Michaela Wolf

This significant new study is concerned with the role of interpreting in Nazi concentration camps, where prisoners were of 30 to 40 different nationalities. With German as the only official language in the lager, communication was vital to the prisoners' survival. While in the last few decades there has been extensive research on the language used by the camp inmates, investigation into the mediating role of interpreters between SS guards and prisoners on the one hand, and among inmates on the other, has been almost nonexistent. On the basis of Primo Levi's considerations on communication in the Nazi concentrationary system, this book investigates the ambivalent role of interpreting in the camps. One of the central questions is what the role of interpreting was in the wider context of shaping life in concentration camps. And in what way did the knowledge of languages, and accordingly, certain communication skills, contribute to the survival of concentration camp inmates and of the interpreting person? The main sources under investigation are both archive materials and survivors' memoirs and testimonials in various languages. On a different level, Interpreting in Nazi Concentration Camps also asks in what way the study of communication in concentration camps enhances our understanding of the ambiguous role of interpreting in more general terms. And in what way does the study of interpreting in concentration camps shape an interpreting concept which can help us to better understand the violent nature of interpreting in contexts other than the Holocaust?

Interpreting in Nazi Concentration Camps

Nadja Grbic

Der Band versammelt Beiträge von Absolvent/innen der Translationswissenschaft der Universität Graz. Sie entstanden in der Folge des Flüchtlingsaufkommens 2015 und legen den Fokus auf die Dolmetscher/innen, ohne die die Kommunikation mit den in Österreich durchreisenden oder um Asyl ansuchenden Menschen nicht möglich gewesen wäre. Die Beiträge erörtern auf der Grundlage gesellschaftspolitisch brisanter Fragestellungen Themenkomplexe wie freiwilliges Engagement und Laiendolmetschen, Diskurse über Flucht, Migration und Translation sowie Implikationen für das Feld der Justiz und loten die Grenze zwischen Wissenschaft und Praxis als dynamischen Kontaktraum aus.

Dolmetschen als gesellschaftspolitische Aufgabe

Translation und Migration

Schlüssel zum Nachlass des Linguisten und Romanisten Hugo Schuchardt (1842-1927)

Hugo Schuchardt Nachlass

Alexandra Fukari

The view of translation as a socially regulated activity has opened up a broad field of research in the last few years. This volume deals with central questions of the new domain and aims to contribute to the conceptualisation of a general sociology of translation. Interdisciplinary in approach, it discusses the role of major representatives of sociology like Pierre Bourdieu, Bruno Latour, Bernard Lahire, Anthony Giddens or Niklas Luhmann in establishing a theoretical framework for a sociology of translation. Drawing on methodologies from sociology and integrating them into translation studies, the book questions some of the established categories in this discipline and calls for a redefinition of long-assumed principles. The contributions show the social involvement of translation in various fields and focus especially on the translator s position in an emerging sociology of translation, Bourdieu s influence in conceptualising this new sub-discipline, methodological questions and a sociologically oriented meta-discussion of translation studies.

Constructing a Sociology of Translation

Anxo Fernandez-Ocampo

Situations of conflict offer special insights into the history of the interpreter figure, and specifically the part played in that history by photographic representations of interpreters. This book analyses photo postcards, snapshots and press photos from several historical periods of conflict, associated with different photographic technologies and habits of image consumption: the colonial period, the First and Second World War, and the Cold War. The book’s methodological approach to the "framing" of the interpreter uses tools taken primarily from visual anthropology, sociology and visual syntax to analyse the imagery of the modern era of interpreting. By means of these interpretative frames, the contributions suggest that each culture, subculture or social group constructed its own representation of the interpreter figure through photography. The volume breaks new ground for image-based research in translation studies by examining photographic representations that reveal the interpreter as a socially constructed category. It locates the interpreter’s mediating efforts at the core of the human sciences. This book will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in translation and interpreting studies, as well as to those working in visual studies, photography, anthropology and military/conflict studies.

Towards a visual perspective

Framing the Interpreter

In the years between 1848 and 1918, the Habsburg Empire was an intensely pluricultural space that brought together numerous “nationalities” under constantly changing – and contested – linguistic regimes. The multifaceted forms of translation and interpreting, marked by national struggles and extensive multilingualism, played a crucial role in constructing cultures within the Habsburg space. This book traces translation and interpreting practices in the Empire’s administration, courts and diplomatic service, and takes account of the “habitualized” translation carried out in everyday life. It then details the flows of translation among the Habsburg crownlands and between these and other European languages, with a special focus on Italian–German exchange. Applying a broad concept of “cultural translation” and working with sociological tools, the book addresses the mechanisms by which translation and interpreting constructs cultures, and delineates a model of the Habsburg Monarchy’s “pluricultural space of communication” that is also applicable to other multilingual settings. Published with the support of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF)img src="/logos/fwf-logo.jpg" width=300

Translating and interpreting, 1848–1918

The Habsburg Monarchy's Many-Languaged Soul

Anxo Fernández-Ocampo

The view of translation as a socially regulated activity has opened up a broad field of research in the last few years. This volume deals with central questions of the new domain and aims to contribute to the conceptualisation of a general sociology of translation. Interdisciplinary in approach, it discusses the role of major representatives of sociology like Pierre Bourdieu, Bruno Latour, Bernard Lahire, Anthony Giddens or Niklas Luhmann in establishing a theoretical framework for a sociology of translation. Drawing on methodologies from sociology and integrating them into translation studies, the book questions some of the established categories in this discipline and calls for a redefinition of long-assumed principles. The contributions show the social involvement of translation in various fields and focus especially on the translator’s position in an emerging sociology of translation, Bourdieu’s influence in conceptualising this new sub-discipline, methodological questions and a sociologically oriented meta-discussion of translation studies.

Michaela Wolf

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