CHICAGO, February 9, 2007 - The Newberry Library welcomes the public to The Caxton Club/Newberry Library 2007 Symposium on the Book, Remodeling the Tower of Babel: The Translator's Role in a Shrinking World. On Saturday, March 31, 2007, from 9 am to 4 pm, five leading scholars will explore the role translators and translations have played and will play in mediating cultural, artistic, and political differences.
"Our purpose in presenting this symposium is to stimulate better thinking about current issues by showing the links between past and present," said Steve Tomashefsky, co-chairman of the Caxton Club symposium committee. "The pressures on language development and cultural identity created by the invention of printing were no less significant in their day than the challenges created by digital technology in our own time. Many 'technology' problems we consider to be new began emerging with Gutenberg."
On the occasion of the Symposium, Paul F. Gehl, custodian, John M. Wing Foundation on the History of Printing, will create a display at the Newberry of books that present more than one language. The display will include Newberry books ranging from 16th-century language instruction books to modern interpretations of poetry.
"There is an essential inequality of languages when one is 'original' and the other is a 'target language,'" Gehl said. "For hundreds of years, designers and printers have tried to solve this problem with different weights, styles, and even directions. At the Newberry, readers can explore this fascinating issue from a variety of angles and time periods."
Symposium speakers include Patricia Clare Ingham, Indiana University; Thomas Hahn, University of Rochester; Göran Malmqvist, Swedish Academy; and Douglas Hofstadter, Indiana University. Diana Robin, resident scholar at the Newberry Library, will moderate the panel discussion among the speakers.
The Symposium is free and open to the public, however seating is limited and advance registration is required. For details, visit www.caxtonclub.org to register or call (312) 255-3700.
Schedule:
Session I: Manuscript to Print
The Newberry Library, 9:00 am
"Romancing the Public"
Patricia Clare Ingham, Indiana University
Romance is an unusual genre -- both universalizing and particularizing, both aristocratic and popular. Professor Ingham, an expert on William Caxton and other early English writers and printers, will explore how the broad dissemination of popular texts brought new demands on the translator's art in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
"Linguistic, National, and Global Communities"
Thomas Hahn, University of Rochester
Professor Hahn's thesis is that the New World was "created" through the medium of print, since Europeans' understanding of the Americas derived primarily from what they read in translations of travel accounts. Professor Hahn will discuss the role of translation in mediating and shaping explorers' experiences for readers from different nations and societies.
Session II: Problematics The Newberry Library, 11:00 am
"The Translator's Responsibility: A Divided Loyalty?"
Göran Malmqvist, Swedish Academy
Göran Malmqvist will discuss the translator's twofold duty: to the author of the original work and to readers in the new language. Dr. Malmqvist will also share his insights into the needs of a very special readership: the members of the Swedish Academy who, charged with selecting one author each year to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, must judge the literary quality of works they cannot read in the original languages.
"Who Is the Real Author of a Translated Book?"
Douglas Hofstadter, Indiana University
Can Dante really be understood in English, a language that didn't even exist when he was alive? Crazy! This observation will be the starting point for Professor Hofstadter's consideration of some paradoxes of translation. Hofstadter, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is well known as a cognitive scientist and has also translated literary works from several languages.
Session III: Today and Tomorrow Alliance Française Auditorium, 2:30 pm
54 W. Chicago Avenue, Chicago.
The symposium will reconvene for a panel discussion by the four morning speakers, moderated by Diana Robin, a distinguished translator of Renaissance texts and Scholar-in-Residence at the Newberry Library. The panel will consider the future of translation and translation studies, which seem inevitably linked to the ongoing development of the Internet and of digital translation technologies.
The symposium is made possible in part from a grant from the Illinois Humanities Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Illinois General Assembly.
ABOUT THE NEWBERRY LIBRARY
The Newberry Library, a pre-eminent humanities research and reference institution, is home to a world-class collection of books, manuscripts, maps, music, and other printed materials. The Library's evolving collections focus on Western Europe and the Americas and includes more than 1.5 million books, 5 million manuscript pages, and 300,000 historic maps. The Newberry offers exhibits based on its collections, musical and theatrical performances, lectures and discussions with leading humanists, seminars, and teacher programs. Visit the Newberry online at www.newberry.org.