Translating E-Literature

The first international conference on translating E-literature will take place from 12 to 14 June at the Universities of Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis and Paris 7 Diderot Denis. The conference is organized by OTNI: Objets textuels non identifiés (UTO: Unidentified Textual Objects), a research project into the evolution of textuality in the digital age. It is supported by the Electronic Literature Organization.

E-literature is an emphatically global phenomenon. Its authors are of many different nationalities. Sometimes they write in a form of global English. The reception of E-literature nevertheless raises issues which are far from being exclusively discursive in nature. It also involves criteria that are visual (screen display, graphics, color…), dynamic (screen animations) or kinetic (reader/players’ actions and movements). These dimensions extend far beyond the competences traditionally required of readers of literary works on paper. They are often highly culture-specific. A new semiotics, a new rhetoric and a new poetics are needed if the analysis of these aspects of E-literature is to progress properly. It is impossible to translate works of E-literature without paying detailed attention to them. Thus, translation does not simply provide materials for research into E-literature. It is a research activity in itself – a form of theoretical practice.

The conference will explore a wide range of questions concerning the translation of works of E-literature. It welcomes proposals relating to:

•  globalized English and vernacular languages;
•  transposing screen displays from one culture to another;
•  the cultural specificity of dynamical figures;
•  technology and gesture in local cultures;
•  digital technology as a medium of translation and/or transformation;
•  …

The conference is open to proposals formulated in terms of poetics, rhetoric or semiotics but also to issues raised by cultural studies and science and technology studies; to theoretical discourse as well as experimentation in and analysis of actual translations; to studies of works in which translation between languages or transpositions effected by technology constitute a literary strategy…

Translation workshops will form part of the conference. Participants are invited to suggest innovative formats to enable these.

The conference will stage a multilingual program of E-literature.

The conference proceedings will be published on-line. They will include textual contributions and videos of the translation workshops. Experimental translations of E-literature will also be featured.