REARRANGED: Hospes and Hostis: Rethinking Translation and Hospitality

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Please note this event has been rearranged to an earlier date.

A public lecture with Professor Loredana Polezzi (Cardiff University), as part of both the Citizens and Translation, Adaptation and Performance research themes at the School. Followed by a wine reception in the School foyer between 17:00 – 18:00.

AbstractLike ‘translation’, ‘hospitality’ and ‘conflict’ are multidirectional words. The Latin ‘hospes’ is both host and guest, local and stranger. Both meanings, as Derrida wrote, have an affinity with ‘hostage’. And as noted by Benveniste, the word ‘hospes’ sits in close proximity to ‘hostis’ which is, in turn, both stranger and enemy. Translation too is an act, a practice, built on the tension between sameness and difference, between ‘the foreign’ and what is ‘peculiar to us’. Traditional dychotomic formulations of translation, insisting on equivalence and substitution, constantly reinstate the opposition between foreign and same and demand the erasure of the first in order to produce the latter. What if we change that model? What if the translator and the translated are the same? And what if they are already here, now, rather than ‘foreign’ and ‘elsewhere’? I will discuss these questions using examples from migrant writing and visual arts and arguing that a different notion of translation can emerge in a mobile, multilingual world.

BiographyLoredana Polezzi is Professor of Translation Studies in the School of Modern Languages, Cardiff University, and President of the International Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS). Her main research interests are in translation studies, comparative literature, and the history of travel and migration. Her work focuses on how geographical and social mobilities are connected to the theories and practices of translation, self-translation and multilingualism. With Rita Wilson, she is co-editor of leading international journal The Translator. She was a co-investigator in the research projects ‘Transnationalizing Modern Languages’ and ‘Transnationalizing Modern Languages: Global Challenges’, funded by the AHRC’s Translating Cultures and GCRF schemes, as well as a founding member of the ‘Cultural Literacy in Europe’ network.

Simultaneous TranslationThe event will be delivered in the medium of English. You are welcome to ask questions in the medium of Welsh during the Q&A session. If you intend to do this, please contact mlang-events@cardiff.ac.uk by Thursday 20 February to request simultaneous translation. Please note that 10% or more of those planning to attend will need to request this provision in order for it to be sourced and will be subject to resource availability.
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Citizens – School of Modern Languages’ Research Seminar Series

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