Presentation

Translation between theory and practice

Within CIRTI, the term “translation” holds three metonymically related meanings: first, it alludes to transfer as a process occurring between languages, media, cultures and historicised subjectivities (those of translators themselves, or of any other human or non-human agent involved in said process); second, it designates a tangible (textual or multimodal) product that recreates an object of artistic, literary or communicational value, that is, a “mediate” born out of the (creative) intervention of translators or other mediating figures; third, it refers to the practice of translation in all its forms, both as a discipline and as a profession. Several of our members in fact operate simultaneously as translation studies scholars and as professional translators, their experience as translation practitioners thereby sustaining both their research activities and their teaching, whether theoretical or practical.

The interplay between these three meanings, which involves an ongoing dialogue between society and subjectivity on the one hand, and between theory and practice on the other, is the cornerstone uniting the various fields of research carried out by CIRTI. These fields can be categorised into five research streams:

Whether it is viewed as a process, an aesthetic (re)creation, a cultural transfer, or a communication or learning object, translation stands in a state of permanent imbalance between its origins – that is, its linguistic, socio-cultural, and authorial roots – and its reception, which is also, in turn, characterised by specific ideological and/or poetic tensions. The 21^st-century translational developments prompt us to rethink translation in the light of complex study environments (i.e. multilingual, asymmetrical, multimodal, post-anthropocentric) and to move beyond the binary oppositions that have traditionally structured its study (source vs. target, translated vs. un-/non-translated, original vs. copy, written vs. oral, human vs. machine).

Teaching translation

This new research stream is dedicated to translation learning and translation training, and is structured around two main themes:

On the one hand, this research stream explores – through corpus-based translation studies approach, for instance – the evolution of translational skills by examining the specificities of translations produced by learners. These projects contribute to a refined understanding of the cognitive mechanisms involved, and are useful to adapt teaching to the specific needs of translation learners.

On the other hand, this stream also benefits from innovative pedagogic devices, such as the collective translation project Le p’TI Journal, designed to enhance the training of translation students. These initiatives seek to introduce methods that promote a more efficient acquisition of translating skills.

Through the intersection of theory and practice, this research stream sheds light on the cognitive mechanisms of translation in junior translators, while also contributing to their training.

Members associated with this stream: Magali Claeskens, Anne Debras, Isa Hendrikx, Marie Herbillon, Valérie Maris, Mathilde Mergeai, Perrine Schumacher.

Translation and new technologies

Professional translation nowadays is influenced by the rapid developments in technologies. In this context, this line of work is constantly redefining itself to successfully adapt to these changes and to the evolving demands in the sector. These technological advances are encouraging the emergence of new practices and tasks – video game localisation, pre- and post-editing, MT applied to numerous areas of translation, including literary translation, the creation and use of corpora and translation memories, etc.

Driven by recent advances in artificial intelligence, the advent of neural machine translation and, more recently, of powerful chatbots raises a series of professional, ethical and educational issues. The spectacular evolution of AI-based translation lead to new professional translation practices. Translators are thus compelled to continually adapt, and institutions to rethink how translation is taught and learnt.

This research stream examines various aspects of these technological developments and studies their impact on the translation product, on the translational act, on the status of translators, and on the cognitive processes involved. It also aims to highlight the stakes of technological development and the new issues that it raises.

This rise of new technologies has led to new media and cultural practices, such as the localisation of video games and other interactive media. These interactive media pose unprecedented challenges, as their defining codes and practices are also undergoing rapid change. This research stream therefore also investigates the cultural and technical challenges specific to the localisation of new media objects, particularly digital ones.

Members associated with this stream: Perrine Schumacher, Valérie Bada, Pierre-Yves Houlmont.

Translation and intermediality

The encounter between theories and practices of intermediality and translation involves using a variety of approaches and objects of study to examine intermediality both through the lens of translation and in translation. What are the conceptual affinities between intermediality and translation? And what becomes of intermediality in translation? Following the typology of Irina Rajewsky (2005:50–52), members associated with this research stream are interested in “media transposition” (e.g. the film adaptation of a novel), “media combination” (e.g. musicals) and “intermedial reference” (e.g. the musicalisation of literature).

Members associated with this stream: Marie Herbillon, Marie Jadot, Pierre Robaux.

Transfer, networks and mediating figures

The concept of transfer covers a series of practices relating to circulation, transformation and resemantisation between different geocultural spaces. It also refers to an interdisciplinary research method which takes a critical stance towards comparative studies and aims to shed light on the intersection logics, historical vectors, networks and mediating figures that have contributed to the circulation of goods, texts and ideas beyond cultural and linguistic boundaries. These reflections have given rise to two fields of investigation within CIRTI.

1) The study of theory transfer in the humanities, including philosophy, history, psychoanalysis, and translation studies itself. Even today, debates around theories often remain confined to a given linguistic sphere, for the simple reason that few translations are available. This is not surprising, given that the translation of theoretical texts requires a dual skill set: on the one hand, translators must be thoroughly familiar with the issues at stake in the discipline (and therefore they should ideally hold a degree in humanities themselves. On the other hand, they must have excellent translational skills in order to overcome the complexities that theoretical texts present (whether in terms of terminology, implicit references to other theories, or allusions to intellectual traditions specific to the source culture). In the transfer of theories, the practice of translation and critical reflection on the process necessarily go hand in hand, as shown by the work carried out by CIRTI members on figures such as Sartre, Freud, de Beauvoir, Meschonnic, Apter, Enzensberger, Sachs-Hombach, Warburg, Wiesing and Darwin.

2) The study of transfer as a process. This field of research specifically focuses on translation networks and flows through quantitative (databases and visualisation) and qualitative studies (analysis of human intermediaries, such as authors, translators, editors and publishers, and non-human intermediaries, such as prefaces and afterwords, contracts, institutions, translation policy, etc.). The study of mediating figures yields a better understanding of the social, historical, and discursive contexts in which translation has taken place, and gives the often-invisibilised translators the visibility that they deserve. The research conducted by CIRTI members explore various constellations, from the Latin American avant-garde movements of the 1920s and 1930s, to the intra-Belgian literary transfers and the translation flows of Georges Simenon’s work, to the translators’ seminars initiated by Günter Grass in the late 1970s.

Members associated with this stream: Clémence Belleflamme, Elisabet Carbó Catalan, Delphine Coppin, Anne-Cécile Druet, Maud Gonne, Céline Letawe, Thea Rimini, Elies Smeyers, Claus Telge, Vera Viehöver, Patricia Willson.

Non-translation: translation avoidance strategies and power relations

From the 18th century onwards, the emergence of national languages in Europe has intensified tensions between monolingualism and multilingualism, the latter being perceived as a threat to the identity of emerging nation states. Literary production, scientific discourse on multilingualism and the language policies of the time were marked by this new paradigm. The “non-translation” research stream analyses how discursive methods and practices challenge this new antinomy between monolingualism and multi-/plurilingualism. By “non-translation,” we mean literary and linguistic strategies that seek to avoid the translation process, such as the creation of universal languages around 1900; universal poetics in the Futurist literary movement; and the genesis of texts whose multilingualism was concealed as early as the 19th century. Nevertheless, the underlying issue remains the persistent presence of the translation process, even when it is deliberately avoided, and the ideological effort to circumvent of its necessity. Like translations, these new strategies of “non-translation” create power imbalances, due in part to issues regarding inclusion or exclusion in national languages and literatures. The “non-translation” research stream aims to study the political, ideological and literary dimensions of non-translation.

Members associated with this stream: Léa Melot, Myriam-Naomi Walburg.

updated on 12/9/25