Resistance is the ability of individuals or groups to refuse or avoid external coercion. It manifests in various forms, from overt conflict to microtactics designed to undermine a prevailing order. Translators continuously engage in resistance: in their choice of source texts or translation strategies, in determining their stance towards market mechanisms and unequal power relations, or in advocating for better working conditions. How do translators combat entrenched ideas about monolingualism or the inviolability of the original? What judgments do they make when they retranslate canonical texts? How do they contend with the dilemmas that arise from translating accounts of a violent past or from translating postcolonial works? This international symposium will explore how translation can operate as a lever of resistance, and how it may do so in a range of ways: as a concrete translation practice, as an analytical category, and as a theoretical concept.
A celebration and a reception to mark Désirée Schyns’s retirement is to follow the symposium (from 4 pm).