Critical Considerations
Asynchronous Session
The Challenges of Translating World Texts by Detained Refugees: Is Omid Tofighian a Translator or Collaborator in No Friend but the Mountains? View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jyhene Kebsi
My paper focuses on the English translation of No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison. I investigate the Boochani-Tofighian collaboration and argue that Omid Tofighian is not only a translator. He is also a collaborator in the English version of Boochani’s text written while incarcerated. I consider Tofighian’s contribution an integral and indispensable part of No Friend but the Mountains and the Manus Prison Theory. While the attention that has so far been given to the book has centralized the main English text, this paper concentrates on the frame narrative that consists of both the Translator’s Note and the supplementary essay that has the final Translator’s Reflections. In this paper, I explore the collaborative aspects of the translation and the translation challenges through a focus on this paratext. I read the paratext in light of the other scholarly work of Tofighian. This focus on the Translator’s Note, Reflections and articles sheds light on Tofighian’s intervention in No Friend but the Mountains. It shows that Tofighian’s additions are the result of 1) untranslatability and 2) his responsibility as he transmits the message of an incarcerated Kurdish refugee to the Australian public.
Text, Time and Movement
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Adrien Pouille
This study examines the journey of the literary text from the local to the global, and argues that it attains a worldly status largely due to how mobile and tuned to the present moment it is. It is often assumed that a literary text becomes worldly when conveying grand and universal truths, but I put forth that its attainment of a universal status relates more to the text's temporal orientation than its reach for thematic universality. Once finely tuned to the characters' present moment, it simultaneously articulates local and global realities generating affective affiliations at the micro and macro level. Ben Okri’s The Famished Road (1991) & Mariama Bâ’s So Long A Letter (1979) are two pertinent illustrations of the idea that the text’s fine representation of its characters' present moment favorably positions it locally and globally. The literary text attains this also because of its capacity to move across cultural and national borders. Without a breath expanding not only across space but also time a literary text may not become worldly, and the global presence of the folktale corroborates this statement. The research then links a literary text’s rise from the status of local to worldly text, and fluid motion between the local and the global to its capacity to capture its characters' present moment and circulate across physical and temporal boundaries.
Culturally-Situated Emoji as a Non-verbal communication tailored for Naxi Community, Lijiang, China View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Yun Ji
The Naxi ethnic group is one of the ancient ethnic groups in China with the richest cultural legacy, comparatively the most distinctive cultures, and comparatively the most endangered cultural characteristics. Although there are many culturally distinctive aspects of the Naxi community, most of them are at risk of Sinicization and are currently on the edge of extinction. According to Capella and Palmer (1989), the meta-communicative value of non-verbal cues is higher than verbal cues in receiving information during conversation. As for efficiency, non-verbal signals amount to a more effective way of communicating than verbal signals. Accordingly, emojis as non-verbal signals on the Internet have been dramatically popular globally. This study progressively figures out the situation of usage of non-verbal communication within the Naxi community, the habits of members within the Naxi community use emoji to interact online, the reason why creating a new set of emoji for the Naxi community is of great significance based on semi-structured interviews. In this study, exclusive emoji designs for the Naxi community are initially developed. The pictorial properties of emoji can facilitate the acquisition of more Naxi cultural knowledge by the general public, regardless of whether they are in-group or out-group members. In addition to its extraordinary disseminating capacity, akin to a swift vehicle, the Naxi culture can go viral on a global scale. This is the first study on the emoji designed for Naxi culture that contains culturally specific elements such as the Dongba Funerary Scroll, featured costumes for women, etc.
Lucy, a Subaltern Who Speaks View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Markeljada Ahmetlli
Jamaica Kincaid is a well-known Caribbean writer of post-colonial literature whose work portrays the reality of post-colonial life and consequences of colonization on women’s life. he focus of this paper is on her novel Lucy, on the way how the post-colonial state impacts Lucy’s life and motivates this young girl to search for her identity, and the right to belong as a human being with full rights in a modern society. This paper approaches the text from feminist critical approach, and it addresses issues such as identity, gender relations and sexuality. Lucy, the protagonist struggles because of the constraints imposed on her gender, by both the Eurocentric society and the society she encounters in Diaspora. The aim of this paper is to give an insight in the life of a woman who comes from a post-colonized background and faces the diasporic way of living. Kincaid through her work voices the truth that being a silent “subaltern” is not helpful in protecting one’s identity and freedom, and Lucy, differently from other post-colonial subjects, is a subaltern who speaks and raises her voice. This rebellion serves as a bridge to fight the patriarchal society and to win independence.
