Early Modern cultures of translation in Wales: innovations and continuities

• Applicants: Professorin Dr. Elena Parina; Professor Dr. Erich Poppe
• Subject Area: European and American Literary and Cultural Studies ; Individual Linguistics, Historical Linguistics
• Term: since 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 404804410

The aim of the research project is the systematic and text-based interpretation and contextualization of the culture(s) of translation in Wales in the long sixteenth century, within the framework of the Priority Program ‘Cultures of Translation in the Early Modern Period’ (SPP 2130) in its second phase of funding, which specifically aims to reflect the view that the Early Modern period was shaped by translations. With reference to a scale between the end points of innovations and continuities respectively, the project will explore the cultural importance of translations in Early-Modern Wales and the characteristics of the contemporary culture(s) of translation and its differences compared to medieval culture(s) of translation. It will profile the regional specifics of translations into Welsh as well as their global interconnections with Protestantism, the Counter-reformation, and Humanism. Methodologically, the project is indebted to a program in translation studies which privileges the hermeneutic, pragmatic, and functional character of translations from the perspective of the receiving textual culture and which bases its interrogation of texts on fine-grained linguistic and stylistic analyses.The project consistes of four interrelated subprojects serving the following objectives: the comprehensive investigation of the Welsh translation of Juan Luis Vives’ De institutione feminae Christianae, a tract on the gender-specific education of young girls; the analysis of translations of catechisms into Welsh and the development of a typology of strategies for translating contemporary catechisms beyond Welsh; the study of the style of Early Modern Welsh translations with special reference to their complexity; and the examination of the Early-Modern reception and adaptation of texts which had already been translated into Welsh in the Middle Ages.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 2130: Cultures of Translation in Early Modern Times
• International Connection: United Kingdom
• Cooperation Partners: Dr. Marieke Meelen; Professor Dr. David Willis