But what about the context?
Workshop with Boris Buden and Stefan Nowotny

Wien, 15.9.2008

We usually say that a text cannot be properly translated without considering – or better, co-translating – its . But what is actually this ? What is this that is more than a simple verbal of the words of the original? Is this a society, or history, or politics, or culture, or a peculiar mixture of all that? Is this the of the source text or the of translation, or rather something beyond both?

Walter Benjamin claimed that both the original and its translation are equally exposed to transformation in time. Does this apply to the , too? Does the broader of both the original and its translation also undergo a change in time? What if the current of the original at the time of its creation, which essentially informed its meaning, later becomes archaic, hardly understandable or even meaningless? For Benjamin the translation of a text occurs in the age of its fame. But what if we have to translate a text in the age of its shame?

Let us consider these questions together. They will tell us much about the phenomenon of translation and even more about the world we live in.

Participants: Aileen Derieg, Dagmar Fink, Mira Kadrić, Ita Kovač, Birgit Mennel, Glória Mélich, Borislav Mikulić, Klaus Neundlinger, Mary O’Neill, Gala Pin Ferrando, Gerald Raunig, Raúl Sánchez Cedillo, Alexander Skidan, Hito Steyerl, Goran Vujašinović, Tom Waibel, Michaela Wolf

With the support of FWF - Der Wissenschaftsfonds