Thursday, 11 October 2018, 14:00-15:20, Theatre D, Simon Building, University of Manchester

Translation is often depicted as a safeguard of the egalitarian ideals multilingualism purportedly guarantees, as an activity of prime importance in the development of healthy multicultural and diverse societies. However, in the prevailing globalized, asymmetrically multicultural order, certain long-standing legal and institutional translation practices may be contributing, albeit involuntarily, to engendering or perpetuating unequal relations of hegemony and subordination between dominant cultures and powers, and minoritized languages and identities. In this seminar, I will identify a number of factors which accentuate translation’s potential proclivity to exercise symbolic violence in our day and age, and, drawing on the concept of recognition, I will present a number of examples illustrating alternative translational approaches aligned with the ideals of cultural pluralism.

Rosario Martín Ruano is Associate Professor at the University of Salamanca, Spain, where she is member of the Research Group on Translation, Ideology and Culture and she currently leads the research project entitled VIOSIMTRAD (‘Symbolic Violence and Translation: Challenges in the Representation of Fragmented Identities within the Global Society’, FFI2015-66516-P; MINECO/FEDER, UE). She has published widely on translation and ideology, gender and post-colonial approaches to translation, and on legal and institutional translation.