A próxima palestra organizada pelo CITRAT (Centro de Tradução e Terminologia da FFLCH),  o Departamento de Letras Modernas da FFLCH, e o Programa de Pós-graduação em Estudos da Tradução da USP será na sexta-feira, 9 de maio, quando Prof. Mark O'Thomas, University of Lincoln, Inglaterra, falará sobre "Translation Futures – Globalization, Innovation and the New Normal".

Sala 266, Prédio de Letras, Avenida Luciano Gualberto 403, 14h - 15h30
Translation Futures – Globalization, Innovation and the New Normal

British novelist Will Self has recently declared that reading novels will in the future become a marginal activity akin to the enjoyment of classical music or the pastime of painting landscapes. The impact of technology, the daily routine of second-screening, and the consumption of knowledge through bite-size chunks of text on tablets and other electronic devices come to converge around an almost passive acceptance that the future will bring a downgrading and devaluing of the arts and aesthetic pleasure in general. For literary translation, the future will inevitably bring change to our art and craft where the early signs of this are already more than evident.
In this lecture, I want to consider a possible world for literary translation and in doing so I will begin by looking at the specific and specialised area of translating for the stage. Drawing on my own experience of working in this field over the past fifteen years and in particular recent examples of my work at the Royal Court and the National Theatre, I will contextualise this work in relation to social, political, cultural and technological changes. Taking the international activity of the Royal Court as a paradigm example of translation’s ability to innovate within the tightest of prisms, I will explore both the ethical issues and the financial impact of this work – for the theatre, its international playwrights, and its translators. Finally, I will survey the current landscape of translation theory and its relevance, or otherwise, to current literary translation practices, pointing the way to a number of developments that posit challenges for all translators in the future.
Mark O’Thomas is Professor of International Drama at the University of Lincoln UK, and has worked at the Royal Court Theatre in London as a translator and dramaturg for the past fifteen years. He has translated a large number of plays from Brazil and Portugal for British audiences and an article reflecting on his translation of Brazilian playwright Samir Yazbek’s play O Ritual is published next month in the journal Theatre Research International. His book on the Royal Court Theatre’s international activities will be published by Palgrave Macmillan later this year. Mark continues to work at the interface between playwriting and translation, dramaturgy and ethics, adaptation and cultural politics, and is currently engaged in a range of works responding to the musical adaptation of Brett Easton Ellis’s novel American Psycho.