Kobus Marais | The 'stuffs' that get translated

Описание: This lecture is the first in a series of five lectures on the complexity of translation delivered by Professor Kobus Marais at the 2025 CETRA Research Summer School in Translation Studies. To learn more about our summer school, visit https://www.arts.kuleuven.be/cetra/re....

Summary:
In this lecture I deal with a seemingly simple question: How material is translation? Recently, debates from what is known as ‘New Materialism’ have entered translation studies, raising questions about the materiality of translation. Blumczynski, for one, argues that translation literally refers to material transfer and only metaphorically to ideational transfer. In contrast, Basalamah argues that translation is at heart a spiritual activity in which materiality is overcome in order to have direct experience of the divine. On the one hand, one could argue that translation has always dealt with materiality, at least since the advent of embodied cognitive approaches to translation studies. On the other hand, one could argue that translation has always been about ideas. This debate also raises issues about the relationship between matter/energy and idea/spirit. I use these debates to explore a complexity approach to translation studies as a possible solution to the emerging discussion.