You are cordially invited to the Faculty’s Literature Seminar "Beyond Cold War Antinomies: Re-thinking Translation and Censorship in the 21st Century", which will be held in English, and will take place on Tuesday, 7 May, at 5 pm in Kazimieras Būga Auditorium.
This time our speaker will be the professor Brian James Baer from Kent State University, USA.
The abstract of the presentation:
This talk begins with a theoretical discussion of translation and censorship as double-voiced texts, followed by a description of the two main approaches to conceptualizing censorship. Then a historical overview of censorship practices is offered, with a special focus on sexually explicit writings in translation. Between the extremes of total banning and total acceptance lie a range of censorial practices applied to translations, such as non-translation or the use of a third language, as well as euphemism, innuendo, and annotation. The textual traces left by such practices bring attention to translation and generate strategies for evading censorship restrictions. Censorship can also take place at an extra-textual level through paratextual material meant to foreclose certain interpretations of a text and promote others. Paradoxically, those paratexts may allow the texts themselves to remain unaltered, providing the possibility of alternative readings. In addition, the effort required to evade censorship to create alternate translations and interpretations results in the creation of minority reading communities.