Translation as Practice – Translating Practices

Roberto Nobili as A Missionary Translator between Culture, Religion, and Societies

<

In the first phase of our project we developed a toolkit for cultural translation that operationalized approaches from translation studies in order to study cultural encounters and interactions. In the second phase we are seeking to integrate elements of practice theory into our analytical toolkit, which will enable us to focus more on practices that constitute social structures and hierarchies.

The project focuses on texts written by the Jesuit Mission in South India:  these comprise Tamil texts written by Henrique Henriques (1520–1600) for a South Indian readership, and Portuguese texts written by Gonçalo Fernandes (1541–1619) for European readers. Parallel to this, the Jesuits’ Indian experience will be set in context by comparing their printed texts from Ethiopia and Northern America.

The project is located in the History department of the University of Bielefeld, with Professor Antje Flüchter as the principal investigator and Giulia Nardini as the research assistant.

• Project presentation of phase I

Publications (project-related):

• Prof Dr Antje Flüchter
• Giulia Nardini