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Project

Multilingualism, translation and minor languages in contemporary world literature

 Since its emergence in the 18th century, monolingualism has had a strong impact on literature and culture. Despite its avowed global perspective, world literature still leans towards monolingualism. Not only does it focus on writers who write in major languages, while peripheral regions and minor languages are off the map, but it also favours monolingual works. Multilingual texts are often considered untranslatable or incomprehensible, which hinders their international circulation and critical reception. This project aims to valorise language diversity in world literature and explores how multilingualism shapes the texts of contemporary authors who write beyond the mother tongue, paying special attention to the role of minor languages. The methodological framework combines institutional and comparative textual analyses with critical readings of world literature, multilingualism and translation theories. It examines how multilingual writers self-consciously mobilise the different languages that inform their work and studies the stylistic features emerging from their hybrid influences. Further, it understands multilingualism and translation as two intertwined processes. It reviews the reception of monolingual works and the strategies used by translators to render the multilingual practices and the status of the translated language(s) and culture(s) (in)visible. This comprehensive view complicates monolingual, binary and national approaches in literary and translation studies.
 

Date:1 Oct 2019 →  30 Sep 2022
Keywords:minor languages, Literary multilingualism, translation
Disciplines:Comparative literature studies, Contemporary literature, Literary translation, Stylistics and textual analysis, Sociology of literary texts