Should Translation cost the Earth? Language, Culture and Communication in the Age of the Anthropocene

Speaker

Professor Michael Cronin (Trinity College Dublin)

From: 4 Feb 2021, 6 p.m.
To: 4 Feb 2021, 8 p.m.
Location: Online Event - Please see description

Michael Cronin is the author of seminal texts such as Irish and Ecology/An Ghaeilge agus an Éiceolaíocht (2019); Eco-Translation: Translation and Ecology in the Age of the Anthropocene (2017); and Translation in the Digital Age (2013).
Throughout its history, translation as a body of theory and form of practice has shaped and is being shaped by prominent transnational movements such as global religions of conversion, trading activities consequent on urban settlements and movements of ideas like the Renaissance, Communism and Liberalism. Climate change as a global phenomenon both informs and is informed by varieties of translation theory and practice. The global nature of climate change and the emergence of humans as geological as opposed to biological agents in the era of human-induced climate change (the Anthropocene) have raised many questions about what it is to be human in radically changed environmental circumstances. Central to any new understanding of what it is to be human in the age of the Anthropocene is the question of translation: as humans are being forced to reconsider the catastrophic consequences of human exceptionalism they must look at their relationship with other species and with other constituent elements of their environment - organic and inorganic. The question of relation across difference, of how humans relate to the ontologically distinct, is a question that can be tackled by translation studies due to its long history of dealing with the underdetermination of meaning. The lecture will outline the global context of climate change and examine earlier engagements between translation and ecology in the context of debates on biocultural diversity (Europe) and changing translation paradigms (eco-translatology (China)). From the standpoint of political ecology we will examine how various forms of translation practice are and will be influenced by the global context of climate change. Whereas previous translation theories have focused on the paradigm of the Nation or the Globe, it is now time to take seriously the paradigm of Earth in the development of a terrestrial translation studies.

Contact: Dr Geraldine Lublin (Email: g.lublin@swansea.ac.uk)

Event created by: h.a.white