Following the success of the Low Countries Conference I Translation and National Images, which brought together scholars from Translation Studies and Imagology (Image Studies) for the first time in 2011, it was decided to organize a follow-up conference. The purpose of the Istanbul conference is to report on movements away from classical nation-based image construction towards increasingly complex cultural image construction in a globalising world and the role of translation in transferring such complex images.
General Theme
Whatever our stance on globalisation may be, it cannot be denied that it is having a profound effect on the way we perceive and experience the world. In a world that is increasingly characterised by a quasi-instantaneous global transfer of information and images, speed and conciseness would seem to be of the essence. This has brought with it a tremendous growth in translation worldwide and just into English. But what is being translated and how? How does the demand for instantaneous information impact translation? More precisely, which cultural images are preferred/dispreferred in the translation and transfer processes? What selection criteria are used for these images? To which extent are these images still in synch with their places of origin? Does globalisation, or to put more clearly, do our globalisation practices propagate stereotypes or work towards dispelling them? How are these globalisation practices and processes thematised in literature and in the virtual and print media?
Another consequence of globalisation is the huge increase in population flow both in terms of inward and outward migration, particulary following the 2008 financial crisis. This, in turn, has brought with it an increase in translation, both ad-hoc and institutional, in centres and areas of multicultural encounter. What forms does such translation take and which cultural images does it propagate? Are these images finding their way into new forms of writing, creative expression and reporting? What is the role played by translation in such cases?
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Joep Leerssen, University of Amsterdam
Nam Fung Chang, Lingnan University
Zrinka Blažević, University of Zagreb
VENUE
In itself the venue is symbolic for historical and contemporary image-building: Istanbul lies on the border between Europe and Asia, hosting a conference organized by an Istanbul university together with a European and an Asian university.
CALL FOR PAPERS
The organisers welcome papers providing both general approaches and specific local/ international case-studies, but always explicitly dealing with the intersections between globalisation, forms of stereotyping and cultural image-building, and translation (understood here in the broad sense of intralingual, interlingual, or intersemiotic translation) and the resultant construction, maintenance and transfer of cultural images and stereotypes.
SUGGESTED SUBTOPICS
- the specificities of multiculturalism and related translational phenomena in given cultural and intercultural settings
- the construction of cultural identity through translation in a globalised world
- the construction and translation of cultural images in the media (virtual and print)
- inter-linguistic and inter-cultural transfer of cultural images and stereotypes
- the function of images in the valorisation and minorisation of cultures
- strategies of translation with regard to globalised images and stereotypes
