Project description
Migrants in their quest for and struggle with memory
What is the relationship between autobiographic memory and translation? What is the role of forgetting? What’s the emotional dimension of memory as an experience of the body and interaction between people? The EU-funded TransMemo project will answer these questions within the migration contexts. It will develop a theory for the translation-memory interface that draws on research on the philosophy of the mind. The project will use the concept of cultural translation and base its research on a series of case studies on autobiographic memory in migrant Arab authors in Britain and the United States. The findings will also improve our understanding about how migration itself as a translational experience takes place and what motivates migrants in their continuous quest for and struggle with memory.
Objective
Recently, migration has emerged as one of the most serious challenges for society, not only in Europe but also globally. As migration occurs in many cases cross-linguistically and cross-culturally, the migrant is not only torn between two lives and two places, but also between different languages, cultures and identities, bringing to the fore the role of translation as process of recall. While research on translation and memory in migration contexts has emphasized translation as intergenerational transmitter of memory, little attention has been paid to the personal dimension of memory. The proposed research aims at developing a new theory for the translation-memory interface. Drawing on current research in the philosophy of mind, it will analyze the relationship between autobiographic memory and translation, emphasizing the emotional dimension of memory as experience of the body and interaction between people, while at the same time highlighting the role of forgetting. This will be supported by a number of case studies on autobiographic memory in migrant Arab authors in Britain and the US, using the concept of cultural translation. Thus, the project will encourage interdisciplinarity and open new perspectives for research by applying memory concepts to translation and offering a theoretical framework that departs from the traditional, representational paradigm and foregrounds memory as embodied action. In this way, the project will contribute to a better understanding not only of how translation and memory interact, but also of how migration itself as translational experience takes place and what motivates migrants in their continuous quest for and struggle with memory. The action involves a two-way transfer of knowledge backed by a professional training and development plan, including training-through-research, project management, dissemination and communication activities, publications and conferences, teaching and pedagogy, as well as mobility and networks.
Fields of science
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinator
WC1E 6BT London
United Kingdom