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Translation Studies Initiative

EAP's Translation Studies Initiative reflects the strengths of cross-disciplinary and transnational critical inquiry within East Asian studies at the university. Cornell has been the home of several world-class research projects in the practice and theory of translation including Traces: A Multilingual Series of Cultural Theory and Translation and numerous bilingual and translated volumes published by the Cornell East Asia Series (CEAS), as well as in the critical inquiry of multilingual texts. Building on this history of practice and inquiry, EAP hosts a series of projects and workshops that deal with the critical issues of translation for academic work in today's world. These projects interrogate how language is used in specific disciplinary and topical situations.

Major workshops and projects of this initiative include:

  • 2017–18 Chinese Medicine and Healing: Translating Practice: A four-day practicum workshop on historical Chinese medical texts led by EAP faculty TJ Hinrichs.
  • Outdoor group photo of participants in 2016 Future of Humanities workshop
    From more than 10 countries, participants in the 2016 Future of the Humanities Workshop.
    2015–16 Anthropological Difference and the Regime of Translation: A five-day international workshop led by EAP faculty Naoki Sakai on the theoretical import of translation studies in today’s globalized university·
  • 2014–15 Still Hear the Wound/残傷の音: A project led by EAP faculty Brett de Bary translating the multimedia volume「残傷の音:アジア、政治、アート」(Zansho no oto: ajia, seiji, aato) into English, and culminating in an international workshop with collaborators at Kyoto Seika University, Seikei University in Tokyo, the University of Pennsylvania, and students in a graduate seminar at Cornell. The translated volume is published in CEAS as Still Hear the Wound: Toward an Asia, Politics, and Art to Come—Selected Essays, edited by Lee Chonghwa.
A conversation with the Chinese Medical Text workshop leaders (left to right) Bridie Andrews, TJ Hinrichs, and Yi-Li Wu