Memory Studies and Translation

Values in Academic Research

• Novelty

• Building on existing research

• Plausibility

• Clarity

Research Question and Definitions

• In what ways is the notion of cultural memory relevant to translation?

• Definition of ‘cultural memory’

• Definition of ‘translation’

Memory

• Number of peopleCultural memory as shared memory.

• Components

• Types of memory

• Duration of time

• Transmission

Translation

• Interlingual

• Intralingual

• Intersemiotic

• Intercultural

• Transmission

Your existing Knowledge

• Retranslation

• Walter Benjamin ‘The Task of the Translator’

Existing Literature (i)

• Data bases: TSA, LLBA, MLA

• Brodzki, Bella ‘History, Cultural Memory, and the Tasks of Translation in T. Obinkaram Echewa’s I Saw the Sky Catch Fire’

• Kuhiwczak, Piotr ‘The Grammar of Survival. How do we read Holocaust Testimonies?’

Existing Literature (ii)

• Bassnett, Susan.

‘Translation as Re-membering’

Your own thinking

A. Content of Texts

Cultural memory as a community’s knowledge of the past

B. The Texts Themselves

Cultural memory as incorporating a community’s knowledge built up over time of cultural items

Content of Texts

• Specific SC historical knowledge contained in a text to be translated

• Memory of past intercultural relations may impact on translating & translation policy

• A text or translation may create historical knowledge

• Translation contributes to creating transcultural memory of the past

The Texts Themselves

• Texts are re-iterated and remediated.

• This may lead to canonization of a text.

• Retranslation of canonical texts keeps the ST ‘alive’.

• Translation contributes to transcultural memory of cultural items.