Translation and Nation

Many translations emerge from people groups who look forward to build bridges that are lost or are a requirement. These requirements could be anything from social, political, historical, cultural to linguistic, so to say. Translation activities, in human history, are on a rise when nations or cultures experience crises. In its nature, translation has qualities of linking people, helping them to understand different ways of life and provide a base for looking at each other as fellow beings of an endless universe of variations. The connections it creates can end up in the evolution of nationhoods or in the evoking of the emotions that question the nationalities. Many a time, translations bring in transnational identities too. Translation and Nation, the national seminar by NTM invites papers that record the nuances in known cases, study their contexts, bring insights into the nature of development and intersections and evolve models for studying similar experiences appearing or destined to appear elsewhere in space and time. While nationhood, nationality and related questions may be discussed in a broad manner, the seminar will concentrate on academic canons of translation and translation theory that deal with these distinctions within the context of the discipline of Translation Studies. The approaches should be focused more on the role of translation in these formations rather than the tropes of the formations themselves. Story of a ‘globalized national’ can also be a case study in the papers provided that translation has effected the formation of that identity. The recycling of these identities as new connections emerge through translations can also be an area that is probed. The intervention of mass media and the electronic space of exchanges between individuals and groups could also be the subjects of discussions. Forces that subjugate, responses that liberate, mediations that make the two meet can all be part of the presentation under the rubric of translations that helped these equations of ‘greater or lesser than’, or, ‘equal to’ emerge.

In a landmark development on 24 May 2017, the United Nations General Assembly declared 30 September as International Translation Day. This date, earlier celebrated as St Jerome's birth anniversary, will now also be celebrated for the role of professional translation in connecting nations and fostering peace. This year, to commemorate the occasion, the National Translation Mission is organising a seminar titled Translation and Nation from 26-27 September 2018.

CIIL, NTM's parent organisation, has encouraged the discourse on translation and nation for a long time. In fact, just before NTM was launched, CIIL had co-sponsored a seminar on 'Nation and Translation' in one of the central universities which seems to have generated discussions. 10 years from then, having taken the mantle of 'the apex body on translation related matters in the country', NTM feels that the time is ripe for us to take stock of the situation through this important event - NTM Seminar 2018: TRANSLATION AND NATION.

RELEVANT TOPICS/AREAS OF THE SEMINAR