T

ranslation is a field that avant-gardes and neo-avant-gardes have investigated. Sometimes, they sought to transform the canon via translation (Ezra Pound), sometimes they used translation creatively to produce writing (Louis Zukofsky, Gertrude Stein, the Oulipo, Ernst Jandl, Charles Bernstein, Peter Waterhouse, Raymond Federman…), sometimes they reveal the violence of translation (Heriberto Yepez) or the wish not to translate in order to question the accessibility of a given language (Natalie Diaz for first nation languages). 

This conference concentrates on renewed practices of translation-as-creation have proliferated in ways that question the production of writing as well as language itself as a social construct (Anne Carson, Stacy Doris, Monica de la Torre, Uljana Wolf, Pascal Poyet, Cia Rinne, Erin Moure…). A branch of the Oulipo dedicates its work to alternative translative methods (the Outranspo). These questions are also related to the renewed interest in plurilingualism as a way to apprehend foreignness; this then often segues into questions of invented languages (Caroline Bergvall and the language of birds).

Programme