Textual Microcosms: A New Approach in Translation Studies

Project Information

TextualMicrocosms

Grant agreement ID: 101001731

DOI

10.3030/101001731

EC signature date 22 March 2021

Start date 1 October 2021

End date 30 September 2027

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 999 655,00

EU contribution

€ 1 999 655,00

Coordinated by

THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM
Israel

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - TextualMicrocosms (Textual Microcosms: A New Approach in Translation Studies)

Reporting period: 2023-04-01 to 2024-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Interlinear translation – a bilingual genre that includes an original text and its translation written in alternating lines on a single page - has constituted a global phenomenon, and is known from ancient times to the present. The wide ranging employment of interlinear translation points to its practical advantages. But is there more? TEXTUAL MICROCOSMS employs the interlinear translation as a framework to study religious, intellectual, linguistic and artistic elements of a culture as they intersect, connect, and diverge on the page. It is a framework that invites exploring these interconnections from global, regional and local perspectives by “reading between the lines” of such translations, concretely and metaphorically.

The project’s central objective is to carry out an inquiry into interlinear translation across the Indonesian-Malay world - a historically and culturally linked region now encompassing the nation states of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, as well as southern Thailand and the southern Philippines - between the 16th and 20th centuries. This region is among the world’s most linguistically and culturally diverse. The use of interlinear translations, especially in the context of Islamic communities, has been very widespread and the number of manuscripts with interlinear translations in collections in and from the region numbers in the thousands. Nonetheless this diverse corpus and the phenomenon it represents have not been subject to critical scholarly inquiry to date.

Interlinear translations can be studied from different perspectives: studying the relationship between translations from Arabic to Malay across time can point to gradual change in the Malay language as its syntax shifted to reflect Arabic sentence structure; exploring how a single Arabic text was translated in between the lines in sites across the Indonesian archipelago reveals how religious terms were standardized or, conversely, shaped by local contexts; reading a text in Old Javanese and retold in modern Javanese raises questions about the possibility of “intra-lingual translation.” Examining visual dimensions of interlinear manuscript pages suggests implicit comparisons between languages undertaken by scribes, and the study of performative forms of interlinear translation underscores the role of sound in translation. In these ways and others TEXTUAL MICROCOSMS considers interlinear translations as a framework to study multiple aspects of cultural expression and change.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

We are studying interlinear translations with several major themes in mind, including (1)
local terminologies and metaphors of interlinear translation (2) religious-cultural forms of interlinear translation, including Islamic (e.g. the Quran, poetry, talismanic texts) and non-Islamic ones (e.g. Ramayana and Bhagavad Gita) (3) script choice and usage in interlinear translation and how script choice (for example the use of the Arabic script to write Malay or Javanese) helped shape particular modes of translation (4) omissions, additions, silences and gaps have proven especially interesting within a translation paradigm that is explicitly “loyal” to the original text, purporting to replicate it word-for-word, and (5) visual and design dimensions of the interlinear page.

We are working to create a first of its kind database that will allow researchers to map and analyse the historically, culturally, linguistically and pedagogically important interlinear texts from a vast and diverse world region. For example, based on the database a scholar might ask what texts were translated using the interlinear model in a particular site in the 18th century? What were the characteristics of translations from Sanskrit into Balinese? What languages were used most often to produce interlinear translations, and by whom?

In order to complement the study of older interlinear texts the PI spent time reading Islamic interlinear translations (from Arabic into Javanese and modern Indonesian) with the guidance of a teacher at a traditional Islamic boarding school. She also observed the forms of instruction employed to teach such texts. Understanding how this traditional translation method is applied today offers key insights on its earlier dynamics and helps conceive of the central pedagogical role of such texts within Islamic education.

In order to advance their individual research on the various themes and texts studied, the PI and Postdoctoral Fellows traveled to several major libraries and archives including the British Library, Leiden University Library, Athenaeum Bibliotheek in Deventer, National Archive of the Netherlands in the Hague and Museum Sonobudoyo in Yogyakarta.

Throughout our work, we have shared our ongoing results and findings through presentations at
international conferences, workshops, and seminars, as well as local ones. We are working to publish the results of our research as journal articles and also on our monthly blog, “Interlinear Translation of the Month.”

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Interlinear translations have been available across the Indonesian-Malay world since at least the late 16th century yet they have never been the topic of a large scale study to date. The work of
TEXTUAL MICROCOSMS addresses interlinear translations from a range of perspectives, including linguistic, historical, religious, philological, literary, visual and pedagogical. Some of these perspectives are novel while others have been adopted in studies of only a limited scope in the past. The database being created as part of TEXTUAL MICROCOSMS will constitute a first-ever attempt to map the phenomenon of interlinear translation – across languages, scripts, sites, texts, compilers, schools of thought – in the Indonesian-Malay world.

In the second half of the project we expect further results and outputs, including an MA thesis on performative interlinear translation in Bali, a Ph.D. dissertation on the history of interlinear translations of the Qur’an in Java, and a series of articles that will engage with, among other topics,
a gendered perspective on interlinear translation in Indonesia, visual dimensions of interlinear manuscripts, the historiography of interlinear texts from the Indonesian-Malay world, dictionaries as interlinear texts. Further papers are planned based on our research and on the process of creating the database and the computer vision model.

We will hold workshops and international conferences. The next conference is scheduled for November 2024 and will focus on “Interlinear translation across the Muslim world,” allowing us to think broadly and comparatively about the phenomenon we study and engage in discussion with a wide range of experts. Invited scholars will speak about interlinear texts from Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, China, the Ottoman world and the Middle East.

We will also continue publishing our blog on a monthly basis, making available to students, scholars and anyone interested information and insights on particular interlinear texts and on theoretical and methodological issues related to their study.

Database training session

Talk by visiting scholar, HUJI

From Bali to Berlin joint workshop with JEWTACT

Speaking at the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities

Study at an Islamic boarding school

Touring Jerusalem

TEXTUAL MICROCOSMS mentioned at a British Library event

Interlinear Translation of the Month blog

Start of the year meeting 2022