37.1751, Confs: Black Sea as a Literary and Cultural Space 4 and Beyond: Inter-Reflections of Translation and Literature (Georgia)
The LINGUIST List
linguist at listserv.linguistlist.org
Wed May 13 17:05:02 UTC 2026
LINGUIST List: Vol-37-1751. Wed May 13 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.
Subject: 37.1751, Confs: Black Sea as a Literary and Cultural Space 4 and Beyond: Inter-Reflections of Translation and Literature (Georgia)
Moderator: Steven Moran (linguist at linguistlist.org)
Managing Editor: Valeriia Vyshnevetska
Team: Helen Aristar-Dry, Mara Baccaro, Daniel Swanson
Jobs: jobs at linguistlist.org | Conferences: callconf at linguistlist.org | Pubs: pubs at linguistlist.org
Homepage: http://linguistlist.org
Editor for this issue: Valeriia Vyshnevetska <valeriia at linguistlist.org>
================================================================
Date: 11-May-2026
From: Khatuna Beridze [beridze at bsu.edu.ge]
Subject: Black Sea as a Literary and Cultural Space 4 and Beyond: Inter-Reflections of Translation and Literature
Black Sea as a Literary and Cultural Space 4 and Beyond:
Inter-Reflections of Translation and Literature
Short Title: BSLC4
Date: 29-Sep-2026 - 30-May-2026
Location: Batumi - Batumi Shota Rustaveli State University, Georgia
Linguistic Field(s): Cognitive Science; Ling & Literature; Text/Corpus
Linguistics; Translation
Subject Language(s): Bulgarian (bul)
Georgian (kat)
Romanian (ron)
Turkish (tur)
Ukrainian (ukr)
Submission Deadline: 25-Jun-2026
Edith W. Clowes conceptualises post-Soviet culture in Russia on the
Edge: Imagined Geographies and Post-Soviet Identity (Cornell
University Press, 2011) and “The Return of Eurasia: Imagining Empire
in Post-Soviet Russia” (Ab Imperio, 3 (2005), 69–96). Clowes’s article
shifts imperial imaginaries and frames the Black Sea as a dynamic
cultural site rather than a periphery.
Positioned at the intersection of empires, languages, and shifting
cultural hegemonies, the Black Sea constitutes a complex translational
space shaped by asymmetrical flows, mediated circulation, and layered
dependencies. Therefore, a literature of the Black Sea region, would
be typically a ‘Small’ Literature, as Yordan Lyutskanov (“A ‘Small’
Literature, that is: Literature with Limited Translational
Opportunities, of Structural Undercapacity and Voluntary
Self-diminishment,” 2024) points out national literatures are posed to
dependence on dominant linguistic channels that perpetuates structural
subordination. Mzago Dokhtourichvili's article Les problèmes
traductologiques ou «trahison créatrice» à la lumière de la traduction
de la poésie géorgienne en français demonstrates, using the example of
the translation into French of Nikoloz Baratachvili's poem “Merani”
and Galaktion Tabidze's poem “Blue Horses,“ that translators are
obliged, in order to keep “the soul and spirit“ (Françoise Wuilmart)
of the original poems, to carry out a creative betrayal of the
original work (Antoine Berman), which makes the grandeur and the risk
of translation.
Susanna Witt (2011: 150-151) explores the themes instrumental to the
study of literary translation in the context of Soviet culture,
pointing out that there are gaps in research regarding the study of
literary translation in the context of Soviet culture. This argument
can be well-extended to the Black Sea translational space.
Bela Tsipuria’s works highlight Georgia’s “in-between” position, where
cultural texts reveal both imposed imperial narratives and local
efforts to preserve agency (2021). Her work often examines how
literary representation functions as a site where colonial power is
reproduced, challenged, or reimagined in the post-Soviet context
(2016).
Hayate Sotome considers Ilia Chavchavadze's "Letters of a Traveler"
(2019) as a distinctly postcolonial work, and Gül Mükerrem Öztürk
(2025), in the same light, writes about Translation and Power in
Georgia exploring Socialist Realism to Post-Soviet Market Pressures.
Khatuna Beridze’s Black Sea, Trilingual Reflections: Georgian and
Russian Literature (2022–2023) identifies a “trilingual condition” in
Georgian writing that oscillates between languages and interlinear
trots. Her theoretical approach to the analysis explores theories of
Cognitive Linguistics (Lacoff, Johnson, 1989, 1999), the Habitus
(Bourdieu's (1991) and Cultural Archive (Said, 1993).
Ukrainian research executed by Lada Kolomiyets (2023) exposes the
political anatomy of translation under totalitarian rule. Her archival
studies of the 1930s “Executed Renaissance” demonstrate how Stalinist
purges destroyed Ukraine’s direct Western translation culture.
Bulgarian scholarship, from Boyko Penchev (2012), to Alexander Kiossev
(1995, 2004), and Miglena Nikolchina (2013) - shifts the focus from
coercion to voluntary emulation.
Romanian theorists highlight translation as both refuge and
resistance. Lidia Vianu’s (1998) idea of “translation as asylum”
describes how writers used translation to survive censorship, keeping
literary language alive under the “wooden language” of propaganda.
Maria Sass (2018) redefines translation as an internal dialogue
between Romania’s German and Romanian traditions, the Transylvanian
model where translation becomes a means of European
self-identification rather than subordination.
Turkish research, as represented by Şehnaz Tahir Gürçağlar and Saliha
Paker (2015), foregrounds translation as a tool of state planning and
ideological re-engineering.
The global circulation of Georgian literature offers a particularly
revealing case of how “small literatures” navigate asymmetrical
translation systems and negotiate visibility within the world literary
space. In this context, translation emerges not merely as transfer but
as a strategic act of cultural positioning, where translational
choices shape how national literature is framed for international
audiences.
Alexis Nuselovici (Nouss) (2022) advocates for a paratranslational
ethics that embraces the threshold as a space of creative tension,
where translation is an act of hospitality to the foreign without
erasing its difference. It calls for translators to recognize their
role as active, critical agents who generate new linguistic and
cultural forms through the very act of translating on the threshold.
Dokhtourichvili's another article “La représentation linguistique de
différentes cultures à travers une même langue (2021) of Assia Djebar
(Algeria), Tahar Ben Jelloun (Morocco), and Andrei Makine (Russia)
demonstrates how writers use French as a non-native language to
express distinct cultural identities while challenging fixed notions
of belonging. Against this background, the situational analysis of
Black Sea writers is interesting to analyze: there are other models of
exile and cultural translation.
What unites the literatures of the Black Sea region in translation?
Shakespeare stands as a possible shared translational and cultural
axis of the Black Sea cultures. Circulating across the region through
direct and indirect translations, Shakespeare’s works offer a unique
opportunity to trace diachronic shifts, intermediary influences, and
inter-reflexive translation practices. In many cases, Shakespeare in
the Black Sea context is not a direct encounter with the English
original, but a palimpsestic construct, shaped by prior translations
and dominant linguistic filters.
Recent developments in corpus-based and corpus-driven translation
studies offer powerful tools for systematically investigating the
Black Sea translational space, particularly in relation to
asymmetrical mediation, indirect translation, and diachronic layering.
Corpus linguistic approaches with aligned multilingual corpora make it
possible to empirically identify whether translations are produced
directly from source texts or mediated through dominant languages, and
to map how these trajectories evolve across time. Researchers can
trace recurring patterns in lexical choice, stylistic normalization,
pragmatic shifts, and the persistence of intermediary influence.
At the same time, the integration of cognitive linguistics, enables a
deeper analysis of how meaning is not merely transferred but
restructured in translation. This cognitive dimension intersects
productively with Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, which foregrounds the
historically and socially conditioned dispositions guiding
translators’ choices.
In the Black Sea context and beyond, translational habitus may reflect
ideological constraints, institutional norms, and inherited literary
models.
This conference proposes to reconceptualize the Black Sea as a dynamic
laboratory of translation, where texts do not merely move between
languages but are continuously reconstituted through processes of
mediation, reinterpretation, and ideological reframing. case studies
of modern translations, exploring how contemporary works are reframed
across linguistic and cultural boundaries, and how they negotiate
between local specificity and global legibility.
The conference seeks to explore how such translational trajectories
generate what may be termed inter-reflexive systems: configurations in
which translations interact not only with source texts but also with
other translations, historical imaginaries, and cognitive schemas
embedded within specific cultural contexts.
Key Topics:
The main topics of the conference are:
- The Black Sea, National Literature and Translation
- The Black Sea and Beyond: The Practice of Literary Translation:
Empirical Studies
- Understanding Shakespeare in the Common Cultural-Translational
Space of the Black Sea
- From Cognitive Linguistics to Cognitive Translation Studies
- Literary and Translation Inter-Reflections in the Contexts of Icon
Schemes, Habitus and Cultural Archives
- Corpus Linguistic Research Models of Literary Translation
- Cultural Imperialism and Censorship
- Linguistic Exile and Cultural Translation
The previous conferences included:
25-27 October: The Black Sea as a literary and cultural area;
https://blacksea.iliauni.edu.ge/en/ - held at Ilia State University,
Georgia;
30 March – 1 April 2020 Black Sea as literary and cultural space (II):
peoples and communities https://www.bas.bg/?tribe_events=25923&lang=en
held online at Sofia University “St Kliment Ohridski”;
20-21 November, 2025, The Black Sea as a Literary and Cultural Space
(3): Ruins (Ancient and Modern) and Mobilities, held at Ovidius
University, Constanta, Romania.
https://sites.utexas.edu/creees/2025/06/05/cfp-the-black-sea-as-a-literary-and-cultural-space-university-of-constanta-romania/
Topical conferences also included:
5-6 October 2018: “East European Multicultural Space"
https://bsu.edu.ge/sub-41/page/2-246/index.html?lang=en ;
https://www.bsu.edu.ge/main/page/10932/index.html at Batumi State
University, Georgia;
29-30 March, 2024: “Re-envisioning the Black Sea in Literature and
Historiography: Backwater or oikoumenē?” held at Virginia University,
US;
https://classics.as.virginia.edu/symposium-re-envisioning-black-sea-literature-and-historiography.
Keynote Speakers:
- Professor Diana Roig-Sanz, coordinator of GlobaLS, is an ICREA
Research Professor and an ERC Starting Grant holder at the IN3 (UOC).
Ramón y Cajal senior research fellow at the Universitat Oberta de
Catalunya.
- Professor Yordan Lyutskanov, Docent / Associate Professor in
Russian Literature, Department of Comparative Literature, Institute
for Literature, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences; Co-editor of
Transponticae, journal & book series
Organizers:
Batumi Shota Rustaveli State University
Translation and Interdisciplinary Research Centre at BSU Faculty of
Humanities
Batumi Shota Rustaveli State University’s UNESCO Chair on
Internationalization of Higher Education through Interdisciplinary
Research and Development;
Co-organizers: Association Transpontica Sofia, directed by Assoc.
Professor Yordan Lyutskanov, Institute of Literature, Bulgarian
Academy of Sciences.
Types of Contributions Accepted:
Individual papers
Venue:
Batumi Shota Rustaveli State University
Address: Rustaveli/Ninoshvili St. 32/35
Website: www.bsu.edu.ge
E-mail: Blacksea4translation at gmail.com
Important Deadlines
- Abstract Submission Deadline: 25 June 2026
- Acceptance Notification: 1-15 July
Submission Guidelines:
Abstract Length: 300–350 words
Formatting guidelines
1. Margins: top, bottom, left, right - 2 cm. Paragraph 1.25 cm.
2. The main text of the abstract should be in the font: Sylfaen for
the Georgian version, and Times New Roman, 12 pt., line spacing - 1.0
for abstracts prepared in English.
3. On the first line: the author's name and surname in bold,
italicized at the top right of the page. On the next line in regular
font in the following order: first line - scientific/academic degree;
second line - academic position in full with the name of the faculty;
Third line – name of institution; Fourth line – city, country.
4. Author Required Information: Name, Affiliation, Email, ORCID
identifier - https://orcid.org/
5. On the next line below, the abstract title should be placed, bold,
centered. Author's email address;
6. References: - at the bottom, Times New Roman, 12 pt. APA (American
Psychological Association (APA) Style.
7. Keywords: Maximum 5
Conference Languages:
English (French and Georgian in case of full paper submissions, 2
weeks prior to the conference, by email; Or, extended summary in
English)
Organizational Fee 80 Eur.
Scientific Committee:
1. Khatuna Beridze, Batumi Shota Rustaveli State University,
Georgia
2. Bela Tsipuria, Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia
3. Yordan Lyutskanov, Institute of Literature, Bulgarian Academy
of Sciences, Bulgaria
4. Mzago Dokhturishvili, Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia
5. Alexis Nuselovici (Nouss), Aix-Marseille University, France
6. Monica Vlad, Ovidius University of Constanța, Romania
7. Eyüp Özveren, Ankara Technical University, Türkiy
8. Hayate Sotome, University of Tsukuba, Japan
9. Susanna Witt, Stockholm University, Sweden
10. Teona Beridze, Batumi Shota Rustaveli State University,
Georgia
11. Gül Mükerrem Öztürk, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan University, Türkiye
12. Lada Kolomiyets, visiting professor at Dartmouth College
(Ukraine, USA)
13. Tamar Siradze, Batumi Shota Rustaveli State University,
Georgia
14. Marine Giorgadze, Batumi Shota Rustaveli State University,
Georgia
15. Ramaz Khalvashi, Batumi Shota Rustaveli State University,
Georgia
References:
1. Beridze, Khatuna. (2023). Black Sea, trilingual reflections:
Georgian and Russian literature. Transponticae: Journal and Book
Series for Black Sea Literary and Cultural Studies, 1(1), 356–422.
2. Beridze, Khatuna. (2026). Inter-reflexive Theory of
Translation (forthcoming).
3. Beridze, Khatuna, Nana Kajaia. Exploring Shakespeare Speaking
Old and Modern Georgian. Journal of Narrative and Language Studies 13
(27), 19-32, 2025.
4. Clowes, Edith W. (2011). Russia on the edge: Imagined
geographies and post-Soviet identity. Cornell University Press.
5. Dokhtourichvili, Mzago. (2021). La représentation linguistique
de différentes cultures à travers une même langue. De Gruyter Brill.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110642018-028
6. Dokhtourichvili, Mzago. (2025) Les problèmes traductologiques
ou «trahison créatrice» à la lumière de la traduction de la poésie
géorgienne en français (Translation problems or "creative betrayal" in
light of the translation of Georgian poetry into French), in : Denis
Fadda, Carmen Saggiomo (dir.) UN COUP DE DÉS Cahier de culture
française, francophone et maghrébine, La Renaissance Française
ÉDITIONS, №12, p. 57-69.
7. Gürçağlar, Şehnaz Tahir. (2008). The politics and poetics of
translation in Turkey, 1923–1960. Rodopi.
8. Gürçağlar, Şehnaz Tahir, Paker, Saliha, & Milton, John (Eds.).
(2015). Tradition, tension and translation in Turkey (Vol. 118). John
Benjamins.
9. Hundorova, Tamara. (n.d.). Ukrainian postmodernism of the
1990s (Sergiy Yakovenko, Trans.). Academic Studies Press. (Honorable
Mention, Book Prize of the American Association for Ukrainian Studies
2018–2019).
https://books.huri.harvard.edu/books/the-post-chornobyl-library
10. Kiossev, Alexander. (1995) The self-colonising cultures. In
Cultural Aspects of the Modernisation Process, ed. by Dimitŭr Ginev,
Francis Sejersted, Kostadinka Simeonova, Oslo: TMV-senteret, 73–81.
11. Kiossev, Alexander. (2004) Heritage and inheritors The
literary canon in totalitarian Bulgaria. John Benjamins.
12. Kolomiyets, Lada. (2023). The politics of literal translation
in Soviet Ukraine: The case of Gogol’s “The tale of how Ivan Ivanovich
quarreled with Ivan Nikiforovich.” Translation and Interpreting
Studies, 18(3), 325–359. https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.21020.kol
13. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1999. Philosophy in the
Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New
York: Basic Books.
14. Lakoff, George & Turner, Mark. 1989. More than cool reason. A
field guide to poetic metaphor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
15. Ljuckanov Jordan. (2014). Introduction: Translating a Small
Literature to the Global Market. The Bulgarian Case and Beyond. Studi
Slavisitici 11, 215-223
16. Lyutskanov, Yordan. (2024). A “small” literature, that is:
Literature with limited translational opportunities, of structural
undercapacity and voluntary self-diminishment. In Contemporary Issues
of Literary Studies – International Symposium Proceedings (Vol. 17,
pp. 644–652).
17. Lyutskanov, Yordan. Introduction. In Heteroeuropeanisations:
(in)capacity to stay marginal, ed. by Y. Lyutskanov, Benedikts Kalnačs
and Gaga Shurgaia, Napoli: UniOr Press, 2021, 1-61;
18. Nikolchina, Miglena. (2013). Lost unicorns of the velvet
revolutions: Heterotopias of the seminar. Fordham University Press.
19. Nuselovici (Nouss), Alexis. (2022). Paratraduction: Du seuil
et du traduire. Meta, 67(3), 665–671.
https://doi.org/10.7202/1100480ar
20. Nuselovici (Nouss), Alexis. (2013). L’exil comme expérience.
⟨halshs-00861245⟩.
21. Gould, Rebecca (2013) Inimitability versus Translatability,
The Translator, 19:1, 81-104, DOI: 10.1080/13556509.2013.10799520
22. Öztürk, Gül Mükerrem. (2025). "Translation and Power in
Georgia: Postcolonial Trajectories from Socialist Realism to
Post-Soviet Market Pressures." Humanities 14, no. 9: 174.
23. Penchev, Boyko. (2012). A History of the Literary Field of
the People’s Republic A History of the Literary Field of the People’s
Republic. Maison des Sciences de l’Homme et de la Société (Sofia)
24. Riabchuk, Mykola. (2011). Postcolonial syndrome
[Postkolonialnyi syndrom. Sposterezhennia]. KIS.
25. Sass, Maria, Pojoga, Vlad, & Baghiu, Stefan (Eds.). (2018).
The culture of translation in Romania / Übersetzungskultur und
Literaturübersetzen in Rumänien. Peter Lang.
26. Sotome, Hayate. 2019. The Perspective of Postcolonial
Zoocriticism in 19th Century Georgian Literature. Sjani, (20),
pp.174-184.
27. Tlostanova, Madina. (2017). Postsocialist ≠ postcolonial? On
post-Soviet imaginary and global coloniality. In Postcolonial
perspectives on postcommunism in Central and Eastern Europe (pp.
28–40). Routledge.
28. Said, Edward W. (1993). Culture and Imperialism. Vintage
Books. New York.
29. Tsipuria, Bela. (2016). Georgian modernism: Relocating
Georgian culture. In Chancen und Schwierigkeiten des interkulturellen
Dialogs über ästhetische Fragen (pp. 57–74).
30. Tsipuria, Bela. (2021). "The Figurative Language of Soviet
Power and Georgian Literature". Volume 3 Discourses on Nations and
Identities, edited by Daniel Syrovy, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2021,
pp. 529-542. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110642018-041
31. Vianu, Lidia. (1998). Censorship in Romania. Central European
University Press.
32. Witt, Susanna. (2011). “Between the lines: totalitarianism and
translation in the USSR”, in: Contexts, Subtexts and Pretexts, 89:
Literary translation in Eastern Europe and Russia, ed. by Brian James
Baer. John Benjamins B.V., pp. 149-170.
33. Witt, Susanna. (2017). Translation Studies 10(2):1-17
Institutionalized intermediates: Conceptualizing Soviet practices of
indirect literary translation.
DOI: 10.1080/14781700.2017.1281157
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
********************** LINGUIST List Support ***********************
Please consider donating to the Linguist List, a U.S. 501(c)(3) not for profit organization:
https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=87C2AXTVC4PP8
LINGUIST List is supported by the following publishers:
Bloomsbury Publishing http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/
Cambridge University Press http://www.cambridge.org/linguistics
Cascadilla Press http://www.cascadilla.com/
De Gruyter Brill https://www.degruyterbrill.com/?changeLang=en
Edinburgh University Press http://www.edinburghuniversitypress.com
European Language Resources Association (ELRA) http://www.elra.info
John Benjamins http://www.benjamins.com/
Language Science Press http://langsci-press.org
Lincom GmbH https://lincom-shop.eu/
MDPI Languages https://www.mdpi.com/journal/languages
MIT Press http://mitpress.mit.edu/
Multilingual Matters http://www.multilingual-matters.com/
Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG http://www.narr.de/
Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics / Landelijke (LOT) http://www.lotpublications.nl/
Peter Lang AG http://www.peterlang.com
SIL International Publications http://www.sil.org/resources/publications
----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-37-1751
----------------------------------------------------------
More information about the LINGUIST
mailing list