CFP-Translation Studies

[Deborah Hoffman]

I generally find dismissive comments on translation reflect a lack of understanding of the profession and discipline of translation. After all, to non-academics isn't writing a dissertation just putting some bs on paper? Teaching classes just getting up and pontificating about stuff that doesn't matter to anyone else between drinking coffee and putting patches on your elbows? Don't professors just get paid to hear themselves talk? Back to translation, I would refer anyone interested in broadening their horizons regarding it to a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education located here: 
http://chronicle.com/article/Translators-Struggle-to-Prove/63542/ 
  
It could very well be a generational thing. I came to Russian studies also during the Cold War (albeit the last 5 years of it), but did not enter academia because I did not want to deal with...well, dismissive comments about other disciplines and endeavors for one, along with faculty/tenure politics and limited acceptance (at least at the time; perhaps things have changed) of what were considered appropriate topics of academic inquiry. Now I'm finally finishing a master's in translation (my first graduate degree being law) and I'm noticing the academics who are my age or younger seem to have a different approach. Although I'm still puzzling over a recent MFA course description I saw on applying Marxist theory to literature.


  
 ---------------------------------------- 
 Deborah Hoffman 
 Modern and Classical Language Studies 
 Vice-Chair, Graduate Student Senate 
 Kent State University 
  
  
 Friday, February 12, 2010 4:30 PM 



From: 

"Melissa Smith" <mtsmith02 at YSU.EDU>
To: 
undisclosed-recipients
>>I forwarded this message to a colleague of mine who is in Translation 
>>Studies, but since no one else has stepped up to the plate, I figured 
>>it was worth provoking some more serious discussion. Thanks for the 
>>humility, Susan, of framing your objections as those of a "lowly grad 
>>student," but I think there is much to your point, and generational 
>>experience  probably plays a major role. 
>>Kathleen Parthe (if she remembers) was probably one of my primary role 
>>models for going into Russian Studies (being two years ahead of me at 
Barnard College over 30 years ago), and has my undying esteem. With all 
>>due respect, however, I think the generation of scholars who, like us, 
>>came to the field during the Cold War, the increasing 
>>professionalization of subdivisions of scholarly endeavors is an alien 
>>concept. Russian writers themselves have difficulty parting with the 
notion that "poet v
>> Rossii ne prosto poet," but in fact, many of us 
>>lost our affiliation with "Humanities Heavy" in the post-Soviet era.
>>I myself was draw to Russian language because of its linguistic 
>>complexity in relation to the more accessible Romance languages, and >>to its literature because of encountering through it for the first >>time the "accursed questions" of life, death, the meaning of history, etc. Add to that the political "other" that dominated international 
discourse, and I had found a course of study worth devoting most of my 
professional, and much of my personal life to.
>>I find the questions raised in much of the CFP-Translation Studies 
>>Conference no less accursed, and quite intriguing. I also think the 
>>dialogue it may generate across the generations of our profession well 
worth engaging in. 
>>
>>Now, back to the trenches of American public education!
>>
>>Melissa Smith


On 2/12/10 12:48
 AM, Susan LaVelle wrote:
> No, it is not a private correspondence; I was responding to this 
comment
> (repeated below) made by one SEELANGS contributor: 
> 
> Isn't this a case of 'Humanities Lite'?
> 
> regarding this entry (repeated below) made by another SEELANGS 
contributor:
> 
> 
> >International Conference Announcement and First Call for Papers
> >
> >"Shifting Paradigms: How Translation Transforms the Humanities"
> >
> >October 14-16, 2010
> >
> >The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
> >Levis Faculty Center
> > etc.
> 
> I felt that it was inappropriate to speak so negatively about the
> conference, since some SEELANGERS might find it interesting and other
> SEELANGERS are contributing to it. It didn't seem appropriate to be so
> disparaging about someone else's field of
 interest. It could easily 
squelch
> genuine academic inquiry.
> 

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