Splendid innovations: the development, reception and preservation of screen translation

Convenors: Dr Carol O’Sullivan, University of Bristol and Dr Jean-François Cornu, France

This conference brings together translation scholars, film historians and archivists to piece together the untold history of screen translation from the silent period to the early talkies. There’s much that we don’t know about this period, starting with what materials survive, in what languages, from what films. This conference identifies the challenges which exist in writing the history of dubbing, subtitling and other forms of screen translation. It asks what a ‘translated’ film is anyway, in the silent and early sound period, and what part translation has played in wider textual transformations of film before and after 1927.

Speakers include:

Professor Martin Barnier, Université Lumière Lyon 2, France
Professor Frederic Chaume, Universitat Jaume 1, Catalonia, Spain
Dr Paolo Cherchi Usai, senior curator, George Eastman House, Rochester, USA
Mr Thomas Christensen, curator, Danish Film Archive, Denmark
Dr Jean-François Cornu, translator and independent film scholar, France
Ms Bryony Dixon, curator and researcher, British Film Institute, UK
Ms Nataša Ďurovičová, University of Iowa, USA
Mr Georg Eckes, project manager, Deutsches Filminstitut, Germany
Professor Adrián Fuentes Luque, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Sevilla, Spain
Professor Lucy Mazdon, University of Southampton, UK
Ms Dominique Moustacchi, film database administrator, Archives françaises du film du CNC, France
Dr Christopher Natzén, National Library of Sweden
Professor Markus Nornes, University of Michigan, USA
Professor Charles O’Brien, Carleton University, Ontario, Canada
Dr Carol O’Sullivan, University of Bristol, UK
Professor Sarah Street, University of Bristol
Mr François Thomas, Universite Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris
Professor Ginette Vincendeau, King's College London, UK
Professor Rachel Weissbrod, Bar-Ilan University, Israel