Translating Cultures: transmission, interpretation, transformation

Translating cultures was a thematic programme funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) between 2012 and 2020. It consisted of a portfolio of 120 projects engaged from various disciplinary perspectives with questions of translation and interpreting. The paper explores the findings of the theme and the ways in which research undertaken revealed the ubiquity of translation across sectors and fields. Drawing on a range of case studies, the presentation demonstrates the centrality of translation to academic research but also to a broad range of areas of public interest and concern.

Charles Forsdick is James Barrow Professor of French at the University of Liverpool. He has published widely on exoticism, travel writing, colonial history, postcolonial literature, comics, penal culture and the afterlives of slavery. Recent publications include the coauthored Toussaint Louverture: A Black Jacobin in the Age of Revolutions (Pluto, 2017) and a series of co-edited collections: The Black Jacobins Reader (Duke University Press, 2016), Keywords for Travel Writing Studies (Anthem Press, 2019), Georges Perec’s Geographies: Material, Performative and Textual Spaces (UCL Press, 2019) and Postcolonial Realms of Memory: Sites and Symbols in Modern France (Liverpool University Press, 2020). From 2012-20, he was leadership fellow for the AHRC theme 'Translating Cultures'. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Member of the Academy of Europe.