Plenary speakers
Robert Barsky's work has focused on language studies from a range of perspectives, generally related to studying power relations and the representation of the (oppressed) self in vicarious situations. His PhD thesis and first book, Constructing a Productive Other: Discourse Theory and the Convention Refugee Hearing (1995), offered the first-ever analysis of integral Convention refugee hearings, with the overall finding that no theory of language could possibly account for the many complex levels involved in the process of telling one's life story. The follow-up work, Arguing and Justifying: Assessing the Convention Refugee Choice of Moment, Motive and Host Country (2001), was on crucial decisions made by Convention refugees, and how they justify these decisions later on in determination hearings. Along the way, Robert Barsky came to be fascinated by the work of Noam Chomsky, as well as the milieus from which it emerged; he has written a trilogy of works for the MIT Press thereon: Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent (1997); The Chomsky Effect: A Radical Works Beyond the Ivory Tower (2007); and Zellig Harris's America (forthcoming 2010). He has also written a book (1997), and a range of articles, on literary and language theory. These works brought him into the realm of translating and interpreting from technical, legal and ethical perspectives and, a translator himself, he has developed a strong interest in this area, leading up to his recent project on the pathway to immigrant incarceration in the US. He is currently working on a film and a new book on a radical Zionist organization called Avukah.
Dirk Delabastita is professor of English literature and literary theory at the FUNDP Namur (University of Namur, soon to be integrated into the Université Catholique de Louvain). He wrote his PhD on Shakespeare's wordplay in Hamlet and the problems of translating it (There's a Double Tongue, 1990, published in 1993). He edited two further volumes on the translation of wordplay: Wordplay and Translation (1996, special issue of The Translator) and Traductio. Essays on Punning and Translation (1997). Dirk Delabastita also co-authored a Dutch-language dictionary of literary terms (Lexicon van Literaire Termen, with Hendrik van Gorp and Rita Ghesquiere, seventh edition, 2007), which has been translated into French (Dictionnaire des termes littéraires, 2001) and of which a new free online edition is being planned for 2011. His other books include European Shakespeares (edited with Lieven D'hulst, 1993), Fictionalizing Translation and Multilingualism (special issue of Linguistica Antverpiensia, edited with Rainier Grutman, 2005) and Shakespeare and European Politics (edited with Jozef de Vos and Paul Franssen, 2008). He is one of the series editors of Approaches to Translation Studies (Rodopi), is involved in the CETRA Translation Studies PhD School at K.U. Leuven, and belongs to the editorial board of The Translator. His main research interests include literary studies and its interface with linguistics and translation studies; narratology; wordplay, ambiguity and verbal humour; the translation and international reception of Shakespeare.
Sandra Halverson is professor at the Department of Foreign Languages, University of Bergen. The main focus of her research has been the integration of cognitive linguistic concepts and approaches in the study of translation, and her work is both theoretical and empirical. She has also written on a number of philosophical issues at the heart of Translation Studies, including definitional questions and representativeness in translational corpora. She has published in various journals such as Target, Meta, Across Languages and Cultures, and The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, and she has also contributed articles to several anthologies and reference works in translation studies. She currently serves on the International Advisory Board for Target. In addition, Sandra Halverson is a member of an interdisciplinary research group on political discourse, and her work there is primarily in the area of cognitive theory of metaphor and metonymy. She has given lectures at a number of European universities and is currently a visiting scholar with the Interdepartmental Program in Linguistics at Purdue University in the US.
- Abstract: Reflexive Practice and the Particular Self: What Kinds of Questions Should We Be Asking? (, 91 KB)
Dr. Hephzibah Israel, India
Hephzibah Israel taught English Literature at Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi for more than ten years and is currently researching independently. She completed her doctoral dissertation on Protestant translations of the Bible and the creation of a Protestant Tamil identity at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London in 2004. Her research interests include literary and sacred translations in the South Asian context, cultural and literary practices, construction of religious identities, circulation of ideas of the sacred, devotional genres, nineteenth-century colonial practices and postcoloniality. She has published several chapters from her thesis in academic journals and her translations of contemporary Tamil short stories in English have been published by Katha. She is working on completing her book Religious Transactions in Colonial South India: Translation, Conversion and the Making of Protestant Identity.
Vicente L. Rafael is Professor of History at the University of Washington in Seattle. His research interests have focused on the areas of language and power, especially with regard to colonialism and nationalism, the politics of translation and religious conversion, and the political and cultural history of the Philippines, Southeast Asia and the United States. His books include Contracting Colonialism: Translation and Christian Conversion in Tagalog Society Under Early Spanish Rule (1993); White Love and Other Events in Filipino History (2000); and The Promise of the Foreign: Nationalism and the Technics of Translation in the Spanish Philippines (2005).