Reine Meylaerts

Dirk de Geest

A partir du cas fascinant de la Belgique, cet ouvrage explore nombre de domaines stratégiques des mondes littéraires plurilingues et multiculturels. Tandis que les études littéraires internationales excluent souvent les «petites littératures» de leur carte du globe littéraire, ce volume les considère comme un point de départ alternatif intéressant. Il révolutionne l'étude traditionnelle de la dynamique des lettres en Belgique, en tenant compte des multiples options et en optant pour une approche résolument plurilingue et pluridisciplinaire. Dit boek wil, uitgaande van de fascinerende casus 'België', een aantal cruciale kwesties aankaarten rond de meertaligheid en de multiculturaliteit van de wereld van de literatuur. Waar de gangbare internationale literatuurstudie 'kleine literaturen' doorgaans uit haar wereldkaart sluit, beschouwen deze bijdragen ze net als een inspirerend alternatief vertrekpunt, als een symptoom om het verschijnsel van de literatuur in zijn heterogeniteit en zijn complexiteit te bestuderen.

Literaturen in België

Gabriel González Núñez

This book brings together an ensemble of leading voices from the fields of economics, language policy, law, political philosophy, and translation studies. They come together to provide theoretical perspectives and practical case studies regarding a shared concern: translation policy. Their timely perspectives and case studies allow for the problematizing and exploration of translation policy, an area that is beginning to come to the attention of scholars. This book offers the first truly interdisciplinary approach to an area of study that is still in its infancy. It thus makes a timely and necessary contribution. As the 21st century marches on, authorities are more and more confronted with the reality of multilingual societies, and the monolingual state polices of yesteryear seem unable to satisfy increasing demands for more just societies. Precisely because of that, language policies of necessity must include choices about the use or non-use of translation at different levels. Thus, translation policy plays a prominent yet often unseen role in multilingual societies. This role is shaped by tensions and compromises that bear on the distribution of resources, choices about language, legal imperatives, and notions of justice. This book aims to inform scholars and policy makers alike regarding these issues.

Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Case Studies

Translation and Public Policy

Kobus Marais

This volume highlights a range of perspectives on the ways in which complexity thinking might be applied in translation studies, focusing in particular on methods to achieve this. The book introduces the topic with a brief overview of the history and conceptualization of complexity thinking. The volume then frames complexity theory through a variety of lenses, including translation and society, interpreting studies, and Bible translation, to feature case studies in which complexity thinking has successfully been or might be applied within translation studies. Using complexity thinking in translation studies as a jumping off point from which to consider the broader implications of implementing quantitative approaches in qualitative research in the humanities, this volume is key reading for graduate students and scholars in translation studies, cultural studies, semiotics, and development studies.

Methodological Considerations

Complexity Thinking in Translation Studies

Luc van Doorslaer

Elke Brems

After several paradigm changes and even more turns, after fights about scholarly territories and methodological renewal, after intra- and interdisciplinary discussions, Translation Studies continues to produce a large number of publications dealing with the challenge of defining itself and its object, with the borderlines of both the discipline and the object, with ways of interacting with related (sub)disciplines. This publication gathers contributions from established TS scholars (all former CETRA Chair professors) about the topics that will very probably dominate the near future of the discipline. This is an extended and updated version of a Target special issue with the same title that was published in 2012 (24:1).

The Known Unknowns of Translation Studies

Diana Roig-Sanz

This book sets the grounds for a new approach exploring cultural mediators as key figures in literary and cultural history. It proposes an innovative conceptual and methodological understanding of the figure of the cultural mediator, defined as a cultural actor active across linguistic, cultural and geographical borders, occupying strategic positions within large networks and being the carrier of cultural transfer. Many studies on translation and cultural mediation privileged the major metropolis of Paris, London, and New York as centres of cultural production and translation. However, other cities and megacities that are not global centres of culture also feature vibrant translation scenes. This book abandons the focus on ‘innovative’ centres and ‘imitative’ peripheries and follows processes of cultural exchange as they develop. Thus, it analyses the role of cultural mediators as customs officers or smugglers (or both in different proportions) in so-called ‘peripheral’ cultures and offers insights into an under-analysed body of actors and institutions promoting intercultural transfer in often multilingual and less studied venues such as Trieste, Tel Aviv, Buenos Aires, Lima, Lahore, or Cape Town.

Customs Officers or Smugglers?

Literary Translation and Cultural Mediators in 'Peripheral' Cultures

Maud Gonne 

Klaartje Merrigan

Heleen van Gerwen

The concept of transfer covers the most diverse phenomena of circulation, transformation and reinterpretation of cultural goods across space and time, and are among the driving forces in opening up the field of translation studies. Transfer processes cross linguistic and cultural boundaries and cannot be reduced to simple movements from a source to a target (culture or text). In a time of paradigm shifts, this book aims to explore the potential and interdisciplinary power of transfer as a concept and an analytical tool to account for complex cultural dynamics. The contributions in this book adopt various research angles (literary studies, imagology, translation studies, translator studies, periodical studies, postcolonialism) to study an array of entangled transfer processes that apply to different objects and aspects, ranging from literary texts, legal texts, news, images and identities to ideologies, power asymmetries, titles and heterolingualisms. By embracing a process-oriented way of thinking, all these contributions aim to open the ‘black box’ of transfer in the widest sense.

Playing with the Black Box of Cultural Transfer

Transfer Thinking in Translation Studies

Cet ouvrage renouvelle l'étude traditionnelle des littératures en Belgique, en explorant les contacts «intra-belges» durant l'entre-deux-guerres. Comment ces multiples contacts ont-ils influencé, notamment à travers la question de la traduction, le développement des langues, des littératures, des cultures néerlandophones et francophones? Comment ont-ils contribué à la construction d'une identité nationale dans une zone géopolitique multilingue à un moment-clé de son évolution linguistico-politique? Le lecteur trouvera, en outre, de précieuses informations sur Cyriel Buysse, André De Ridder ou Felix Timmermans ainsi que sur l'auteur des Fables de Pitje Schramouille, Roger Kervyn de Marcke ten Driesche, qui joua un rôle important dans cette aventure menée entre autres par Paul Tschoffen et Pierre Goemaere. La Belgique de l'entre-deux-guerres s'y révèle un monde global avant la lettre. Un cas exemplaire de dynamique littéraire dans une zone stratégique de l'Europe. Un plaidoyer et un défi pour des études comparatistes intranationales.

Reine Meylaerts

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