of the author, with the assumed birth of the translator, and the cultural, cognitive, creative, and sociological turns within the discipline have acted as strong catalysts for this new interest in the translator. So far, researchers have been particularly interested in the translator’s habitus, in translatorial cognition, in the translator’s cultural and historical rootedness, but few attempts have yet been made to integrate the different perspectives.

It is the aim of this conference to set an interdisciplinary stage to discuss theoretical and methodological challenges that come with studying the literary translator, bringing together diverse approaches and multiple perspectives, such as cognitive science, sociology, psychology, creativity studies, identity studies, gender and queer studies, etc. Contributions are welcomed that focus on the literary translator, who, traditionally, tends to remain in the wings, shedding new light on psychological, emotional, physical, social, and cultural facets of the translator’s persona and identity.

Suggested topics

This international conference on literary translators is open to a large variety of topics and approaches. Contributions may discuss translators as individuals or as a collective from diverse perspectives, making use of various methodological instruments. Topics could, for example, include the following:

Theorizing the literary translator

Methods of researching the literary translator

The literary translator’s self and identity

The literary translator’s discourse and voice

The literary translator’s professional trajectory

The literary translator’s body

The literary translator’s habitus

Feminist/queer literary translators

The literary translator’s diasporic experience

The literary translator’s perception of his/her role and/or agency

Psychological, emotional, cognitive, etc. facets of the literary translator’s personality

With diverse papers and multifaceted discussions on the featured topics, we hope to foster new perspectives, promote cooperation and stimulate integrated research efforts.

Abstracts and Deadlines

Scholars are invited to submit 200-300 word proposals (with 3 keywords) for papers by 15 November 2017 to: translit2018@univie.ac.at

Abstracts should be attached to your e-mail as a WORD document [titled: authorname.doc]. Please include your contact information in the body of your e-mail, not in the file.
Presentations will be 20 minutes in length, followed by a discussion. There will be sessions on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
Date of notification of acceptance of abstracts: 15 December 2017.

Further details: http://translit2018.univie.ac.at/home/