NYU Florence: Translating the Untranslatable

NYU FLORENCE
Translating the Untranslatable: A Comparative Approach to Problems in Early Modern Literature
Jacques Lezra Chair, Comparative Literature, New York University and Professor of Spanish, Portuguese and Comparative Literature
Jane Tylus Faculty Director of The Humanities Institute and Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature, New York University
November 4, 2014
NYU Florence
Villa La Pietra
The two polemical assertions that will guide this conversation are the following: translatability and untranslatability are concepts born in early modernity; modernity emerges when the concepts of translatability and untranslatability are negotiated. The first is a baldly historical claim; the second has a much more complex relation to history. This talk/conversation centers on the paradoxical relation between these two claims. Some of the texts to be discussed include Machiavelli’s reading of Lucretius, Rojas’s La Celestina, Cer-vantes’s Don Quixote, Leonardo Bruni’s De Recta interpreta-ione, and the recent English translation of the Vocabulaire européen des philosophies (The Dictionary of Untranslatables: A Philosophical Lexicon).

[@alejandraacosta3739]

Gracias, Jacques Lezra!

[@dorinodesalvador6331]

Good Afternoon everyone, i would like to know about the merit and the relevance of untranslatability in translation studies.