This conversation will explore the concept of translatability that includes, but is not limited to, traditional language translation. As a starting point, we’ll take it as axiomatic that translation exists in every transfer of information (whether analog or digital) and that we can learn (and teach) a lot by engaging in and becoming conscious of this process. Essentially, we will try to come up with generative and creative approaches to translation in digital humanities, whether in the classroom or in our own research projects.
Discussion points may include the following:
- analog to digital translation
- human gesture, composition, and motion capture technologies
- multimodal translation (visual, sound, silence)
- visual languages in digital humanities
- crowd-sourcing translations
- cross-platform virtualization and binary translation
This is a great discussion of how we make meaning in DH projects. Hope we could schedule it on Friday so that @GillianLord can come.
Thanks, Sophia. I have to present a seminar paper on Friday morning, but should be available all afternoon!
Your proposal called to mind two descriptions of translation I have run across recently: 1. from Anne Carson’s Nox – translation as “a room, not exactly an unknown room, where one gropes for the light switch.” 2. from Craig Dworkin’s No Medium – translation is elegy.
Now I’m curious about what is lost or left in the dark when it comes to digital studies. I really hope we get to have this discussion!
This observation is very apt and Anne Carson is definitely on my radar. As you know, Nox is a rather heuretic approach to translation — not a literary translation, really, but a creative and visual annotation/superimposition of the original Latin with personal memories of grief and loss.There is a lot that gets “left in the dark,” as you say, in this superimposition of one project over another, and a lot that gets left unsaid.
Thank you for your comment and I look forward to meeting you in person!