This special subject will explore the translation of writing from the long Eighteenth Century with a particular focus on Enlightenment texts, that is to say, those that deal with describing or disseminating or questioning knowledge in some way and which might consider themselves as bringing illumination in some form. The Enlightenment was an explosion of writing (and translation), and the field is vast. It includes encyclopaedia entries, philosophy (including natural philosophy, that is, what we would now call science), medical texts, drama and poetry, as well as fictional, polemical, epistolary, and dialogic forms. Some of the questions we will ask are: 

• What are the particular challenges of translating Enlightenment texts? 
• Does the continued presence of Enlightenment language in much modern Western political discourse facilitate or hinder translation? 
• How do we translate concepts between languages?
• How do we as translators navigate the joint presence of poetics and discourses of knowledge?
• The Enlightenment was an era of intense sociability and debate, and all these writings are part of a huge series of conversations between different speakers, positions, or voices. These voices might be named characters who speak, argue, or write to each other within the text, or they might be implicit in that the text is a reply to a previous text or an intervention in a debate and can’t be understood – or translated – in their absence. How do we bring this dimension to life?

We will also think about translation as a form of intensified reading and consider the practice of collective translation (e.g. the University of Michigan’s Collaborative Translation Project, the Encyclopedia of Diderot and d’Alembert).

Languages: French is needed for this course.