Welcome to our first issue of the Language Exepress!

BY AMBER WOODS

"But.. What is a translation festival?" was the most common response I got when telling people about Translation! Festival 2019: Languages in Motion. Everyone understands the words individually: a festival is held to celebrate something, so stick a noun in front of it and that's what we're celebrating: literary festival, music festival, food festival, to name a commonly recognised concepts. So why did I get so many blank looks?

Was it because translation is such a niche theme? Or perhaps because translation is still largely viewed as simple, boring, and a task Google can do for us. As fellow linguists you'll appreciate that these preconceptions are, of course, misconceptions, and not just because of how many times we've giggled at the translated menus abroad.

Translation is a cross-cultural encounter, a negotiation, a display of linguistic creativity. Exeter's biennial translation festival brings people together to broaden our ideas of translation and celebrate all of it with local and international experts. This year’s theme, Languages in Motion, reflected remarkably topical issues. In one way or another, each event challenged and deconstructed the idea of fixed borders while demonstrating the importance of language on borders – as both conceptual and political spaces, with many speakers emphasising the link between language and identity or language and nationality. 

‘Discover Translation’ talks tackled the more popular questions: what makes a good translation? Is there such thing as ‘untranslatable’? And, the bilingual’s bugbear, why don’t the subtitles match what’s being said?! What was great was that despite the complexity of the content and how esteemed many of the speakers are in their fields, each event had an inclusive and engaging atmosphere. Rather than talks, they seemed more like conversations. Questions and comments were welcomed in abundance as people shared their experiences and thoughts, and the speakers were genuinely interested in what we, the public, had to say.

Of course the interactivity didn’t stop there – we took part in a number of practical translation activities. From multilingual treasure hunts to the Spectacular Translation Machine which invited us to translate a French or Italian graphic novel into English with the help of professional translators who not only do that for a living, but have won awards for it! There were workshops run by literary, commercial, and specialized translators, so whatever your interest you could get training from the best. Even these challenged our simplistic views of translation as the Women Beyond Words and Transcreation in Action workshops explored mediums beyond the text for conveying concepts. Images and words can often act together to create meaning – another dimension that translators have to work with.

From translating words and images we went to Translating Clothing, an exploration of codes we wear as opposed to codes we speak, and then on to translating food in I say dumpling, you say ravioli/pierogi/gyoza where members of the community brought along their culture’s idea of ‘dumplings’ for everyone to sample while discussing food as a dynamic and travelling cultural symbol – yum!

Taking place at the end of September it is not only a great time to celebrate translation because of International Translation day, but also because it's the beginning of the academic year.  Students are invited to attend the festival's events in the city centre to engage with the diversity of languages and cultures that exist in Exeter allowing freshers to quickly become acquainted with local venues (RAMM, Phoenix and the Central Library) along with local people and their international cultures, forging the essential bond between the University and the city – both inspiring each other.