Research and publications
- Research and Publications of Professors
They Divided The Sky, a novel by Christa Wolf, Translated into English by Luise von Flotow.
This is the first novel published by former East Germany`s best-known literary figure: Christa Wolf. Set around the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, Der geteilte Himmel combines a love story that is destroyed by this cold war fixture and the politics behind it with criticism of East Germany`s then 15 year experiment with socialism. A re-translation, The Divided the Sky, this English version, stays as close as it can to the German original.
Published by UOttawa Press, to be launched on February 6, 2013 ARTS Building Room 509 (6-8pm), it can be bought on-line, or at the launch.
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The Hermes Complex. Philosophical Reflections on Translation
University of Ottawa Press, 2012, 170 p.
By Charles Le Blanc
Translated by Barbara FolkartWhen Hermes handed over to Apollo his finest invention, the lyre, in
exchange for promotion to the status of messenger of the gods, he
relinquished the creativity that gave life to his words.The trade-off proved frustrating: Hermes chafed under the obligation to
deliver the ideas and words of others and resorted to all manner of ruses
in order to assert his presence in the messages he transmitted. His
theorizing descendants, too, allow their pretentions to creatorship to
interfere with the actual business of reinventing originals in another
language.Just as the Hermes of old delighted in leading the traveller astray, so
his descendants lead their acolytes, through thickets of jargon, into
labyrinths of eloquence without substance.Charles Le Blanc possesses the philosophical tools to dismantle this empty
eloquence: he exposes the inconsistencies, internal contradictions,
misreadings, and misunderstandings rife in so much of the current academic
discourse en translation, and traces the failings of this discourse back
to its roots in the anguish of having traded authentic creativity for mere
status.Author
Charles Le Blanc is Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa School
of Translation and Interpretation. Trained in the philosophy of
Kierkegaard, he is a recognized expert on German Romanticism and the
principal specialist of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg in the French-speaking
world. In addition to a work on Kierkegaard’s thought, he has published
translations of several key German romantics, including Schlegel and
Wackenroder, as well as the definitive French critical edition of
Lichtenberg.Translator
Barbara Folkart studied medieval linguistics, literature and philology at
the École Pratique des Hautes Études (Sorbonne) and the Université de
Montréal. Her hands-on experience in working with medieval manuscripts,
establishing manuscript genealogies and preparing scientific critical
editions of medieval texts has given her a strong sense of how texts get
corrupted when they are transcribed and transmitted, and has very
definitely influenced her views on the transmission of information and
esthetic values during the process of translation.
- Research and Publications of students
- List of PhD and MA theses and major research papers
- K1N (journal of literary translation)