Translating Across Minority and Dominant Languages

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Two talks with guest speakers Professor Özlem Berk Albachten (Boğaziçi University) and Dr Stefania Taviano (University of Messina), as part of the Translation, Adaptation and Performance research theme at the School.

Language Policies, Minority Languages and Rewriting Translation History in Turkey
By Professor Dr Özlem Berk Albachten, Boğaziçi University, Turkey

Abstract:
In this talk I will look at the position of minority languages and discuss the language policies in Turkey during the Republican era from a historical perspective, including a discussion on literary and translational activities by non-Muslim Ottoman subjects in the Ottoman Empire. I will then focus on the translation activities between Turkish and these languages, on the contribution of “minority” translators to the translated literature, and on literatures written in minority languages. Finally, I will analyze some publishing houses established after the 1990s that focus on translated – as well as original – literature from and into minority languages. The main argument of my talk will be that the growing research on the interaction and exchange between Turkish and literatures in minority languages during the Ottoman Empire, continuing into modern Turkey, will enable the construction of a fuller picture that will reshape Turkish literary and translation history.

Biography:
Özlem Berk Albachten is professor in the Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies at Boğaziçi University, Turkey. She is currently a visiting academic at the University of Graz, Department of Translation Studies. Her research interests include translation history, translingual writing, Turkish women translators, and autobiography/life writing. She has published widely on Turkish translation history and intralingual translation, focusing mainly on issues such as modernization, identity formation, and translation and cultural policies.

Translating Resistance in Arab Hip Hop: Global Voices and Local Identities
Dr Stefania Taviano, University of Messina, Italy

Abstract:
Translational and polylingual practices are central to global forms of art activism, such as Hip Hop. Diasporic Arab Hip Hop artists, in particular, address political issues with a universal resonance while bringing a change in their local social and cultural contexts. Drawing on Hip Hop linguistics and translation studies, this presentation will focus on selected Arab Hip Hop songs and videos to show how relevant translation processes (understood in a broad sense) are in the construction of these musicians’ identities. Such a multidisciplinary approach will also contribute to shed light on the dynamics connecting language, culture and identity both on a local and global level.

Biography:
Stefania Taviano is Associate Professor of English Language and Translation at the University of Messina, Italy. Her current research areas are language phenomena resulting from globalization, particularly translation processes in Hip Hop music, as well as the spread of English as a Lingua Franca and its impact on translation and translation pedagogy. Her publications include articles and monographs on these topics and a special issue of The Interpreter and Translator Trainer (ITT). She is also a professional translator and interpreter.