Translation in Exile Conference

LIVGhent (Belgium), Giorgio Vassallo - Ovid, Dante, Victor Hugo, D.H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann, Assia Djebar, Irmgard Keun, Mahmoud Darwish, Salman Rushdie and Julia Kristeva. All of these authors have experienced exile. How does exile and life ‘in another language’ affect an author’s work?


The Free University of Brussels and Ghent University will hold a conference in Brussels on 10-11 December 2015 which will discuss topics of Translation in Exile and literary émigrés.

Exiled writers have been able to write and publish their work with varying degrees of acceptance in their new homes. Some of them have been harassed by governments, opposed with censorship, or even forced to deal with physical and psychological threats.

Despite these obstacles, some exiled translators became a sort of catalyst for the introduction of new genres and works of literature: Vladimir Nabokov translated Pushkin, Pedro Salinas translated Marcel Proust, Felix Pollak translated Heinrich Heine. Some of them ended up translating their own work into their adoptive language.

Thus, the focus of the conference will be multilingualism and displacement, as well as the impact they have on translation studies: exiled translators’ experiences, problems and opportunities during their exile will be explored. The conference will strive for a more empirical approach to translation, rather than a metaphorical one. The focus of the conference will not be limited to any particular language, culture or historical period.

The full programme has been set and will be published very soon.

More information in the link below.


http://www.cliv.be/translationinexile/

Additional information