A. Kircher, Turris Babel, 1679
Opening Reception and Purchase Award Presentation
Saturday, February 10, 11:00 am - 3:00 pm
Join members of the Chicago Calligraphy Collective to view the twenty-first annual juried show, and meet several of the exhibiting artists. Find out which exhibited piece will become part of the Newberry's calligraphy collections when Paul F. Gehl, Custodian of the Newberry's John M. Wing Foundation for the History of Printing, announces the 2007 winner of the Purchase Award.
Admission is free. No reservation is required.
Remodeling the Tower of Babel: The Translator's Role in a Shrinking World
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A. Kircher, Turris Babel, 1679 |
Saturday, March 31, 9:00 am - 4:00 pm
Because of strong advance registration, we are now at capacity for this event. Unfortunately, we cannot accept additional registrations.
Language is a source of beauty and understanding, but it is also a barrier to communication among nations and cultures - and between ourselves and those who lived long ago. Has the ubiquity of the Internet raised to a new level of urgency the problem of communicating across national and cultural boundaries?
The challenge of translation has, in fact, been with us at least since the Middle Ages. Then as now, translators have occupied a central position in fostering progress in literature, science, and society. In this symposium, our speakers will demonstrate how understanding the translator's role in the past is fundamental to understanding its importance in public debates today on many issues in diplomacy, journalism, economics, art, and pop culture.
For information about the Caxton Club visit their web site at: www.caxtonclub.org.
Newberry Library's Ruggles Hall, 9:00 am
Romancing the Public
Speaker: Patricia Clare Ingham, Indiana University
Romance is an unusual literary genre - both universalizing and particularizing. Historian Patricia Clare Ingham, an expert on William Caxton and other early printers, will explore how broad dissemination of popular texts in the late Middle Ages placed new demands on the translator's art.
Linguistic, National, and Global Communities
Speaker: Thomas Hahn, University of Rochester
Historian Thomas Hahn argues that the "New World" was created in Europe through the medium of print, as Europeans' understanding of the Americas came primarily through what they read. He will discuss the role of translation in mediating and shaping explorers' written experiences for readers from different nations and societies.
Newberry Library's Ruggles Hall, 11:00 am
The Translator's Duty: A Divided Loyalty?
Speaker: Göran Malmqvist, Swedish Academy
Each year, the eighteen members of the Swedish Academy must select one author to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. Sinologist Göran Malmqvist, one of the eighteen, and a distinguished translator in his own right, recognizes a two-fold responsibility: to the author of the original work and to readers in the new language. He will share some of the joys and frustrations of assessing the work of authors from around the world whose books have not been widely translated from their native languages.
Who Is the Real Author of a Translated Book?
Speaker: Douglas Hofstadter, Indiana University
Can Dante really be understood in English, a language that didn't even exist when he was alive? This question is the starting point for consideration of some paradoxes of translation. Douglas Hofstadter, the polymath author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (1979), has translated literary works from several languages.
Alliance Française Auditorium
54 W. Chicago Avenue, 2:30 pm
The symposium will reconvene at the Alliance Française for a panel featuring the four morning speakers. The discussion will center on the speakers' perspectives and how they can illuminate the digital future of translation and translation studies. The panel will be moderated by Diana Robin, distinguished translator of Renaissance texts and Newberry Scholar-in-Residence.
This symposium is made possible in part by a grant to the Caxton Club by the Illinois Humanities Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Illinois General Assembly.
The Newberry Library
Center for Public Programs
60 West Walton Street
Chicago, IL 60610-7324
telephone: (312) 255-3700
fax: (312) 255-3680
e-mail: pubprog@newberry.org