Project Conference: Translating the Literature of Small European Nations

Tuesday 8th - Thursday 10th September 2015, Clifton Hill House, University of Bristol

‌In September 2015, scholars from throughout Europe gathered at the University of Bristol in England to discuss the contemporary and historical circulation of literatures written in less widely known European languages or from less familiar traditions.

There were papers devoted to Catalan, Croatian, Galician, Greek, Irish, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, Swedish and Turkish literature, with participants also representing Czech, Dutch, Hungarian, Norwegian and other Scandinavian and South Slav literatures. Our discussants were drawn from current UK doctoral students working in the field. The conference programme, including abstracts and speaker details, can be downloaded Conference Programme (Office document, 422kB).

‌ Several delegates commented that there cannot have been many conferences where so many national literatures were represented and where the points of similarity and difference in their relationships with the wider world were so thoroughly interrogated. It was particularly valuable that so many speakers and delegates were not only or mainly researchers, but also practising translators or otherwise involved in the 'business' of literary translation.

‌Many thanks to sci-fi critic and publisher, Cheryl Morgan, for blogging so enthusiastically about both Day One and Day Two, to Professor Charles Forsdick, AHRC Translating Cultures Theme Fellow, for coming and for his informative blog, to Marko Juvan for his post-conference report and to Julia Sherwood for her dispatch for Asymptote.

Thanks also to all those who tweeted about the conference in progress using the hashtag #translatingSEN.

The conference organisers would like, above all, to thank:

• all our speakers and discussants, and all those who attended the conference, for making it such a lively, stimulating and happy occasion.
• the AHRC, for their generous support of and engagement with this project.
• Hannah Blackman in the School of Modern Languages at Bristol for her patient organisation of participants’ travel and her ready advice on many other matters.
• the University of Bristol Conference Office and all the staff at Clifton Hill House and Goldney Hall who looked after us so well.
• the Faculty of Arts Finance Office, the Bristol Institute for Research in the Humanities and Arts (BIRTHA), Research and Enterprise Development (RED) and colleagues in the School of Modern Languages at Bristol for all their help, guidance and support.