Religious Translation, the Catholic Church and Global Media: a study of the products and processes of multilingual dissemination.

Projektinformationen

PIETRA

ID Finanzhilfevereinbarung: 101001478

DOI

10.3030/101001478

EK-Unterschriftsdatum 16 Februar 2021

Startdatum 1 Januar 2022

Enddatum 31 Dezember 2026

Finanziert unter

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Gesamtkosten

€ 1 892 541,00

EU-Beitrag

€ 1 892 541,00

Koordiniert durch

UNIVERSITY OF GALWAY
Ireland

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - PIETRA (Religious Translation, the Catholic Church and Global Media: a study of the products and processes of multilingual dissemination.)

Berichtszeitraum: 2023-07-01 bis 2024-12-31

Zusammenfassung vom Kontext und den Gesamtzielen des Projekts

PIETRA provides the first, large-scale, multilingual study of the translation products and processes that underpin communication in global religion. The project analyses the translation strategies, processes and products of the Catholic Church across three different media and in two different time periods to advance understandings of how multilingual dissemination intersects with technological change and institutional ideology. The central research question of PIETRA is whether and how consistency of message can be maintained in a large multilingual institution across different languages, cultures and communicative formats.

The development of a ground-breaking form of analysis of communicative strategies of multilingual institutions is crucial because, with so much translation now produced in an institutional setting, it is vital we are able to assess this work and understand its processes. The advent of new technologies necessitates a radical adjustment in how we conduct research in the domain and PIETRA is to the forefront in driving this innovation.

PIETRA Objectives
• Analysis of institutional translation practices and products embedded in the practical example of the Catholic Church.
• Innovative and transformative multilingual study of religious translation on a large scale across diverse media.
• Provision of a model for the analysis of multilingual output of a global institution in a multimedia world.
• Comparative analysis of multilingual practices in different historical eras and in different formats.

Arbeit, die ab Beginn des Projekts bis zum Ende des durch den Bericht erfassten Berichtszeitraums geleistet wurde, und die wichtigsten bis dahin erzielten Ergebnisse

PIETRA has combined the latest advances in empirical translation research, data capture and data analytics, with sociological and ethnographic investigations to examine the multilingual products and processes of the Catholic Church. The three work packages on the Pope’s Twitter account, the Vatican’s news website and the print networks of Catholicism are providing a unique insight into translation products and processes in religious and institutional settings.

In Work Package 1 – (Social Media: THE POPE ON TWITTER) a multilingual corpus of 10 years of tweets has been collected and aligned in 7 languages (Italian, French, Spanish, English, Portuguese, Polish and Arabic). The analysis of this corpus has begun and has focused on topic modelling, distributional variation, persuasiveness detection, readability and formality, inclusive language, metaphors and environmental discourse. Interviews have been conducted with Vatican communication teams.
In Work Package 2 – (Website: VATICAN NEWS) a multilingual corpus from the website Vatican News (https://www.vaticannews.va/) has been created which is multimodal in nature. Structured interviews have been conducted with members of the Vatican News linguistic teams and management. The constructive news content in reporting on environmental issues has been studied and a chapter on this submitted for publication.
Work Package 3 – (Print: RELIGIOUS TRANSLATION IN PRINT MEDIA) a corpus of translated religious books in the nineteenth century is currently under construction. Within this, a subcorpus of the translated works of St. Alfonso Liguori has been compiled and analysed in English and in French. This work is being combined within an analytical framework of infrastructures of global Catholicism, a new approach being proposed by the PI which will be included in an edited collection on Global Catholicism.

Fortschritte, die über den aktuellen Stand der Technik hinausgehen und voraussichtliche potenzielle Auswirkungen (einschließlich der bis dato erzielten sozioökonomischen Auswirkungen und weiter gefassten gesellschaftlichen Auswirkungen des Projekts)

The innovative methodological design offers a new approach to the study of religious translation, on a scale that has not been attempted before. It furthermore addresses a fundamental gap in the literature by assessing the linguistic aspect of online religion. Finally, it expands the study of religious translation from core canonical texts to wider media platforms and multimodal forms of communication, with a focus on the material carrier of the religious message. The project is innovatively placing language at the heart of discussions of religious communication; it is questioning the presence of religious translation in a globalised communication circuit and it is analyses the impact of the material carrier on the communication strategies. Uniquely it is doing this across multiple languages, and the methodological approach and results to date show transformative outcomes for the field.