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Translating culture and talking with translators
What is the position of the translator as cultural mediator?
A panel of distinguished scholars explore the significance of translation, its impact on encounters between people, and its contribution to social cohesion, especially in multicultural and multi-faith societies like Australia.
Experts on translation from different languages, genres and media, discuss the translatability of cultures and the (im)possibility of translating.
This talk is sponsored by the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre as part of both the ‘Multilingual Australia: Past and Present’ and ‘Social and Political Impact of Translation’ Huddles convened by Professor Vrasidas Karalis and Associate Professor Avril Alba, School of Language and Cultures.
This event was held at the University of Sydney on Monday 5 February 2018.
Speakers
- Professor Vrasidas Karalis (host) is the Sir Nicholas Laurantus Professor of Modern Greek and Chair of the Department of Modern Greek at the University of Sydney. His main areas of research include Modern Greek, Byzantine, Cultural Studies and more recently New Testament Studies. He has translated into Greek three of Australian Nobel Laureate Patrick White's major novels: Voss, The Vivisector, and A Cheery Soul.
- Professor Adrian Vickers is Professor of Southeast Asian Studies in the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Sydney. He researches and publishes on the cultural history of Southeast Asia. His research utilises expertise in the Indonesian language as well as drawing on sources in Balinese, Kawi (Old and Middle Javanese) and Dutch.
- Dr Chris Andrews from the Writing and Society Research Group at the University of Western Sydney has translated books of fiction by Latin American authors, including Roberto Bolaño, César Aira and Rodrigo Rey Rosa. He also looks at experiments with form in twentieth- and twenty-first century French writing.
- Professor Yixu Lu is Head of the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of Sydney. Yixu Lu's main research interest is modern German literature and history.
- Dr Joshua Stenberg is a lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Sydney. He teaches and researches in Chinese-English Literary translation. He is currently working on translations of Chen Xue’s Child on the Bridge and Su Tong’s (author of Raise the Red Lantern) short fiction.
Image (at top): Patrick Tomasso; Unsplash