Conference Description
Translation as Re-rhythmization.
On the Role of Rhythmic Shifts in Communication Across Linguistic, Cultural and Media Boundaries
Rhythm has been rediscovered in research across diverse areas of the humanities, particularly in the past two decades. As a ubiquitous concept which has often been dismissed as overly vague, rhythm is integral to quite a few communicative phenomena. As an organizational form of time and definitely also of space, rhythm is a basic element that cannot be neglected in practice or theory. This particularly applies to music and literature (most obviously to lyric poetry), but also, more generally, to the cultural and life sciences. This makes rhythm one of the few variables common to the most diverse forms of communication and expression. On this basis, rhythm seems predestined to function as a hinge element in communication which links several forms of expression. From this perspective, the creation of intermedial, multimodal or polysemiotic artifacts is a synchronizing achievement.
As a phenomenon with transmedial relevance, rhythm also controls intercultural and intermedial transfer processes. In the spectrum between extensive preservation and complete transformation, interesting rhythmic shifts occur between pre-text and subsequent text, between source and target communication. Whether it is the change of verse meter in poetry translation, the adaptation of translated song texts, the supplementation, complete revision or adaptation of an original by means of other sign systems and media genres – phenomena of re-rhythmization are omnipresent in the reproduction and transmission of meaningful structures across linguistic, media and cultural boundaries.
We want to address these phenomena in a conference workshop to be held at the University of Innsbruck on December 1st and 2nd, 2022. This gathering will be organized by Dr. Marco Agnetta and Dr. Katharina Walter at the Translation Studies Department at Leopold-Franzens University, Innsbruck.