TRANSIT vol. 15, Issue 1 CfP
WORDS AND LIVES IN TRANSIT
In 1947 Anna Seghers returned from exile in Mexico City to Berlin, where Transit, the namesake novel of this journal, would be serialized over two months in the Berliner Zeitung. This was the first time the work had appeared in German, having been published three years earlier in English, French and Spanish—none of them the language in which Seghers had written her by-now iconic saga of escape. The publication history of Transit, which, like its author, lived beyond German and Germany, reminds us that translation and migration always go hand-in-hand.
For the fifteenth volume of TRANSIT, we invite submissions that reflect on the shared life of translation and migration, two modes of movement—one between places, another between languages—whose self-evident connection is often relegated to ancillary status in scholarship. Translation has long played a role in facilitating the flow of bodies, words and ideas, an indispensable, if inconspicuous conduit, in networks of transnational solidarity and collaboration. It has just as well allowed for the consolidation of difference, feeding flawed notions of originality and treason, and undergirding a corporatized model of cultural production dominated by a handful of hegemonic languages.
As a forum for publishing translations over the last 20 years, TRANSIT wishes also to expand its focus to translation in the realm of asylum and other legal proceedings, and education, especially the role that AI translation and other forms of automated language technologies play in them. Translation is just as central to linguistic justice and language acquisition as it is to helping a literary text to migrate; indeed, we contend that translation in and beyond the explicit realm of cultural production are related processes, often intimately so in the case of migration. Possible questions for submissions to address may include:
- How does the anticipation of eventual translation into a more “lucrative” language impact a creator’s choices in the production of the source text? Does this lead to a homogenized “international style” ?
- What are the consequences of translation and translation technologies for linguistic justice, including legal proceedings and language education (e.g. DaF). Transcription, interpretation, language assessment and pedagogy are all central to migration; and are domains in which automated technologies are increasingly used.
- How might aesthetic categories for translated works be applied to evaluate the “performance” of migrants in a host society?
- How does translation feed nationalism? How can it subvert it?
- Does translation segment audiences by language? Does it bind them in shared viewing/reading/listening experiences?
This CFP encourages contributions from all fields that engage with German language, culture and thought. Such disciplines include, but are not limited to, literary studies, linguistics, language pedagogy, history, film and media studies, performance studies, geography, philosophy, translation, critical theory, and anthropology. The deadline for submissions will be April 15, 2025. Please see our submission guidelines and email contributions to: transitjournal@berkeley.edu CC asathreya@berkeley.edu (Ambika Athreya, Co-Managing Editor) or krvk@berkeley.edu (Kayla Rose van Kooten, Co-Managing Editor).