'Translation, education and pragmatics' postgraduate symposium

Thursday 25 Feb 2021, 08:45 → 20:00 Europe/Athens

organised online by

University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy (UBAM, Department of Letters, Languages, Arts - Italian and Comparative Cultures)

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece (NKUA, Department of English Language & Literature, and the ΜΕΤΑ-FRASEIS Laboratory)

University of  Salento, Department of Humanities, Italy, and

Aristorle University of Thessaloniki, Greece (AUTH, Department of English Language and Literature, and the TICL Laboratory).

 

 

Assessing the Symposium_Questionnaire results 9-3-2021.pdf

Call for Papers_Translation, education & pragmatics.pdf

Programme-abstracts Postgrad Symposium 25-2-2021.pdf

Screenshots_Courtesy of the speakers and attendees.pdf

Speakers' academic bios.pdf

SYMPOSIUM POSTER.JPG

The link to the TEP Symposium 25-2-2021.pdf

Time for coffee.JPG

10:00 → 10:10 [Please, NOTE this is GREEK time. ITALY IS ONE HOUR EARLIER and starts at 9:00 am. Please see uploaded file 'Programme-abstracts Postgrad Symposium' on the 'Overview' page, for Italian timing, because the system does not allow alternative scheduling]

10:10 → 10:30 WELCOME ADDRESSES_Chair. Prof. Davide CANFORA (UBAM)_Deputy Chair, Assoc. Prof. Aggeliki TZANNE (NKUA)_Chair, Prof. Maria Grazia GUIDO (UniSalento)_Chair, Prof. Anastasios TSANGALIDIS (ΑUTH)

10:30 → 10:45 10:30-10:45 Alexandros Karavelos_’Translating profanity and sexual blackmailing in Lysistrata’_CHAIR: Maria Sidiropoulou

Translating profanity and sexual blackmailing in Lysistrata
Alexandros Karavelos
M.A. ‘English Language, Linguistics and Translation’, Specialization ‘Translation Studies and Interpreting’

The study examines the pragmatic phenomenon of profanity in Modern Greek and English translations of the ancient Greek comedy Lysistrata written by Aristophanes. The play is known for its bad language and is a very useful resource for the analysis of how profanity is treated by English and Greek translators of the play during different time periods. The study examines the degree to which offensiveness is tolerated in four translations of the ancient play. Two Modern Greek and two English translations were selected for interlingual and intralingual comparison. The study takes an emic approach to the phenomenon in that it handed out questionnaires with the aim of utilizing the participants’ linguistic insight into assessing degrees of profanity and appropriateness. The elicited data confirmed a higher degree of profanity in the two modern translations and that there is higher tolerance of taboo language in the recent translations vs. the older ones. Another finding concerns the tendency of modern Greek to engage in profanity more often vs. the modern-day English translation. The analysis could advance understanding of taboo language and im/politeness norms prevalent at particular times and cultures, because these norms are reflected in the final translation products.

10:45 → 11:00 10:45-11.00 Constantinos Dimitrakakis_’Translating In-Yer-Face Theatre for the Greek stage’

Translating In-Yer-Face Theatre for the Greek stage
Constantinos Dimitrakakis
M.A. ‘English Language, Linguistics and Translation’, Specialization ‘Translation Studies and Interpreting’

During the 1990s a new innovative kind of drama started to show up in Great Britain, known as in-yer-face theatre, originating from young writers who challenged conventional theatrical codes and prese¬nted provocative and aggressive material on stage in order to shock audiences and raise public consciousness (Sierz 2001). They were innovative in terms of content and form and established a new theatre language which was more direct, raw and offensive. This study examines a representative play of this kind of drama, Attempts on her Life written by Martin Crimp in 1997 and two Greek translations of it, by Aspa Tombouli (1999) and Athanasia Karagianno¬poulou (2007), in order to investigate how impoliteness and especially the shock effects are rendered and if the primary aim of in-yer-face theatre is achieved in these two Greek texts. Τhis paper elicits data through a questionnaire which is answered by both translation postgraduates and professionals related to the theatre industry (actors, directors). Results show that both groups perceive impoliteness in both stage translations in a similar way: the latest translation seems to fulfill a bit more eloquently the goals of in-yer-face theatre. The significance of this study lies in highlighting variation in the use of pragmatic phenomena cross-culturally which fit the needs of theatre genres.

11:00 → 11:15 11:00-11:15 Athina Sarafi ’Comedy of menace: The Birthday Party on the Greek stage’

Comedy of menace: The Birthday Party on the Greek stage
Athina Sarafi
M.A. ‘English Language, Linguistics and Translation’, Specialization ‘Translation Studies and Interpreting’

The paper is a case study examining three translations of Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party (1957) for the Greek stage. Pinter’s first full-length play is classified as a comedy of menace. The essence of this particular genre is the ominous, threatening feeling that the writer gradually builds in the subtext, whilst the dialogue is mundane with some humorous moments. The study examines three Greek versions of the play (Pavlos Matesis 1969, Errikos Belies 2013, Dimosthenis Papado¬pou¬los 2016), with respect to how translators transfer this ‘ominous threatening feeling’, in a language – like Greek, which favours positive politeness in interaction (Sifianou 1992). Results indicate that the translators adjust aggression and interpersonal distance/proximity in order to render the violence in the subtext. A questionnaire, addressing 15 English-Greek bilingual postgraduate students, examines target reception of these devices. The significance of the study lies in that it shows how pragmatic variables in social interaction are highly significant in transferring aspects of a source play text.

11:15 → 11:30 11:15-11:30 Athanasios Vasileiadis 'Translating destiny in Greek versions of Macbeth'

Translating destiny in Greek versions of Macbeth
Athanasios Vasileiadis
M.A. ‘English Language, Linguistics and Translation’, Specialization ‘Translation Studies and Interpreting’

Destiny has been a troubling concept through the ages. People have pondered on its existence or inexistence for as long as there have been organized human societies. Many have come to accept it as a driving force in life, while others tend to reject it. Scholars have been concerned with whether and to what extent people rely on fate and destiny rather than on one’s own achievement. Hampden-Turner and Trompe¬naars (2000) have measured inner/outer direction (in corporate cultures) by asking questions highlighting the advantages of self-determination and inner control vs. the advantages of contingency, luck, fate, and circumstance. The aim of the study is to show how notions of destiny and fortune travel through Greek versions of Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Macbeth. In comparing four target versions of the text, two of which were performance versions, the study shows how the concept of destiny is one of major significance in the target context. Findings indicate that all three translations favor impactful words when referring to fate, whereas Shakespeare’s original used more loose terms. Results suggest that translated performance versions may assign high significance to the notion of destiny, while others may tone it down favoring a more secular approach as to whether people can determine their own future or rely on higher, abstract powers that weave the strings of destiny. The study relies on both unelicited and elicited data. A questionnaire was distributed to bilingual postgraduate students, in their late 20s – early 30s, for eliciting information on whether the current Greek reader would appreciate awareness of the power of destiny in fiction and theatre. Translation seems to be a powerful channel conveying aspects of pragmatic awareness.

11:30 → 11:45 11:30-11:45 Konstantinos Karantzis 'Sociocultural awareness through dubbing Disney film songs'

Sociocultural awareness through dubbing Disney film songs into Greek
Konstantinos Karantzis
M.A. ‘English Language, Linguistics and Translation’, Specialization ‘Translation Studies and Interpreting’

Given the universal appeal of animation films and the importance of the messages they convey to a young audience, songs play a significant role in the filmmaker’s intention to summarize the plot of animation films for young audiences to consolidate the film message. The question arises as to whether shifts in pragmatic meaning occur in the process. The case study focuses on the ways sociocultural awareness is constructed through songs in children’s films, which address a rather ambivalent audience, namely, children and parents. The study analyzes four Disney film songs and their Greek dubbed versions to examine if and how sociocultural values, in these songs, have been transferred in the dubbed Greek versions. It focuses on pragmatic shifts which translators allowed into the target versions to enhance the summarizing function of the songs in a culturally familiar manner. Findings show that dubbers interfere with the religion, race and gender narratives of animation films to match those circulating in target environments. The significance of research lies in that it shows the liberties dubbers take in rendering animation film songs, making it a subgenre of its own.

11:45 → 12:00 11:45-12:00 Maria Nikoleta Blana 'Micro-narratives in film trailer translation'

Micro-narratives in film trailer translation
Blana Maria Nikoleta
MA_NKUA & 67th/69th/44th Primary Schools of Athens

Meaning transfer practice may entail the adaptation of an original source product into multiple target versions which may, in their turn, be modulated in order to fit into different language and/or media forms (Whited 2002). Each of these adaptations informs the “textual system” of the source product (Shavit 1981: 68-9; 1986: 111-15), whose components converge in depicting the main plot and characters, but may as well diverge in several other ways which are equally accountable for the creation of distinct narrative patterns. Even though language may be considered as the prime suspect for this differentiation, the manipulation of various media channels may, in fact, be of decisive importance in this narrative-creation process (Diaz-Cintas 2009 4-5; Gambier and Henrik 2001: viii). Film trailers serve as micro-narrations of source products, a ‘targeted synthesis’ whose purpose is to promote the film to its audience (Dusi 2014). The study examines cinematic and televisional trailers specifically designed to advertise two temporally distinct films of the Harry Potter Saga, i.e. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (2011), to Greek viewers. The assumption is that there are separate diegetic patterns based on their trans-media differences (the broadcasting medium of these trailers, cinema/television) and the temporal distance between trailer release. On the one hand, trailer transfer seems to display variation owing to the gradual immersion of the target audience into the fantasy world of Harry Potter, on the other, trailer translations commissioned for television are more in line with the target movie narrative than those commissioned for cinema distribution, presumably because they address a different set of audiences—cinema goers as opposed to a more generic viewing public. The study highlights the importance of pragmatic parameters in shaping the discourse of translated products.

12:00 → 12:15 12:00-12:15 Elena Alafuzova 'Interpreted political talk: President Putin’s speeches on the coronavirus outbreak' _CHAIR: Dr. Ada Korda

Interpreted and translated political talk: President Putin’s speeches on the coronavirus outbreak
Elena Alafuzova
MA ‘Translation: Greek, English, Russian’
The paper attempts to show how meaning-transfer may shape the image of a political leader. It analyses translated and interpreted English versions of four of President Putin’s speeches on the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak delivered at the beginning of the pandemic (March-June 2020). The study focuses on pragmatic phenomena like power distance (impersonality), building trust in the power of the state, the conceptual metaphor of WAR in regards to the virus, which shape citizen roles and the image of the President. The analysis demonstrates that while the official written translations attempt to follow the source speech of the President as closely as possible in most respects, high-exposure interpreting introduces more changes to the text. They may entail a more positive public image of the President and the authority he represents. The oral mode of interpreting seems to favour pragmatic variation which the written translated of the same discourse does not assume. The study confirms that the channel of communication is highly significant in shaping power on the political stage.

12:15 → 12:30 12:15-12:30 Eleftherios Antoniou Ideological perspectives in translated museum discourses

Ideological perspectives in translated museum discourses
Eleftherios Antoniou
MA ‘Translation: Greek, English, Russian’

The research focuses on translation as a resource for constructing ideological narratives found in the Russian and English versions of two museum website, namely, The ‘Bunker 42 Museum of Cold War, in Moscow, and The Museum of the Occupation in Latvia. The theoretical framework in this paper is the critical discourse theory and discourse historical approach (Fairclough 1997, Wodak 1999) which present the growing interest in the textual and discursive manifestations of ideologies and in their specific linguistic realizations in discourse. These approaches mediate between linguistic structures as evident in a text and the social, political, and historical contexts of text production and reception. The data sets, selected in 2020 for the purposes of the study, comprised a source text of 1,965 words translated into English (2,413 words). They show how translators favour intended meaning, through discourse choices, disseminating intended historical narratives, which are aligned with the ideological transition of societies which the museums are a channel of. The study shows that the English translations are ‘westernized’ versions of the source slavo-centric Russian discourses, manifesting that the ‘iron curtain between the East and the West’ has been drawn, regardless of substantial ideological shifts traced in Russian and English translated museum discourses.

12:30 → 12:45 12:30-12:45 Elina Melikidou 'Approaching the consumer in Russian-English tourism advertising'

Approaching the consumer in Russian-English tourism advertising
Melikidou Elina
MA ‘Translation: Greek, English, Russian’

The study explores English translations of Russian advertising tourism texts with respect to prevailing cultural norms and traditions, revealing aspects of cultural identity, preferred ways of self-representation and ways of approaching the consumer. The data comprise parallel texts of three data subsets (on Nature, Health and Food tourism) unveiling how tourist perception and identity are reshaped in terms of power distance, self-representation, cosmopolitan orientations. Findings show that English strongly restricts the use of the impersonal forms, interpersonal distance and higher formality and widely uses personal pronouns, active verbs, closeness. As a result, the analysis of the data demonstrates that English favours a more active approach to the tourist whereas in the Russian versions a more passive approach dominates. Results indicate that prevailing politeness principles cross-culturally renarrate the prospects of a rewarding travel experience.

12:45 → 13:00 12:45-13:00 Zhang Zhan_'Childness in translating for children: Trivizas’ The Last Black Cat in Mandarin Chinese'_CHAIR: Dr. Effie Fragkou

Childness in translating for children: Trivizas’ The Last Black Cat in Mandarin Chinese
Zhang Zhan
M.A. ‘English Language, Linguistics and Translation’, Specialization ‘Translation Studies and Interpreting’

Innovative proper names, whimsical employment of word-play and acoustic features of a language are highlights of children’s literature in terms of creating childness in constructing characters and producing humour. Such linguistic creativity, however, is language-specific and could not be easily transferred to other languages in a similar vein. This study examines translation strategies employed in Hu’s (2012) Mandarin Chinese version of Eugene Trivizas’ Greek children’s story, The Last Black Cat attempting to shed light on a less-widely examined language pair. Specifically, it discusses translation techniques of proper names, transfer of word-play and sound-play. The original work exploits nonsensical content in combination with rhymes in slogans to demonstrate the irrationality of social discrimination and the beast in humankind. The Chinese translation failing to reproduce these techniques due to linguistic constraints, prioritized semantic rendering. The study further investigates the effectiveness of various translation strategies, in the Chinese context, by distributing questionnaires to 10 second-year Chinese university students of Greek language major, for examining target reader reception. Participants had to choose from two Chinese options according to their own liking: one was Hu’s translation which focuses on semantic meanings, the other was my creative translation emphasizing naturalness through linguistic and cultural adaptation). Results suggest an overall preference for localized rendering over semantic meaning transfer. The paper draws attention to the significance of target-orientedness in constructing childness in children’s stories, through Greek-Chinese trans¬la¬tion, a language pair which has less widely attracted the attention of scholars.

13:00 → 13:15 13:00-13:15 Marina Sofia Vlachou_'Shaping Dorian Gray’s hedonism through translation'

Shaping Dorian Gray’s hedonism through translation
Marina Sofia Vlachou
M.A. ‘English Language, Linguistics and Translation’, Specialization ‘Translation Studies and Interpreting’

The theme of identity is immensely important in translating Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). This study explores how the identity of the main character emerges in two translations of the novel (1947 Alexandrou, 1989 Theodorakopoulos) and which aspect of identity may be highlighted in each one of them. The study makes use of Brewer and Gardner’s (1996) three levels of identity: the individual, interpersonal and group levels. It explores (a) the level of identity potentially favoured in the translations, which are 42 years apart and (b) the impact of face in shaping identity (Spencer-Oatey 2007), drawing on a rhetorical and critical perspective (Martin and Nakayama 2003), which focuses on contextual and social factors. Shaping the identity of Dorian Gray in each translation is the outcome of manipulating the use of a number of pragmatic phenomena. Findings show that each translator intuitively draws on a different level of Brewer and Gardner’s (1996) model, diversifying the social reality Dorian Gray’s character emerges from. The 1947 (Alexandrou) version rather highlights the interpersonal level of identity while the 1989 version (Theodorakopoulos) highlights the individual level, presumably drawing on prevailing ideological positions emerging in the context of their time. The study is an attempt to apply Brewer and Gardner’s theory in the translation of fiction and advance understanding of aspects of culture which may contribute to improving audience reception of plays.

13:15 → 13:30 13:15-13:30 Aikaterini Gavra_'Revolution and oppression in translated versions of Animal Farm'

Revolution and oppression in translated versions of Animal Farm
Aikaterini Gavra
MA ‘Translation: Greek, English, Russian’

The paper focuses on portrayal of two central themes, ‘oppression’ and ‘revolution’, in George Orwell’s novel Animal Farm (1945) and especially in Old Major’s speech. Old Major, the wisest and oldest of the animals unites the farm against humans and inspires the animals’ rebellion. The aim of the study is to explore a Russian (1989) and a Greek (2005) target version of Old Major’s speech. The study intends to highlight differences in the way the target versions shape oppression and revolution and to account for these differences in terms of pragmatic theoretical concepts. Findings show that oppression and revolution are more vividly shaped in the Russian target version than in the Greek one, along with pessimism about the farm’s situation, implications of hard work and exhaustion, collective awareness and optimistic prospects of a revolution. Multilingual parti¬cipants, answered questionnaires, for confirming data analysis. The research offers insight into how relevance awareness may shape translator intention to adapt target versions to respective audiences.

13:30 → 13:45 13:30-13:45 Konstantina Kyriakou_'The madness narrative in Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Fall of the House of Usher'"

The madness narrative in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher
Konstantina Kyriakou
M.A. ‘English Language, Linguistics and Translation’, Specialization ‘Translation Studies and Interpreting’

The study attempts to trace diachronic evidence of attitudes towards madness in translated fiction and how they have changed through the years. It explores three Greek translations of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story The Fall of the House of Usher, spanning from 1995 to 2013. Michel Foucault’s Madness in Civilization (Foucault, 1961), is used as the methodological framework regarding shifting attitudes towards madness from a historical perspective. Attitudes towards madness, in discourse, may be manifested through an im/politeness model testing the following hypothesis: Using the notions of offensiveness, interpersonal distance and explicit references to mental illness, the study hypothesizes that the degree of impoliteness of the first-person narrator towards the mentally ill protagonist, Roderick Usher, will decrease in the latest translation, as a result of the disability movement, suggesting that the Greek society’s attitudes towards mental illness are becoming more tolerant and inclusive. Α questionnaire addressing Greek-English bilinguals, between twenty and thirty years of age, confirms the madness-inclusive attitude in the third translation, suggesting that representations of mental illness in fiction undergoes a major shift, as it does in society. Τhe research shows that translators need to construct identities relevant to societal tensions to regulate the implications they allow from verbal choices they make.

13:45 → 14:00 13:45-14:00 Aspasia Koutsoumpogera_'Gender in Greek versions of Margaret Atwood’s "The Handmaid’s Tale"'_CHAIR: Dr. Anna Hatzidaki

Gender in translation: Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale in Greek translations
Aspasia Koutsoumpogera
M.A. ‘English Language, Linguistics and Translation’, Specialization ‘Translation Studies and Interpreting’

The study attempts to explore gender identity construction in two Greek translations of Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale. A variety of translation and gender issues have been addressed by feminist translation scholars since the 1980s. Drawing upon feminist theories of language and translation and feminist practices in translation, the study takes an interdisciplinary approach to critically portray females, in a 1990 and a 2018 translation version of The Handmaid’s Tale, in the Greek context. The study examines selected extracts from the two versions to elucidate the translation strategies employed with respect to the portrayal of females. The first translator seems to have the tendency to neutralize aspects of female identity by raising religious connotations, whereas the second translator shows a preference for highlighting them, through discoursal choices. A questionnaire addressing MA participants confirmed findings of the study. Results indicate that the second translation takes a more feminist translation approach, critically adjusting the representation of characters. The significance of the study lies in that it shows the potential of discourse to do justice to issues emerging in target societies.

14:00 → 14:15 14:00-14:15 Charikleia Smyrli_'Shaping the detective in Agatha Cristie’s "The Murder of the Orient Express"'

Shaping the detective in Agatha Cristie’s The Murder of the Orient Express
Charikleia Smyrli
MA ‘Translation: Greek, English, Russian’

The study attempts to explore differences in the way a Greek and a Russian target version of Agatha Christie’s novel Murder on the Orient Express shapes the detective, Hercules Poirot. The data derive from the two last chapters of the novel, where the tension escalates before the detective unveils the truth. The study uses a theory of identity (Schwartz, Luyckx, Vignoles 2011) to highlight aspects of the detective’s character as manifested in the two translations. Most of the findings are confirmed by a questionnaire addressing seven English-Greek-Russian trilingual MA students, aged 22-40. The study shows how Greek and Russian translators are renegotiating Poirot’s figure. The detective appears more polite, elegant and gentle, in Greek, while in Russian more humorous, comprehensive and simple. The study suggests that translation practice is a rich resource for studying identity construction in fiction, raising awareness of the translators’ potential to manipulate identities.

14:15 → 14:30 14:15-14:30 Svitlana Voltsenko_'Constructing social reality in the Russian & Greek versions of Pilcher’s "The Shell Seekers"'

Constructing social reality in the Russian and Greek versions of Rosamunde Pilcher’s The Shell Seekers
Svitlana Voltsenko
MA ‘Translation: Greek, English, Russian’

The paper tackles cross-cultural pragmatics through translation, namely in examining how social reality is constructed across the Russian and Greek target versions of an English novel The Shell Seekers by R. Pilcher (1987). The study is based on naturalistic evidence (the translated versions of the novel) in order to trace shifts in speech act performance. It also uses experimental research methodology in addressing questionnaires to three respondent types (one examining English-to-Greek shifts, another examining English-to-Russian ones, and a third one examining perception of shifts across all three languages). Findings show that speech act performance, in the three data sets, manifests itself through variation in interpersonal distance (Brown and Levinson 1978) between interlocutors and their relational dynamics or in the dimension of power distance (Hofstede and Hofstede 2005). Findings show that power distance is higher in the Russian version rather than in the Greek or English texts, and the results of the questionnaires confirm these findings. Moreover, power distance is lower in the Greek version than in the English and Russian texts manifesting itself through idiomatic expressions, lower tenor vocabulary and allowing the characters to express opinions and feelings more freely. The significance of the study lies in that it shows pragmatic appropriateness to be a cultural variable and in that it shows translation to be a sensitive indicator of intended aspects of social reality in fiction.

14:30 → 14:45 14:30-14:45 Sophia Zacharia_'Social class and offensiveness in Emily Brontë’s "Wuthering Heights"'

Social class and offensiveness in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights
Sophia Zacharia
M.A. ‘English Language, Linguistics and Translation’, Specialization ‘Translation Studies and Interpreting’

The aim of this paper is to study how Heathcliff and Catherine’s unfulfilled love, in Wuthering Heights, and its dramatic consequences, hatred and revenge, can be shaped cross-culturally and intra-culturally through the use of impoliteness strategies. The study also considers the role of social class in shaping characters’ impolite behaviour which may have emotional consequences and cause offence (Culpeper 2011). To this end, the study examines the use of impoliteness strategies in two Greek versions (Kazantzis 1984, Mantoglou 2020) of the novel. The 1984 version seems to make use of a language which is less offensive and aggressive, in contrast to the more recent version of 2020. As translated discourse constructs the period each translation was created in, the two target versions register a change in how society viewed offence in 1984 as opposed to nowadays. Α questionnaire addressing 13 postgraduate students at NKUA confirmed the findings. The study shows that impoliteness is a significant tool for shaping chara¬cters in target versions and seems to creatively interact with social class.

14:45 → 16:45 15:00-17.00 L U N C H B R E A K

16:45 → 17:00 COFFEE TIME: You are welcome to join us for coffee online, at 15:45 (Italian time)/16:45 (Greek time)]

17:00 → 17:30 17:00-17:30 Elisabetta Lella_'Sociolinguistic variation in medical genres: A contrastive approach to professional and lay medical discourse in the English-Italian language'_CHAIR: Francesca Bianchi

Sociolinguistic variation in medical genres: Α contrastive approach to professional and lay medical discourse in the English-Italian language
Elisabetta Lella
UNIVERSITY OF BARI ALDO MORO
Medical discourse is a subject-specific area of meaning realization within a given culture/ language, which is articulated in different genres and registers, ranging between two opposite ends of the so-called “medical cline”. Traditionally, the extremes of the continuum are identified with the professional discourse end (determined by the evolving concept of Evidence-Based Medicine – EBM) and the lay discourse end. Nevertheless, the most recent studies have attempted a different framing for the cline, placing “healthcare discourse” on one end and “clinical discourse” at the other, following the evolution over time of power relations between the participants in medical discourse and the subsequent implications in how meanings are encoded (Baldry, Bianchi, Loiacono 2019).
Changes in social tissue also account, in literature, for the ends of the cline being “fluid” and standing at changing reciprocal distance at different times (Baldry, Bianchi, Loiacono 2019), a phenomenon that has become well-visible today in the global pandemic-related language, as specific lay texts count highly technical medical words, usually belonging to the professional, EBM-driven end of the cline.
Furthermore, the recent years have seen multi-mediality gaining an increasingly prominent position in today’s complex society and, accordingly, in research, literature shows. The importance of addressing and using multimodal and multi-media contents has been discussed in many fields, including Digital Humanities, Corpus Studies, and ELT (English Language Teaching) and EFL (English as a foreign language). Multi-media contents, indeed, provide detailed and context-rich meaning-making units (Halliday, Hasan 1989) capable of making the pragmatic aspects of discourse more readily evident to the observer, and whose analysis can be exploited for corpus-based research or for teaching purposes. (Loiacono, Iamartino, Grego 2011; Vasta, Baldry 2020).
Against this multifaceted background, the present paper aims to contribute to mapping the changes in the medical cline, both at interlinguistic and intralinguistic level, with specific reference to the current pandemic. An integrated corpus-based approach is adopted, comprising web as/for corpus methodologies (Gatto 2014) and more recent multimodal corpus analysis tools (mws.pa.itd.cnr.it). A pilot corpus of about 50 pandemic-related short YouTube videos has been compiled, tagged and prepared for analysis. The preliminary results suggest that the corpus exploration will serve fruitfully the purposes of linguistic mapping as well as teaching purposes.

17:30 → 18:00 17:30-18:00 Marco Barletta _'Cusani’s pen is mightier than Bulwer’s sword'

Cusani’s pen is mightier than Bulwer’s sword
Marco Barletta
UNIVERSITY OF BARI ALDO MORO
“The pen is mightier than the sword” is one of the most famous quotes by Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), a novelist who was a significant exponent of the Victorian culture and whose literary fame is nowadays almost forgotten (Christensen 2004). “Il Manzoni inglese” of the XIX century, as named by Sangiorgio (1884), was much appreciated and widely read in his time. Bulwer’s novels were translated as soon as they were published and one of the XIX-century translators of his literary works was the famous Milanese historian and writer, Francesco Cusani Confalonieri (1802-1879). Cusani started his career as a translator in order to restore his family finances (Vittori 1985), but he continued to translate and edit Bulwer’s novels throughout his life. In particular, he provided the Italian market with the publications of five Bulwer’s novels: Gli Ultimi Giorni di Pompei (1835-36); Ernesto Maltravers (1838-39); Alice o i Misteri (1839-40); Rienzi. L’ultimo de’ Tribuni (1847); Zanoni (1848). Drawing on Malmkjer’s (2003) model of translational stylistics and Batchelor’s redefinition of ‘paratext’ (2018), which builds on Genette’s (1997) conception of the term, the aim of this study is to investigate and illustrate the relationship between some authorial statements made in the novels against the Italian culture and Cusani’s paratextual interventions in the translations (such as prefaces and footnotes) in which he disputed Bulwer’s claims.

18:00 → 18:30 18:00-18:30 Stavroula Vergopoulou _'Advertising literacy in relation to masculine genericness in the translation of advertisements'

Advertising literacy in relation to masculine genericness in the translation of advertisements
Stavroula Vergopoulou

ARISTOTLE UNIVERSITY OF THESSALONIKI

Within the context of translation, education, and pragmatics, this study focuses on the generic use of masculine terms in the translation of advertisements between Greek, English, and German as well as the importance of advertising literacy as an educative tool. A thought-provoking example of (false) generics in Greek is the lexeme ‘άνθρωπος’ [ánθropos] (‘human being’/‘person’). Although it is morphologically marked for gender by the -ος [-ós] suffix, which typically signifies the masculine grammatical gender, it is semantically gender-neutral, by definition addressing or referring to both men and women. Nonetheless, despite its theoretical semantic gender neutrality, ‘άνθρωπος’ is most often used in practice to address or refer to men—in this way, it is pragmatically marked for gender. The generic use of masculine terms is typical of synthetic inflecting languages like Greek and German, in which inflection indicates differences in gender. In Greek, this generic use is very often explained by equating ‘άνθρωποι’ [ánθropi] (‘persons’) with any masculine term, such as, ‘δάσκαλοι’ [δáskali] (‘(male) teachers’). However, genericness
expressed through masculine terms arguably does not include or fully represent all people—primarily women, but also non-binary individuals. Therefore, one could say that the generic use of masculine terms is vague and even potentially misleading or pseudogeneric, as it excludes women from fair representation. This issue of inclusion/exclusion could be seen as interconnected with the nature of a language, whether synthetic or analytic. In the analytic English language, in contrast to Greek and German, grammatical gender plays a much smaller role. Thus, translation between these languages may increase or decrease the generic use of masculine terms and, in turn, linguistic sexism. Looking at the translation of advertising texts in particular, how can advertising literacy educate us about linguistic sexism in this translation process?

18:30 → 19:00 18:30-19:00 Francesco Sinigaglia_'Cultural translation in the digital environment: Theory, research and practice'.

Cultural translation in the digital environment: Theory, research and practice
Francesco Sinigaglia
UNIVERSITY OF BARI ALDO MORO

The project Cultural translation in the digital environment: Theory, research and practice, focuses on the translation of the cultural and artistic heritage of Apulia. The goal is to make it easily available in the digital environment to anyone interested in cultural tourism, according to an approach to the communicative act intended as a sociocultural tool. In this way, the translation is considered an act of re-contextualization across cultures. The theoretical framework of this study draws on Juliane House's theory of intercultural communication, which in turn draws on Malinowski's notion of functional equivalence, where the cognitive reference to the situational context envelops completely the text. In my presentation I will outline the theoretical framework of my research project, the main goals, and the methodology.

19:00 → 19:30 19:00-19:30 Closing of the Symposium__Dr. Maria Sidiropoulou NKUA, Dr. Sara Laviosa UBAM, Dr. Louisa Desilla AUTH, Dr. Francesca Bianchi & Elena Manca USAL