Project overview

Cities have a multilingual population and their institutions are directly in contact with this population. To what extent do they have room to develop translation policies that are adapted to their sociolinguistic reality, which includes non-national languages? How do national language regimes influence their ability to do this?

The “Places of Translation” project aims to provide decisive insight into these questions by comparing, from the point of view of Translation Studies, the emergence of local policies in Belgium and Switzerland, two countries where multilingualism forms a key part of the political system and national self-definition. While both countries have consistently adhered to a liberal and democratic political model since they became modern independent states, their language policies have historically developed from two opposite models (unitary and officially monolingual vs federal and officially multilingual). The project compares the emergence of local translation policies in several cities from each country from the founding of the modern states (1830 and 1848, respectively) until the start of the First World War, with a particular focus on how these policies interacted with the national framework. It examines how translation was regulated, carried out and debated, with the aim of investigating not only its scope, functions, forms and practical organisation, but also its symbolic aspects, factors of change, and social and cultural impact.

Building on existing literature about the cities’ history and about language and translation policies at the national level, this study collects data from local public archives. It is organised in two main phases. The first consists of gaining an overview of the sources and selecting key periods, issues, agents and procedures for which detailed analysis is relevant. The second consists of analysing documents about translation and resulting from translation, using digital methods and tools. The aim is to describe, explain and assess the various local policies in their context.

In addition to its contribution to the cultural history of several cities in the two countries, the project will develop digital analysis methods for a historical and comparative study of local translation policies and provide documented knowledge on the role of institutional translation in multilingual societies.