15.563 monolingualism

From: Humanist Discussion Group (by way of Willard McCarty (w.mccarty@btinternet.com)
Date: Thu Apr 04 2002 - 01:14:18 EST

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                   Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 15, No. 563.
           Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   <http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
                  <http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>

       [1] From: lachance@chass.utoronto.ca (Francois Lachance) (18)
             Subject: Re: 15.560 monolingualism

       [2] From: "Totosy, Steven" <totosy@lib.purdue.edu> (18)
             Subject: Re: 15.560 monolingualism

    --[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
             Date: Thu, 04 Apr 2002 07:08:54 +0100
             From: lachance@chass.utoronto.ca (Francois Lachance)
             Subject: Re: 15.560 monolingualism

    Willard,

    You ask

    > In any case, what Domenico sees is both no surprise and the cause of many
    > difficulties for us -- especially the isolation from important work, as he
    > notes. In my mind the question is, what do we do about it? All well and
    > good to say we should take a year or two to learn one or two additional
    > languages (which we should), but few of us will, and meanwhile the problem
    > continues. Involving other languages in our conferences is impractical for
    > other reasons. What do we do about this serious problem?

    I suggest

    1) Translation be rewarded.

    2) Multilingual abstracts become common and best practice (subset of
    rewarding translation)

    If the money and resources are there, it will happen.

    --
    Francois Lachance, Scholar-at-large
            http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~lachance/ivt.htm
    per Interactivity ad Virtuality via Textuality
    

    --[2]------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Thu, 04 Apr 2002 07:09:32 +0100 From: "Totosy, Steven" <totosy@lib.purdue.edu> Subject: Re: 15.560 monolingualism

    with regard to the issue of monolingualism, the recent article by Eric DICKENS in CLCWeb 4.1 (2002) may be of interest: "Literary Translation in Britain and Selective Xenophobia" at <http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb02-1/dickens02.html>. Abstract: In his article "Literary Translation in Britain and Selective Xenophobia," Eric Dickens discusses the fact that fewer translations of works of contemporary prose, poetry, and essays appear in Great Britain than perhaps anywhere else in Europe. Dickens attributes this shortfall to various factors, including poor language teaching and an indifference to foreign languages in general, but also to a degree of smugness with regard to literature written in English being "the best in the world." In his study Dickens covers such areas as the availability of literary translations in bookshops, the attitudes of publishers, and the effect of prizes on the selection of authors translated. He also attempts to demonstrate that postcolonial studies has remained an exclusively English-language enterprise, rather than becoming a methodology for global liberation.

    with my best regards, steven totosy, editor, CLCWeb at http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/



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