Call for Abstracts:
Translation and the Visual
Translation Panel, annual SCS meeting in New Orleans, 2023
Proposed by: SCS Committee on Translations of Classical Authors
Organizers: Diane Rayor and Deborah Roberts
Translation, often thought of as essentially verbal, regularly engages with the visual. This panel seeks papers that address any of the forms such engagement may take: that is, any of the ways in which translation incorporates, intersects with, or attends to the visual.
Some examples: Cover art offers a paratextual introduction to and framing of translations, and in illustrated editions and graphic novels image and translated text may complement, distract from, or subvert each other. Both illustrations and stand-alone works of visual art may themselves be conceived of as what Roman Jakobson calls intersemiotic translations, rendering the verbal through the visual; a written translation may itself incorporate the visual when translators make use of typographical elements like italicization or capitalization, or work in writing systems with strong calligraphic traditions. A translation for the stage may entail anticipatory visualization, either implicit or explicit (as when the translator adds stage directions or describes settings); and in film, or in recent online drama productions or readings that creatively exploit the visual possibilities of online platforms, verbal and visual translation work together.
Abstracts for papers should be submitted electronically as Word documents by the extended deadline of March 7, 2022 to Kathryn Gutzwiller, preferably with the subject heading “abstract_translation_SCS2023”. All abstracts will be judged anonymously and so should not reveal the author’s name, but the email should provide name, abstract title, and affiliation. Abstracts should be 650 words or fewer and should follow the guidelines for individual abstracts, except that works cited should be put at the end of the document, not in a separate text box.