Why study Public service Translation?
Flexible programme with mix of self-study tasks, interactive activities, research and reflection and face-to-face classroom sessions
Digital Language Laboratory and conference interpreting facilities
Training in the field of video-mediated interpreting
Extensive use of e-learning technologies for collaborative learning and teaching activities
Core curriculum delivered in English allows for all language combinations
Preparation for the IoLEducational Trust Diploma in Public Service Interpreting (DPSI) examination (pass rates available on request)
Visits to external institutions (Courts, Tribunals, Hospitals etc) included in programme
Classes taught by experts in the field with extensive experience
and a track record of EU funded research and development activities
Fortnightly workshop-style classes combining the benefits of both distance and face to face learning
for more info:
http://www.mdx.ac.uk/courses/undergraduate/language_translation_studies/public_service_interpreting_cert.aspx

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Business School Public Lecture Series -

Book Launch: WHY IT’S KICKING OFF EVERYWHERE: THE NEW GLOBAL REVOLUTIONS
Author/Speaker: Mr. Paul Mason, Economics Editor, Newsnight, BBC
Date: Monday, 5th March 2012
Time: 11.00am-12.30pm
Venue: W138, Williams Building, Hendon Campus

Brief event description:
The year 2011 has witnessed an unprecedented wave of protests and revolts, from the Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, to the indignados in Spain, the urban protests in Israel and the youth riots in Britain. 2012 has already started with the ongoing breakdown of Greek society. In his new book Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere, Paul Mason analyses the reasons behind the current wave of struggles. The social roots of the upheaval lie in the massive disillusion of the ‘graduates with no future’ and the impoverished middle classes, the capacity of social networks to mobilize from below as opposed to top down hierarchical forms of mobilisation. Meanwhile the ongoing financial crisis has led to massive youth unemployment, a formidable squeeze on living standards, and the virtual disappearance of any hope of a better future for the next generation. Taken together, these social and economic factors have produced an explosive mix, as the collapse of the Greek society spectacularly illustrates, with children abandoned in orphanages by starving parents. Financial capitalism is now eating its own children. That people should revolt is not that all surprising – after all, there is surely a limit to what they can endure. The crucial puzzle is the incapacity of economic and political elites to understand, anticipate and respond to such revolts – or revolutions.

The economics editor of the BBC’s flagship program Newsnight, Paul Mason is also one of the most influential journalists on twitter. He first reported live for the BBC on 9-11, and covered the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 from outside its New York HQ.

This event is FREE to attend for both internal staff, students and general public, but bookings must be made in advance due to popular demand. To reserve a place, please email Yangna Li: Y.Li@mdx.ac.uk

2nd February 2012, 6.30pm – 8.30pm, Free Word Centre, London, 60 Farringdon Road, EC1R 3GA, free, refreshments will be served

LAF and the Free Word Centre invite you to a presentation of the report by co-authors Alice Guthrie and Alexandra Büchler, followed by a panel debate and Q & A. Speakers include translators of Arabic fiction Professor Marilyn Booth and Dr Peter Clark OBE.

LAF’s recent report Literary Translation from Arabic in the UK and Ireland is an in-depth look at the last twenty years of Arabic literature in English translation in the UK and Ireland. Drawing on a broad range of sources, the report traces the trajectory of contemporary literary works translated from Arabic, from the initial selection of titles, to the work of translators and editors, through to book sales and critical reception. It addresses a range of relevant issues such as translator training and translation quality control, and public and private support for translation.

As could be expected, the journey of books into a culture generally resistant to translation offers rich areas for discussion and the authors look forward to your feedback.

The event is free but please contact news@lit-across-frontiers.org to reserve your place. For directions to the Free Word Centre visit: www.freewordonline.com/info/visiting-us/

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ONE-DAY SYMPOSIUM – THE STRUGGLE AGAINST POVERTY IN BRAZIL UNDER LULA AND DILMA: THE CHALLENGES AHEAD

 CENTRE FOR BRAZILIAN AND LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES (MIDDLESEX UNIVERSITY)

A host of specialists will address diverse aspects of the poverty-eradication policies under the presidencies of Lula and Dilma. It is widely known that the various income redistribution policies undertaken by these PT administrations, the impressive figure of 25 million Brazilians have been taken out of poverty. No small feat. However, there remain many challenges ahead: Are Brazil’s current rates of economic growth sustainable in the future? Are the current poverty-eradication policies sustainable in the long term? Is povertyeradiction accompanied by the generation of employment? Are the current poverty-eradication policies sufficient to eliminate the social exclusion, discrimination and social marginalization characteristic of Brazilian society?

SYMPOSIUM WILL END WITH Q&A SESSION WITH SPEAKERS

Date: 29th February, 2012

Time: 2:00 – 6:30 pm

Registration 2:00 pm

(free of charge)

Consulate of Ecuador – 58-59 Trafalgar Square – Uganda House – Lower Ground Floor

London WC2N 5DX

Launch of book: Right-Wing Politics in the New Latin America – Reaction and Revolt (Zed Books 2011)

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For further details, please contact

Prof Maria Helena Cortez de Melo Pires

Federal University of Piaui, Brazil

Email: helena@ufpi.edu.br

Dr Francisco Dominguez

Middlesex University, London, UK

Email: f.dominguez@mdx.ac.uk

Date: 8 Jun 2012

A one-day PG Conference organised by the University of East Anglia’s School of Language and Communication Studies

The theme of the conference is intentionally broad, and will be of interest to those pursuing postgraduate studies in diverse linguistics-related disciplines. Plenary speakers will include Dr Christopher Hart from the University of Northumbria. We look forward to ending our conference with a roundtable discussion which all delegates will be invited to attend. Our two plenary speakers will be joined by three professionals from outside academia, and together they will share their insights into issues which have been raised throughout the day. Participation from audience members in the form of questions to the panel will be welcome.

Call for papers

The School of Language and Communication Studies at the University of East Anglia invites you to a one-day postgraduate conference, to be held at the University of East Anglia on Friday 8th June 2012. The theme of the conference is ‘representations of discourse’. This theme to be understood broadly and submissions relating to a wide variety of linguistic aspects of the theme are welcome. Possible topics of presentations include:

•all aspects of translation and interpreting
•semantic or pragmatic approaches to reported discourse, including relevance-theoretic perspectives
•discourse analysis and reported discourse, for example critical discourse analytical approaches to discourse representation
•representations of discourse across media, for example film and television

for more info:  http://www.uea.ac.uk/lcs/eventsnews/discourse

Middlesex University, Hendon Campus, 17-18 January 2012

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Programme 

Tuesday 17 January 2012 

Interpreting in the UK Community  - Brooke Townsley 

Working as a Legal Interpreter and Translator - Aysen McIntosh  

Chair: Monica Zhekov (MA Translation, Middlesex University) 

Session 1: 

Interpreting in the UK Community  - Brooke Townsley 

16.00/17.15 – Williams Building, Room W143
Brooke Townsley, Senior Lecturer in Public Service Interpreting and Translation and MA Interpreting Programme Leader. Starting with the question ‘why do we need professional public service interpreters?’ the talk offers an overview of the present situation regarding the provision of public service interpreters (PSIs) in the UK to public service clients and touches on the main obstacles to the professionalisation of public service interpreting so far encountered. 

Session 2: 

17.30/18.45 – Williams Building, Room W143 

Working as a Legal Interpreter and Translator 

Aysen McIntosh. BA, DPSI Law / Health, RPSI Qualified Interpreter/ Interpreter Trainer PG Cert. The talk will provide an overview of the processes and procedures involved in legal interpreting and translation, including accepting translation work, preparation prior to translation, expected or unexpected common difficulties and problems that might arise, finishing touches to completed translation, translating while public service interpreting. 

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Wednesday 18 January 2012  

Journey into “Storyworld” – David Rain 

The Poet as a Translator – Martyn Crucefix 

Chair: Abele Longo (MA Translation, Middlesex University)  

Session 1: 

17.00- 18.15, Room PORT 7
Journey into “Storyworld”  

Writer David Rain (MA Creative Writing, Middlesex University), known for his eight-volume OROKON Series, written under the name “Tom Arden”, which has been translated into Czech, German and Russian, offers a writer’s perspective on how to create a fictional world to those, the translators, who have to recreate that world. He will provide an account of his own experience focusing on the first book of the OROKON series, The Harlequin’s Dance, an extract from which students have translated for the conference. 

Session 2: 

18.30- 19.45, Room PORT 7
 The Poet as a Translator. Poet and translator Martyn Crucefix will give a talk on his work as a translator offering an insight into his activity as a poet and how he came to translate poetry. He will be focusing on his translation of Rilke’s Duino Elegies (2006) and on his latest collection, Hurt (2010), in a discussion with the MA students who have translated poems from the book.  

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Travel information 

Hendon campus:
The Burroughs
London NW4 4BT
Tel: 020 8411 500 

Travelling via public transport: 

• Underground: Hendon Central (Northern line), then walk.
• Rail: Hendon, then 183 bus to The Burroughs.
• Bus: To The Burroughs: 143, 183, and 326. 

Abele Longo
Programme Leader for the MA Theory and Practice of Translation
Middlesex University – Bramley Road, London N14 4YZ 

a.longo@mdx.ac.uk

Transcultural Practice, Gender/Sexuality and the Politics of Alterity

Edited by Christopher Larkosh

ISBN 1-905763-32-8, £25 (inc. postage and packing)

Published December 2011, 156 pages

https://www.stjerome.co.uk/books/b/154/

Of interest to scholars in translation studies, gender and sexuality, and comparative literary and cultural studies, this volume re-examines the possibilities for multiple intersections between translation studies and research on sexuality and gender, and in so doing addresses the persistent theoretical gaps in much work on translation and gender to date. The current climate still seems to promote the continuation of identity politics by encouraging conversations that depart from an all too often limited range of essentializing gendered subject positions. A more inclusive approach to the theoretical intersection between translation and gender as proposed by this volume aims to open up the discussion to a wider range of linguistically and culturally informed representations of sexuality and gender, one in which neither of these two theoretical terms, much less the subjects associated with them, is considered secondary or subordinate to the other. This discussion extends not only to questions of linguistic difference as mediated through the act of translation, but also to the challenges of intersubjectivity as negotiated through culture, ‘race’ or ethnicity.

The volume also makes a priority of engaging a wide range of cultural and linguistic spaces: Latin America under military dictatorship, numerous points of the African cultural diaspora, and voices from South, Southeast and East Asia. Such perspectives are not included merely as supplemental, ‘minority’ additions to an otherwise metropolitan-centred volume, but instead are integral to the volume’s focus, underscoring its goal of re-engendering translation studies through a politics of alterity that encourages the continued articulation and translation of difference, be it sexual or gendered, cultural or linguistic.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Re-Engendering Translation
Christopher Larkosh

Writing on Race and Sexuality in the Harlem Renaissance: Translation as Retelling and Rememory
Annarita Taronna

This study uncovers a rich tradition of writing by African-American women, mostly hidden in the frst half of the 20th century, whose works developed as a site of ideological struggle in which gender, sexual and racial politics stand out as inextricable elements. The stories, diaries and poems of women writers such as Gwendolyn Bennett, Marita Bonner, Nellie Bright, Mae Cowdery, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Alice Dunbar-Nelson and Angelina Grimké reveal overtly feminist agendas, address issues of alternative sexualities and express homoerotic affection. This paper starts by looking at how the re-emergence of these women writers and their texts may fill some of the gaps in the American literary tradition, thanks to their re-narration and translation into other languages and cultures within a process of rememory as conceptualized by Toni Morrison. The focus then shifts to a discussion of the resonance that such subaltern subjects as African-American women writing in the Harlem Renaissance might have in the context of current Italian political realities, in which new legislation seeks to enshrine new ‘chromatic’ racial labels and categories.

Speaking to the Dead: Juan Gelman’s Feminization of Argentine Poetics as a Politics of Resistance
Lisa Bradford

This article endeavours to reveal Argentine poet-in-exile Juan Gelman’s poetics of resistance through the discussion of the translation problems involved in parenting a similarly resistant text in English. In a verse strongly rooted in the city of Buenos Aires yet intimately involved in exile and loss, he authors an elegy entitled ‘Carta abierta’ (‘Public Letter’, 1980) in response to his son’s disappearance during Argentina’s military dictatorship in 1976. In these poems, he deranges language by reinventing words, spelling, grammar and gender in an attempt to recreate a ‘mother tongue’ that would allow him to speak (to) his ‘unspoken’ son.

Transformations of Violence: Metramorphic Gains and Plastic Regeneration in Marie Vieux-Chauvet’s Les RapacesPersonal Mission or Public Service?
Carolyn Shread

The main objective of this article is to suggest that a commitment to translation that engages with the new possibilities evoked by gender and sexuality studies allows us to envisage and practice non-violent negotiations of similarity and difference. Marie Vieux-Chauvet is a Haitian novelist known for exposing gendered violence during the Duvalier dictatorships (1957-1986) in her trilogy Amour, Colère, Folie (1968). As translator of Vieux-Chauvet’s last novel, the allegorical fable Les Rapaces (1986), I had to engage with the ways in which violence is articulated at individual and structural levels, and consider the implications of my intervention in the text. Ultimately, my translation seeks to extend the social transformation envisaged by Vieux-Chauvet through self-reflexive,feminist strategies and paradigms of translation. Grounding my argument in this particular translation project, I review and resist the ways in which the term ‘violence’ has accrued around translation, proposing instead an understanding of translation as a generative activity.

Two in Translation: The Multilingual Cartographies of Néstor Perlongher and Caio Fernando Abreu
Christopher Larkosh

This essay discusses the problematics of literary translation and transcultural communication in the literary and cultural production of late twentieth-century Brazil, especially in the works of the Brazilian novelist and journalist Caio Fernando Abreu and the exiled Argentine poet, essayist and urban anthropologist Néstor Perlongher. Through a comparative analysis of common themes in their writing, such as multilingualism, male homosexuality and hiv/Aids, a transnational dialogue emerges that allows for a more nuanced and informed discussion of sexual subalternity in translation studies, above all in its implications regarding the ethical imperative of cross-identification for work in transcultural communication.

The Creation of ‘A Lady’: Gender and Sexual Politics in the Earliest Japanese Translations of Walter Scott and Charlotte Brontë
Takayuki Tokota Murakami

The Shogunate regime of sexuality divided women into two categories: ji-onna (ordinary women; housewives, marriageable women) and yujo (prostitutes/courtesans). The former performed the household labour and reproductive functions, and were thus separated from the amorous/sexual activities fulflled by the latter. The lady, or kajin, had become a predominant object of literary/artistic representation in the Edo period; at the same time, a female beauty was defined by the term bijin, one that used to be synonymous with kajin. By examining the Meiji translations of the poem The Lady of the Lake and the novel Jane Eyre, this paper attempts to analyze how ‘pre-modern’ and ‘modern’ sexual ideologies negotiated with each other in Meiji-era literary discourse, as well to demonstrate, through the history of the translation of the English word ‘lady’, how the ‘old’ conception was reconfigued and thus was able to survive. It also traces the changing definitions and theories of translation in the 19th and 20th centuries that infuenced the development of the conficting gender politics embodied in the term kajin.

Western Others (And ‘Other’ Westerns): Translating Brokeback Mountain into Vietnamese Culture
Loc Pham

The current practice of English-Vietnamese translation, along with the dominant theoretical pronouncements by translators and literary critics, has perpetuated the peripheral position of translated literatures in the Vietnamese literary system. While translation is recognized as a real demand in Vietnam, it is alienated as the Western Other and contained in a closed-off and disempowered territory. Like translated literature, homosexuality experiences the same disempowerment. This essay arises from my experience of translating Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain. In this project, I argue that in the case of translating homosexuality from English into Vietnamese, the technique of radical domestication allows the translated text to be read not as a cultural product of the Other, but as a condition within Us, a condition that is perpetually displaced and remains unrepresented. My Vietnamese Brokeback Mountain represents the unspeakable from within, resisting the presumed otherness of homosexuality and the very translational medium through which it is told.

Gender, Historiography and Translation
Tutun Mukherjee

This paper is an exploration of the interpellation of gender in the writing of literary and cultural history, and an attempt to understand how this may be conveyed through translation. The aim is to emphasize the need for dynamic interplay among the three components of gender, historiography and translation. The paper takes up for close study Subarnalata, a novel by Ashapurna Devi, one of India’s most eminent women writers, as well as its translated versions. This novel, the second of an expansive generational trilogy, tells the story of women’s emancipation and the emergence of the ‘lekhika’ or woman writer in India. It is axiomatic that a translator does not merely ‘transfer’ the text into another language, but also its cultural context. In this instance, the challenge is to convey the socio-cultural problematics and the milieu that the author very deliberately weaves into her text. The main question this raises: What kind of cultural sensitivity would be required to effectively translate all the elements of history? The paper then offers the concept of ‘ex-centrality’ as a desirable approach for translating texts of the marginalized and the underprivileged.

Notes on Contributors

Index

To join the International Association of Translation & Intercultural Studies, click here:
http://www.iatis.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&layout=item&id=61

Are the fears of a coming depression or a populist backlash real, or are they being stoked up to make sure that the Eurocrats get their way? Is democracy at a national level really an obstacle to Euro-integration? Or is it more freedom and democracy, and demands for referenda that we should put our faith in, even if it might risk the breakup of the Eurozone? Might it be Europe’s only chance of avoiding a future in which nobody is pro-European?

Lecturers:

Phil Mullan: Economist; business transformation director, Easynet Global Services; author, ‘The Imaginary Time Bomb’

Simon Nixon: European editor, Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column; author, ‘The Credit Crunch: how safe is your money?’

Mark Seddon: Writer and broadcaster; author, ‘Standing for Something: life in the awkward squad’

Chair:

Angus Kennedy: Head of external relations, Institute of Ideas; chair, IoI Economy Forum

Date: Thursday 15 December

Time: 7pm

Cost: £8/£6 (IoI associates and concessions)

Tickets: http://www.instituteofideas.com/events/xmaslecture2011.html
or contact 020 7269 9220

Venue: Friends House, 173 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BJ

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WORLD CINEMA FILM SCREENINGS – In other words : let’s see a good movie!

A series of free of charge screenings is taking place in Hendon campus. Every two weeks there is an opportunity to see a film from a different country or region of the world. The main purpose is to explore cultural differences, but also to experience and practice foreign languages. Curious about how it looks, I went to the first meeting of the club.

I came a bit late so I decided to sneak through the back door. I know it’s a terrible sin, especially during a screening, but I did my best to be as silent as possible. To be honest, I shouldn’t have tried so much, because probably no one would notice even a pair of screaming chimpanzees running through the middle of the room. Everyone was enchanted by the story which was being told on the big screen and as soon as I took a seat I knew why. The French film Amelie makes you feel so positive about the whole world and each human being individually that you cannot take your eyes off of it and just dip into this beautiful story. Yes, I admit, it is a bit unrealistic, but isn’t that what many films are for? To escape and relax? Well, this is definitely one of those movies and if you feel a bit down it will improve your mood immediately. But back to the World Cinema Film Club! All these people gathered in one room experienced the same kind of feeling : warmth and kindness. And that’s the beauty of the film –  even if you watch it with a bunch of strangers, you feel connected to them simply by sharing the same emotions. Can’t believe that it’s possible? Come and check it out yourself!

The meetings start with a short introduction to the background of the movie and some information about the director. After each screening everyone is more than welcome to express their feelings about the film and start a discussion. The next film is Offside directed by Iranian Jafar Panahi; it will be screened on Wednesday 16 November in CG77 at 6.30pm. So if you are tired of they’re-all-about-the-same American comedies you should definitely pop in!

Fri 4 Nov (Week 4): Sophie Mayer. Sophie Mayer is a poet with three solo collections including The Private Parts of Girls, out this year. In addition she has had poems included in The Pocket Spellbook, Infinite Difference and other anthologies and magazines.

Friday 11 November (week 5):Catja Pafort. Catja Pafort gets paid to read books. In return, she wields the editor’s red pencil and helps writers to communicate more efficiently. She has a Master’s Degree in History/Geography and strong academic interests in the History of Cartography and all things landscape, including their virtual archaeology. She writes Fantasy, attends conventions when she can, and enjoys writerly discourse. Her other interests include classical dressage, classical music, digital photography and Apple Macs. She currently lives in Oxfordshire with too many computers and an almost equal number of acers.

Friday 18 November (week 6): Nicholas McInerny– need guest host Nicholas McInerny is a dramatist and teacher who lives just outside Oxford. He has written 35 episodes of TV series, over 30 radio plays, and had plays produced at the Soho Theatre, The Orange Tree, Croydon Warehouse and The ICA, amongst others. He was the Creative Arts Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford – and has taught extensively throughout the UK. He currently chairs SCRIPT – the West Midlands Agency for New Dramatic Writing.

Fri 25 Nov – week 7 –  Roz Kaveney. Roz Kaveney is perhaps best known for her critical works about pop culture. Her review of Little, Big was appended to the 2002 Harper Perennial reprint of the novel. Kaveney is a regular contributor to The Independent and Times Literary Supplement. She appeared as one of the numerous commentators in the BBC television documentary (May 2008) about the idea of parallel worlds as used in science fiction. She is also a founding member of Feminists Against Censorship; a former deputy chair of Liberty; and a transgender rights activist . She was included in this year’s Independent Pink List.

Fri 2 Dec (Week 8) : Lorna Gibbs. Lorna is from Lanarkshire in Scotland and worked as a professional dancer when she left school. She always enjoyed writing and won a couple of short story prizes and had a play performed by the Scottish Society of Playwrights when she was much younger. Her first popular non fiction book Lady Hester was published by Faber and Faber and she is now working on a book about the writer and journalist Rebecca West for Pan Macmillan. Since 2005 she and her husband have lived in four different countries and are now happy to be settled back in London with their two cats, both rescued from the Middle East. She is a Visiting Fellow in History at Essex University and teaches Linguistics in the Media department at Middlesex.

Fri 9 Dec (Week 9): Shaun Levin. Shaun Levin is a South African writer and the author of Seven Sweet Things and A Year of Two Summers. His more recent books include Snapshots of The Boy and Trees at a Sanatorium. His work explores issues of identity, immigration, home and family, and is set mainly in London, Israel, and South Africa. He has been a Hawthornden Fellow, as well as writer-in-residence in a theatre, a bookshop and on the island of Tasmania. He edits the literary journal, Chroma, and teaches creative writing on the Complete Creative Writing Course.

Fri 16 Dec (Week 10): SF Said. SF Said’s first novel, Varjak Paw (2003), tells the story of a Mesopotamian Blue cat called Varjak who leaves his sheltered upbringing to explore the city and learn the ‘Seven Skills of the Way’, taught to him in dreams by his ancestor Jalal. In his dreams, Varjak finds himself transported from his gritty urban surroundings to the deserts, rivers and mountains of Mesopotamia (ancient Iraq). With the Skills, he is able to fight the Gentleman and, in The Outlaw Varjak Paw (2005), the domineering ‘white cat with one eye,’ Sally Bones, who is invading other cats’ territory and ruling over it with torture and terror. Varjak Paw won the Gold Medal in the 2003 Nestlé Smarties Book Prize, and The Outlaw Varjak Paw won the 2007 Blue Peter Book of the Year Award. Varjak was staged as a play by Playbox Theatre, and was performed as an opera by The Opera Group in 2008.