Tuesday, 8 March (16.00-17.00 UK time)

Training the Art Translator

Prof. Dr. Monika Krein-Kühle (TH Köln, University of Applied Sciences, Cologne)

Registration link: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_zZv7Oh5ERJSyZZZhivFeNQ

This seminar sets out to explore the situational and textual-contextual conditions and constraints surrounding art translation, a hitherto under-researched mode of translation. It presents the key findings of a survey conducted among art translators in the German-speaking countries to provide a first insight into the field (Krein-Kühle 2021). It discusses the implications of these findings for translator training and presents an art translation module that can be included in translation curriculum design. On an art essay corpus-in-context basis, it also discusses and exemplifies the specific challenges involved in art translation. It discusses specific textual features used in such essays and highlights relevant trends in translation solutions that can be useful for the applied branches of art translation. Moreover, this seminar will explore the more foundational requirements involved in art translation, focusing on the relevance of seeing and on training a translator’s eye that is receptive to the power of visual phenomena and able to grasp the artistic impulse as “an impulse of cognition” (Fiedler [1876] 1949/1978: 76). (Re)learning how to see works of art may be regarded as an indispensable prerequisite for felicitous art translation.

Keywords: Art translation, translator training, survey among art translators, exhibition catalogue essays, translator’s eye.

Bio

Monika Krein-Kühle, MA, PhD, is Professor Emerita of English Linguistics and Translation Studies at TH Köln – University of Applied Sciences in Cologne, Germany, where she founded and directed the MA course in Specialized Translation which is part of the European Master’s in Translation (EMT) network. She has extensive working experience as a translator, translator trainer and as head of the translation departments of major German companies. Her research interests are specialized translation in the field of the visual arts, scientific and technical translation, translator training, research methodology, literary and corpus-based translation studies. She has published widely in all these fields.