The Translator Made Corporeal: Translation History and the Archive

This conference will explore the current progress in studying the human translator in an historical and cultural context

Read the programme for the day 

The translation scholar Theo Hermans suggested that while we have recognised that there can be no translated text without the human translator, translators are still expected to remain ‘hidden, out of view, transparent, incorporeal, disembodied and disenfranchised’.

If we are to get a deeper understanding of translators as cultural agents, Anthony Pym describes the need to look at the ‘flesh-and-blood’ translator. D’Hulst suggests that we ask ‘Qui? – who is the translator?’ A question which requires a look into the translator's social, cultural and economic background in a historical context.

More recently, Jeremy Munday, Outi Paloposki and others have suggested that we should research translators’ archives to reveal their everyday lives, struggles, networks, and even friendships.

This conference will explore current progress in studying the human, flesh-and-blood translator in an historical and cultural context. Among those translators revealed will be: a court interpreter and part-time criminal in 18th-century Ireland; translators who risk exile or even their lives for their beliefs; WWII Japanese interpreters convicted as war criminals; blind translators in Poland today; and pre-1980 Soviet Union literary translators negotiating and arguing over censorship with their editors.

The varied research showcased here challenges our notions of who translators are and broadens our understanding of their social and cultural agency.

There will also be a showing of a photography project The Translator Through the Lens specially commissioned for the event by Julia Scönstädt (see programme).

Organised in partnership between the British Library, University College London and the University of Essex  

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