Last updated by pkorpal on 2014-10-24. Originally submitted by pkorpal on 2014-10-20.
Department of Translation Studies has the pleasure to announce:
A veritable treat for both translators and English language historians! A dazzlingly erudite lecture by Prof. Magdalena Charzyńska-Wójcik, Deputy Head of the School of English at the Catholic University of Lublin, Head of the Department of History of English and Translation Studies.
Medieval Translators:
The Makers of the Holy Grail
by prof. Magdalena Charzyńska-Wójcik
Abstract: Ancient and medieval translators are viewed as crucial links in the chain transmitting knowledge, values and ideas between peoples and cultures divided by linguistic barriers. Among the many undeniable merits associated with historical translators, one aspect seems to have gone unnoticed: their potential role in advancing historical linguistic analyses. Language historians generally disfavour translations, giving precedence to original compositions instead, not without good reason. It is the objective of this talk, however, to show that a range of well-selected translations can offer a unique opportunity to travel back in time and observe with unmatched accuracy minute changes they, or rather, we, would not otherwise even dream of investigating. In effect, what we have so far seen as unattainable - a supply of native speakers of a dead language producing for us the same text into successive diachronic stages of this language's development and leaving a clear trail of the changes that take place between successive generations of speakers - the Holy Grail, comes within our reach. The story of how the texts need to be selected to make it possible will take listeners from a delicate papyrus scroll to a parchment codex which ... outweighs a fully grown female Great Dane. We will look at a line of translators who were blessed and cursed, treated as prophets or proved wrong by the evidence coming from ancient sarcophagi. Generation by generation, these translators created a body of data uniquely suited for historical investigations, provided one knows what to look for. So manuscripts preserved against all odds need to be identified among fakes and frauds, scribal errors must be traced and interpreted, each translation requires to be matched with its source text, etc. All of this makes the quest for the Holy Grail of historical linguists a truly unforgettable adventure.
