Welcome to a reconstruction of the first on-line international colloquium on translation that was organised by the Facultat de Traducció i d’Interpretació of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. (There is also a Department de Traducció i d’Interpretació.) This was meant to be a pilot project for future on-line seminars, symposia, colloquia and congresses in the fields of translation practice, translation teaching, translation theory and translation studies.
The On-line Translation Colloquium opened formally on 5 March 1997 and closed formally on 14 March 1997.
We invited Doug Robinson and Anthony Pym to present position papers on the subject of intercultural transfer, and we invited Michael Cronin to respond to their position papers in order to begin a debate on this subject.
As frequently happens with a “live” colloquium, the invited speakers began to debate among themselves the contents of their respective position papers even before the colloquium officially got under way. The position papers by Doug Robinson and Anthony Pym, the Response by Michael Cronin, and Robinson’s and Pym’s “virtual” debate are available in the links below.
The more general debate was carried out over the TRANSFER-L list, temporarily created for that purpose. Participants were invited to subscribe to this list. (There was no charge for participation in this pilot project.) Subscribers could send their questions, comments and suggestions to the authors by means of this list, and the authors could respond directly to the list. In this way all participants received all of the relevant messages. Messages received were also published on a specific Web page on an accumulative basis and are available below.
A selection of texts from the colloquium were published as:
Golden, Seán et al. (1998) “First On-Line International Colloquium on Translation: Intercultural Transfer,” Quaderns. Revista de Traducció, Núm. 1, 79-113.
N.B. Since this is a reconstruction of en event held in 1997, many of the links and e-mail addresses included here are now obsolete, and over the years the images included in some of the texts have simply disappeared into cyberspace.
Colloquium Materials
“The Invisible Hands that Control Translation“, Doug Robinson’s position paper
“Translation as a Transaction Cost“, Anthony Pym’s position paper
“Transferre non semper necesse est“, Anthony Pym’s position paper
“Hand over Fist?“, Michael Cronin’s response to Doug Robinson’s and Anthony Pym’s position papers
“Guiding the Guiding Hand“, Anthony Pym’s response to Doug Robinson’s position paper
“Making Sense of the Chaos“, Doug Robinson’s response to Anthony Pym
“Of Excluded Middles and Fine Lines“, Doug Robinson’s response to Michael Cronin
Messages Received
| 3 March 1997 | 10 March 1997 |