Online Lecture: Translation at the interplay between cultural and transcultural memory.

‘Translation at the interplay between cultural and transcultural memory’ - Dr Alicia Castillo Villanueva & Dr Lucía Pintado Gutiérrez (Dublin City University). Monday 27 March 2023, 6-7pm (GMT)

The intersection between translation and memory is a new field that has become essential to understand, remember and give voice to those who were repressed during conflict situations. Memory is a dynamic process subject to constant interpretation and reassessment through different periods, societies and languages. Memory in translation, in turn, becomes even more delicate by bringing such memory to target cultures — sometimes also across different time periods.

The primary focus of our discussion lays at the interplay of translation and memory in fictional writings around the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and the subsequent Francisco Franco dictatorship (1936-75). The translation of contemporary novels that belong to the phenomenon known as the memory boom have the capacity not only to serve as a platform to give voice to those who were silenced, but also to create new meanings across contemporary societies, that is, transculturally. In this talk we will focus on two novels, La voz dormida (2002 ) and Los girasoles ciegos (2004 ), and their translations into English as The Sleeping Voice (2006) and Blind Sunflowers (2008), respectively.

Different examples will illustrate how tensions and challenges around memory are (re)created (or not) through the translation of the novels and demonstrate the implications of translation on the way the past is understood in the present. Simultaneously, a discussion of the role of the translator becomes essential in exploring translation and the transcultural transmission of memory.