Conference: Politics and Pragmatics of Translation in the USSR

[cn29 at COLUMBIA.EDU]

The Politics and Pragmatics of Translation in the USSR: The Daily Life  
of Language in a Multi-National Empire

Thursday, 07 April 2011?Friday, 08 April 2011
Room 1512, International Affairs Building.

This conference will bring together scholars from various disciplines  
across the humanities and social sciences to discuss the politics of  
language and the pragmatics of language policy under state socialism  
in one of the most linguistically diverse regions of the world.  
Invoking ?translation? in the broadest terms, the conference will  
address such topics as the art of translation of formal literary works  
from minority languages into Russian (i.e., Boris Pasternak?s use of  
cribs to translate Georgian literature without ever learning the  
Georgian language), practices of code-switching between official and  
local languages in informal conversation as well as formal literary  
contexts, and the mobilization of local language ideologies as a form  
of resistance against the hegemony of the Russian language in every  
aspect of daily experience. In an effort to understand the politics  
and pragmatics of translation in the USSR in comparative perspective,  
the conference program also features scholars whose work addresses  
similar problems elsewhere in the world and in other socio-historical  
contexts.

Keynote speakers: David Bellos, Princeton University and Nancy Condee,  
University of Pittsburgh.

Conference Program:

Thursday, April 7

4:00p Introductory remarks
Catharine Nepomnyashchy, Barnard College, Columbia University

4:15 The Aural in Translation
Discussant: Cristina Vatulescu, New York University
Chair: Ronald Meyer, Columbia University
Tench Coxe, Columbia University
Kino-Tableaux: Framing Space, Image and Text in Georgii Shengelaia?s Pirosmani
Paco Picon, Columbia University
Cheborashka as the Glue of Empire
Catharine Nepomnyashchy and Lauren Ninoshvili
Barnard College, Columbia University
Language and the Politics of Soviet Talkies

5:45 Break

6:00 Keynote addresses: Translation and Empire
David Bellos, Princeton University
Nancy Condee, University of Pittsburgh
Moderator: Michael Scammell, Columbia University

Friday, April 8

10:00a The Soviet Publishing Industry and Literary Translation
Discussant: Frank Sysyn, University of Alberta
Chair: Tarik Amar, Columbia University
Nadezhda Azhgikhina, Russian Union of Journalists
The Press and the Languages of the Minorities of the RFSFR
Gennady Estraikh, New York University
Finding a Place for Sholem Aleichem in Multi-Lingual Soviet Culture
Katerina Clark, Yale University
Lear in Yiddish and the Translations Controversies of the 1930s
Khatuna Beridze, Columbia University
Bilingualism, Censorship and Ideology in Data Tutashkhia

12:00 Lunch break

1:30 Linguistic Encounters and the Law

Discussant: Alexander Motyl, Rutgers University
Chair: Alan Timberlake, Columbia University
Vasili Rukhadze, Kent State University
Same Strategy, Different Tactics? Tsarist and Soviet Language Policy  
in Georgia
Volodymyr Kulyk, Columbia University
Translation and Corpus Planning in Ukraine: Soviet Experiences and  
Post-Soviet Representations
Emily Johnson, University of Oklahoma
Censoring the Mail in Stalin's Multi-ethnic Penal System: The Use of  
Languages Other Than Russian in Soviet Inmate Correspondence
Robert Greenberg, Hunter College and Yale University
When Language Choices Inflame Unrest: The Case of the Slovene Spring of 1988

3:30 Break

4:00 Concluding remarks
Boris Gasparov, Columbia University

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